Bergs, Alexander, and Laurel J. Brinton, eds.
Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012.
An encyclopedic handbook with contributions by various authors, with topics ranging from historical periods to modern media studies. Includes an introductory essay by Jeremy J. Smith entitled "Middle English" (pp. 32-47) and a section on various…
Bergvall, Caroline.
PennSound (Sound recording; MP3 format. Recorded in London, September 22, 2006.) [writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Bergvall.php].
Four poems inspired by Chaucer's CT, written and recorded by Bergvall: "The Host's Tale"; "The Summer Tale (deus hic, 1)" [link to text included]; "The Franker Tale (deus hic, 2)" [link to text included]; and "The Not Tale (funeral)."
Includes a section entitled "Shorter Chaucer Tales" (pp. 21–51) with five pieces inspired by CT: "The Host Tale," "The Summer Tale (Deus Hic, 1)," "The Franker Tale (Deus Hic, 2)," "The Not Tale (Funeral)," and "Fried Tale (London Zoo)." The…
An extended prose-poem (with portions lineated), presented as a dialogue between "Caroline" and "Alisoun," the latter an adaptation of the Wife of Bath. Transgresses temporal, linguistic, modal, and thematic categories, and includes references to…
Assesses the Proem to Boccaccio's Il Filostrato as a source for TC: the artist's "dual-self of helpless lover and ingenious artist" is split between Troilus and Pandarus, and Boccaccio's two ladies, Filomena and Criseis, "are first merged and later…
Berkeley, Michael, comp.
Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. PJBE Finale: Music Written for Philip Jones (London: Chandos, 1987). 1 CD: tracks 9-13.
A five-movement suite, composed by Michael Berkeley for the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, who are recorded here. Includes "Triton's Trumpets" (1:25), "The Grieving Queen" (3:46), "A Fanfare for the Huntsmen" (0:35), "The Sorrowful Knight" (1:51), and…
Berkeley, Michael, comp.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Commissioned in 1983 by the BBC "as incidental music for a series of radio programmes to texts by Chaucer." Includes parts for instruments (two trumpets, one horn, one tenor trombone, one tuba, and "Optional Percussion"), with scoring for five…
Berkhout, Carl T.
American Notes and Queries 23 (1984): 33-34.
A reference in Matthew Parker's "De antiquitate britannicae ecclesiae" (1572) to Clare Hall, Cambridge, as "vocatum in Chaucero in fabula de Reve the soller Halle" (cf. RvT 3990).
Berlin, Dorthea.
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. [176]-85.
Lists several pedagogical activities that pertain to GP.
Suggests that saints' lives, "in which demons converse with saints," provide a context and structural pattern that informs the dialogue between the Summoner and the devil. The tale inverts the usual threefold pattern of the saint's victory over the…
Berman, Constance H., Charles W. Connell, and Judith Rice Rothschild, eds.
Morgantown: West Virginia Unviersity Press, 1985.
Twelve essays on Hrotsvita, the Skaldkonur, Heloise, Mechthild von Magdeburg, Margery Kempe, Marie de France, and others, including two essays on Chaucer. For the two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Worlds of Medieval Women under…
Bernardo, Aldo S., and Saul Levin, eds.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1990.
Twenty-six essays on the impact of the classics on medieval art, history, philosophy, education, and literature. Topics range widely from Coptic textiles to fourteenth-century England, from neo-Platonism to speculative grammar--all addressing the…
Argues that medieval lists or catalogues point both to the necessary and to the excessive, and in doing so emphasize differing views of appropriate ownership and use of material goods. Includes brief mention of lists in HF and Form Age.
Berndt, David E.
Studies in Philology 68 (1971): 435-50.
Reconciles an apparent discrepancy between teller and tale in Chaucer's depiction of the Monk, arguing that the worldliness of the GP description, the exchange in MkP, and the concern with fall through Fortune in MkT are unified by the "common,…
Part 2 (pp. 225-379) prints the entire GP, based on the text of Manly and Rickert (1940), with phonetic transcription of lines 1-78; introductory commentary on its meter, stress patterns, syllabification, and rhyme techniques; and a comprehensive…
Bernstein, Charles.
Charles Bernstein. Recalculating (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 46-48.
Parodies Cole Porter's lyrics in "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," using Chaucerian topics and emphases; purportedly composed for a conference of the New Chaucer Society.
Berrozpe Peralta, Carlos.
[Albacete, Spain]: C. Berrozpe, 2006.
Includes a diachronic linguistic analysis--phonetic, orthographical, morphological, syntactical, lexical, and stylistic--of the description of the Reeve from GP. Traces elements backward to Old English and forward to Modern English.
The artistry of Chaucer's poetry is influenced by his historical role as a "negociis regis" employed to argue, persuade, and "embrace opposing doctrines" in the name of the king. Chaucer's skill as a negotiator can be seen in TC, wherin Criseyde,…
Berry, Craig A.
Theresa M. Krier, ed. Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 106-27.
Assesses Spenser's appeal to Chaucer and his continuation of SqT as an aspect of the Renaissance poet's doubt about his place in English poetry. Chaucer "revels in the multiplication of doubt," but Spenser sought to work out his doubts about his…
Berry, Craig A.
English Literary History 68: 287-313, 2001.
Chaucer enhances the rhetorical authority of SqT by following classical authorities, using figures such as Pegasus, the Trojan horse, and Sinon's persuasive deception as models and figures for the poem's rhetorical operation. Chaucer understood and…
Berry, Craig A.
Studies in Philology 91 (1994): 136-66.
Reads two sections of Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" (the opening lines and Arthur's dream, 1.9) as examples of inscripted biographical details and the poetic anxiety of the work. Considers Spenser's adaptations of PF and, especially, Thop, reading…
Berry, Craig A.
In Andrew Escobedo, ed. Edmund Spenser in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 246-53.
Describes the "audacity and intensity" of Spenser's debt to Chaucer, considering the later poet's archaisms, his allusions to and quotations of Chaucer (particularly in "The Faerie Queene"), and the importance of Chaucer to Spenser's English…
Berry, Craig A.
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 212-23.
Explores the thematic concern with poetic tradition in the narrator-Africanus exchange of PF and in Spenser's "Mutabilitie Cantos," arguing that Chaucer and Spenser share an "interest in rhetorically linking the earth-bound poet with a community of…
