In context of a larger study of dream visions, uses HF as an example of the ironic dream vision, arguing that it treats authority ironically, whereas other dream visions (e.g., Macrobius on Scipio, Julian of Norwich's mystical visions) offer other…
Considers the "authoritative weight" of dreams and visions in literature, focusing on their connections with other forms of prophetic or revelatory texts and offering a taxonomy of varieties. Includes chapters on the biblical Book of Daniel,…
Bidard, Josselin.
Danielle Buschinger, ed. Médiévales, 11-12: L'antiquité dans la littérature et les beaux-arts (Amiens: Presses du Centre d'Études Médiévales, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, 2010), pp. 302-8.
Focuses on Chaucer's uses of Ovid, specifically his use of the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe in LGW.
Bidard, Josseline.
Leo Carruthers, ed. Heroes and Heroines in Medieval English Literature:A Festschrift Presented to Andre Crepin on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday ( Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 119-23.
In medieval beast fables, including NPT, the fox is a figure of vice. Neither his basic animalism nor his comic villainy qualifies him as an anti-hero, but his consistent distortion of truth does.
Bidard, Josseline.
Leo Carruthers and Adrian Papahagi, eds. Prologues et épilogues dans la littérature anglaise du Moyen Âge (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2001), pp. 155-69.
Examines the use of prologues and epilogues in several narratives of the Reynard tradition (13th-15th centuries). NPT indicates Chaucer's preference for the prologue and the ambiguity of his assertions.
Bidard, Josseline.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littérature dans les textes médiévaux anglais (Nancy: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2005), pp. 217-28.
Analyzes Chaucer's characterization of the birds in PF to explore the process of "distanciation," stemming from two coexisting viewpoints in the poem: the author's and the dreamer's.
Biddick, Kathleen.
Durham, N. C., and London : Duke University Press, 1998.
Explores the "contemporary consequences of the methods used to initiate medieval studies as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century," particularly how the discipline is "still intimately bound" to the "fathers" of medieval studies.
Biddick, Kathleen.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30: 449-62, 2000.
Reading the loathly lady's discourse on gentilesse (WBT) against the Statutes of Kilkenny (imposed by the English crown on the Anglo-Irish in 1366) highlights the conflict of nobility as defined either by blood line or by behavior (sanguinity or…
Bie, Wendy A.
English Language Notes 14 (1976): 9-13.
Readers err in trying to define the time-scheme of TC too closely, since only a few days of the story's three years are narrated in detail. One must distinguish, therefore, between historical and dramatic chronology, noting Chaucer's emphasis more…
Biebel-Stanley, Elizabeth M.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 73-82.
Rooted in Irish analogues, the sovereignty theme is anchored in the queen figure in WBT. The theme reflects "women's integral role in governance," a "wishful vision of a movement toward more egalitarian society," and Anne of Bohemia's role in the…
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds. Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1998), pp. 15-26.
Surveys references to food in CT, arguing that they capitalize on traditional associations of the "feminized Christ" and butchered animals.
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1564A.
Feminist criticism has changed perceptions of the Wife of Bath. Feminist critics perceive her not as a superficial and "garish caricature" of womanhood but as a serious person attempting to establish her identity, rejecting antifeminist tradition,…
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 63-75.
WBT reveals the Wife's idealized vision of society. The Tale answers her society's gender inequities, which victimize both men and women, by depicting a world wherein ultimately women and men are recognized as individuals.
Chaucer employed color adjectives more extensively than did his contemporaries. He preferred basic colors and used them most in connection with human beings. Chaucer's most "colorful" poem is KnT, followed by Rom and GP. Often, his colors are used…
Biggar, Raymond George.
Dissertation Abstracts International 22.06 (1961): 1992.
Compares and contrasts Chaucer's and Langland's views of the "lower clergy" (monks, friars, and parish priests) in light of the "religious backgrounds" of their age, arguing that despite their stylistic differences their views are very similar in…
Explores the meanings and implications of the phrase "spiced conscience" in Middle English and later English language history, arguing that in both the GP description of the Parson (1.526) and the Wife of Bath's admonition to her husband (WBP 3.435)…
Maintains that the Summoner's fondness for "overheating foods" conveys lechery, adducing evidence from Reginald Pecock's fifteenth-century "The Reule of Crysten Religioun."
Biggins, D.
Philological Quarterly 42 (1963): 558-62.
Examines the statement about alliterative verse in ParsP 10.42-46, arguing that the "rum, ram, ruf" sequence has its source in French and helps to constitute a "meaningful . . . and technically adroit comment on alliterative poetry."
Explores the denotative, connotative, figurative, and ironic implications of the GP description of the Wife of Bath as one who knows "muchel of wandrynge by the weye" (1.497).
Clarifies the reference to Christ catching Peter as he sailed in GP 1.696-98, focusing on the figurative meaning of "hente" and its implications regarding the Pardoner's faux relic, Peter's sail-cloth.
Explicates GP 1.673 (not 1.163, as in title), adding depth to the multiple, generally sexual innuendoes of the "stif burdoun" borne by the Summoner to accompany the Pardoner's song.
Though we cannot recover the facts of Chaucer's versification,his lines in CT are basically iambic pentameter. Of the first hundred lines of GP in the Ellesmere MS., eighty may be so scanned with little difficulty.
Biggins, Dennis.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 249-54.
Interprets various details in WBP and in the GP description of the Wife of Bath to determine whether she is a five-time widow or still wedded to Jankyn, finding the evidence to be inconclusive, perhaps richly ambiguous.
