Benson, C. David.
Mediaevalia 8 (1985 for 1982): 337-49
The Pardoner should be read not as a real person but as an allegorical figure. Modern discussions overemphasize the Pardoner's sexuality and distort the fact that hints about his sexuality prepare for the more important concern with his…
Benson, C. David.
Ardis Butterfield, ed. Chaucer and the City (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 129-44.
Significantly, the setting of GP is located outside the limits of London proper, and most of the pilgrims are not Londoners. CkT offers a clear vision of fourteenth-century London and reflects what is both good and appalling about the city.
Benson, C. David.
Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 1-20.
Benson describes the very different views of London produced by Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, as well as the depictions in William FitzStephen's "Description of London" (1174) and "London Lickpenny" (fifteenth-century). These representations…
Benson, C. David.
Stephen J. Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby, eds. Misconceptions About the Middle Ages. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, no. 7 (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 240-53.
Benson advocates teaching Chaucer in Middle English, because the liveliness and vitality of Chaucer's language are lost in translation.
Benson, C. David.
American Benedictine Review 24 (1973): 299-312.
Demonstrates that John Lydgate's modifications of his sources in his "Troy Book" result in a "convincing picture of the ancient world," although Lydgate did not achieve the superior historical texture that Chaucer produced in KnT.
Benson, C. David.
Chaucer Review 3.2 (1968): 107-23.
Describes the "basic historical method" of KnT as consistent with the "contemporary aristocratic chronicle," showing how Chaucer uses Statius's "Thebaid" to archaize the plot drawn from Boccaccio's "Teseida" and create a world "believable" for his…
Benson, C. David.
Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds. Medieval Women and Their Objects (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 267-87.
Discusses SNT as Chaucer's only hagiographical work to evaluate the medieval perception of art. Contrasts the medieval devotion to earthly relics in relation to St. Cecilia's desire to shed the physical and enter the spiritual, while paralleling her…
Benson, C. David.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019.
Studies "ancient Rome as a major theme in the works of late medieval English poets": Chaucer, Gower, Langland, Lydgate, and the anonymous authors of "Stacions of Rome" and the interpolated "Metrical Mirabilia." Chapter 3, "Heroic (Women) in Chaucer's…
Benson, Donald R.
Chaucer Review 14 (1979): 48-60.
Rhetorically nearer to exhortation than to encomium, the didactic structure of this passage (4.1267-1392) rises in a series of contradictions that confuse doctrines and undercut ironic perceptions. None of the proposed assignments of the passage…
Benson, L[arry] D.
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 321-51.
Descriptive survey of major developments in Chaucer criticism and scholarship, treated historically and sub-divided into eight categories: 1) canon, 2) texts, 3) language and versification, 4) biography, 5) learning, 6) sources, 7)…
Benson, L[arry] D.
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 352-72.
Accompanies Benson's discursive "Reader's Guide to Chaucer," included in the same volume (pp. 321-51). Lists selected "critical and scholarly works" (some lightly annotated), and indicates with an asterisk works that are "especially suitable for…
Benson, Larry D.
English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 03 (1992): 1-28.
Doubtful of M. L. Samuels's argument that Equat is Chaucer's work, Benson examines dominate and recessive spelling forms to argue that it is not. Compares spelling in Equat with that of various manuscripts of TC and CT.
Benson, Larry D.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Genres, Themes, and Images in English Literature from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988), pp. 11-30.
Argues that Chaucer was the "Father of English Prudery" because (fabliaux notwithstanding) he elevated and purified the English language by inventing a language of circumlocution and courtly indirection and by substituting Latinate terms for the…
Benson, Larry D.
Julian N. Wasserman and Robert J. Blanch, eds. Chaucer in the Eighties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 3-22.
By dating HF's composition and first public reading in December, 1379, we can see the unfinished last lines as a joke purposely played on Cardinal Pileo's messenger, Nicolo,whose news that no marriage would take place between Richard II and Caterina…
Benson, Larry D.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 23-47.
Discusses bawdy words, obscenities, and euphemisms in Chaucer,exposing fallacies in overzealous scholarly search for obscene puns.
Benson, Larry D.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 77-120.
By analysis of manuscript traditions Benson argues that there were at most two early orderings of CT. All later orderings in manuscripts are scribal rearrangements or distortions of these two. Both orders, one of which is the Ellesmere order,…
Benson, Larry D.
Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Wisdom of Poetry (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University, 1982), pp. 123-44.
Offers new support for the old theory that PF represents Anne of Bohemia as the "formel eagle" and King Richard, Charles of France, and Friedrich as her three suitors, presenting new ararguments for dating the poem in 1380 and new evidence that both…
Benson, Larry D.
Hamden, Conn.: Garland Press, 1993.
A complete concordance to Benson's "Riverside Chaucer," excluding only titles, glosses, implicits, and explicits. Includes brief definitions of words and references to definitions in the OED and MED.
Benson, Larry D.
Ian Lancashire, ed. Computer-Based Chaucer Studies (Toronto: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, University of Toronto, 1993), pp. 141-60.
Describes the production of a computer-generated "glossarial concordance" to Chaucer in which meanings, variant spellings, and occurrences are presented; see Benson's "Glossarial Concordance." Describes the uses of such a concordance and the…
Benson, Larry D.
Theodore M. Anderson and Stephen A. Barney, eds. Contradictions: From "Beowulf" to Chaucer (Aldershot, Hants: Scolar; Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1995), pp. 243-65.
Surveys the lyric and romance traditions of England and France that most likely influenced Chaucer's early writing, commenting on how Rom, ABC, and BD reflect the possible sources and development of Chaucer's colloquial English style.
Includes thirteen essays by Benson, all but one reprinted from earlier publications. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Contradictions: From "Beowulf" to Chaucer under Alternative Title.
Benson, Larry D., and Theodore M. Andersson, eds.
Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.
An anthology of sources and analogues of MilT, RvT, MerT, and ShT, with more limited analogous materials for SumT, ManT, and FrT, in all cases providing facing-page translations of non-English materials. Each section includes an introduction that…
