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.
Biggins, Dennis.
Studies in Philology 65 (1968): 44-50.
Argues that the name Simond/Symkyn in RvT "involves a pun on the Latin word 'simia,' meaning 'ape'," exploring Symkyn's multiple associations with apes, along with those of Robin the Miller.
Proposes punctuation for CkT 1.4394-96 that renders Perkyn's "sober-living master" as "not altogether above reproach," offering the reading as "yet another token of Chaucer's sophisticated art."
Offers evidence from medieval naturalists and bestiaries to clarify that the she-ape simile in ParsT 10.424 means that the "proud dandy . . . is ridiculously like a wretched ape sticking up its bare bottom when the moon is full."
Biggio, Rosemary.
Dissertation Abstracts International 44 (1983): 164A.
Chaucer's work evolved structurally from circular (dream visions) to spiral (TC; CT), developing closure through "thematic resolution" and metaphoric symbols.
Biggs, Frederick M.
Review of English Studies 56 (2005): 497-523
Difficulties in dealing with the role of the three tubs (along with other issues) suggest that Chaucer's MilT is the source for the Flemish version. Chaucer may have originated this Tale to reflect on the theme of God's control, an idea also…
Peter G. Beidler identifies "Heile van Beersele" as a likely source for MilT, supporting his argument with seventeen words he ascribes to Middle Dutch origin in MilT. Only one "or perhaps two" of those words prove to be "distinctively Dutch,"…
Biggs, Frederick M.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 108 (2009): 59-80.
Biggs argues that Decameron 3.4 is a source for MilT, inspiring the latter's density of detail, its religious sentiment, and many of its narrative features, particularly the Flood story. MilP also echoes Boccaccio's "Conclusione dell'autore" and its…
Biggs, Frederick M.
Notes and Queries 254 (2009): 340-41.
Among the four fabliaux in London, British Library Harley MS 2253, "La gageure," featuring the "misdirected kiss" motif, is an analogue of MilT, while "Le chevalier e la corbeille" is a possible source, providing not only a container that forces "the…
Biggs, Frederick M.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017.
Addresses connections between Boccaccio's "Decameron" and CT, with particular focus on ShT, MilT, and WBT. Presents a "hermeneutic argument" that explores areas including "alchemy, domestic spaces, economic history, folklore, Irish/English politics,…
