Bishop, Louise M.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007.
Surveys medical metaphors and the rise of English vernacular writing to trace diminution of belief in the "intrinsic healing quality" of words. As the healing power "evaporates," we find the separation of material and immaterial things, healing and…
Bishop, Louise M.
Martha W. Driver and Sid Ray, eds. Shakespeare and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Performance and Adaptation of the Plays with Medieval Sources or Settings (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland, 2009), pp. 232-44.
Bishop argues that Paulina's "female eloquence" reflects the influence of Chaucer's Mel on Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale," commenting on the fact that the folio editions of Chaucer present Mel as "The Tale of Chaucer" and observing how Richard…
Bishop, Morris, ed.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970.
An anthology of Latin, Continental, and English medieval narratives in modern translation, including RvT (pp. 305-09) in a section called "Merry Tales and Salty Fictions."
Item not seen. The WorldCat record states that this is a "Shortened edition of The Horizon book of the Middle Ages, published in 1968 by American Heritage, New York," with a section on Chaucer.
Bisson, Lillian M.
Medieval Perspectives 7 (1992): 19-33.
Chaucer's and Eco's works appear to be structured as "unicursal labyrinths" but are really based on "multicursal labyrinths" in which no center can be found. Chaucer's aesthetic demonstrates the open quality that Eco finds specific to contemporary…
Bisson, Lillian M.
New York : St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Reads Chaucer's works for the ways they reflect the "conflicting realities he confronted in his world." An opening section on "The Poet and His World" introduces the "double vision" of the intellectual world Chaucer inherited and describes his…
Studies Chaucer's first-person narrators of BD, PF, and HF as "students" who are instructed by some pedagogical authority, considering also the narrator of TC as well as the student-teacher relationship between Pandarus and Troilus. Assesses the…
Bitner, Kendall, and Kyle Dase.
Digital Medievalist 14, special issue (2021). 34 pp.
Explains the "necessary compromises and more efficient practices" that underlie changes to the original transcription principles of the Canterbury Tales Project, offering illustrative examples, and emphasizing the goal of making textual materials…
Bitot, Michel, ed., with Roberta Mullini and Peter Happe.
Tours: Universite Francois Rabelais, 1996.
Twenty-eight essays by various authors addressing Chaucer, Langland, medieval drama (English, Spanish, and French), Malory, Thomas More, and Renaissance drama, especially Shakespeare. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Divers Toyes…
Explains PardT 6.406 to mean "to be damned" in light of the figurative associations of brambles with sins and the picking of fruit with spiritually dangerous activity, corroborated in exegetical commentary and other medieval literature.
Explores various linguistic difficulties in analyzing Chaucer's scientific language, and comments on his coinages, uses of English scientific vocabulary, and borrowings of French and Latin terms.
Bixler, Frances.
Papers of the Arkansas Philological Association 12 (1986): 1-12.
Deals with the order of CT in group C. Establishes parallels,antitheses, and thematic similarities regarding morality, sacrifice, and characters in PardT and SNT.
Tabulates and analyzes analytic (more/most) and synthetic (-er/-est) forms of comparatives and superlatives in Chaucer's prose works (Bo, Astr, Mel, ParsT), correlating them with Old English and French derivations of the root words.
Bjork, Lennart A.
Mats Ryden and Lennart A. Bjork, eds. Studies in English Philology, Linguistics, and Literature Presented to Alarik Rynell 7 March 1978. Stockholm Studies in English, no. 46 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1978), pp. 1-20.
The courtly love interpretations of TC are not plausible; TC offers a burlesque of courtly love. In support of the exegetical promotion of "caritas," serious flaws in Troilus's character are revealed in animal imagery.
Bjork, Robert E.
Chaucer Review 53.3 (2018): 336-49.
Surveys Chaucer's uses of terms for private parts, and argues that his use of "bele chos" (beautiful thing) instead of pudendum (shameful thing) suggests his celebration of the Wife's sexuality.
Black, Maggie.
London: British Museum Press, 1992.
An illustrated, indexed cookbook of medieval recipes, drawn from the resources of the British Museum, with one chapter entitled "Chaucer's Company" (pp. 34-50) that includes seven recipes, linked to the CT pilgrims.
Black, Merrill.
Diane P. Freedman and Olivia Frey, eds. Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines: A Reader (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2003), pp.85-95.
An autobiographical reading of WBPT by a woman who was for a time an abused wife. Black records three different responses to Chaucer's materials at three different stages in her life, focusing on the Wife's responses to abuse by her husbands.
Black, Nancy B.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.
In narratives of falsely accused queens, the queens frequently undergo periods of exile that refine their souls through poverty and suffering. Black compares the Constance narratives by Nicholas Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer, examining each version in…
Black, Robert Ray.
Dissertation Abstracts International 35 (1975): 6090A.
Parody is the key to understanding the relation between Chaucer's comedy and Christianity. Through parody Chaucer achieves high seriousness and high comedy. Parody of sacral sign and symbols in PardT and Marriage Group produces poetry that can be…
Black, Robert.
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 55:1 (1985): 23-32.
MilT 3589-92 alludes to Matt. 5:27-30, where Christ condemns lechery, using the images of hand and eye. Chaucer uses the same imagery to condemn the lecher Nicholas, whose punishment is to be burned a "hand-brede aboute" his "nether ye." The same…
Blackbourne, Matthew.
Medieval History Magazine 6 (2004): 30-33.
Brief summary of Ricardian literature and contemporary social and political events. Mentions Gower's works, "Piers Plowman," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Chaucer's works, especially GP and WBPT.
Although the Reeve claims a moral high ground by telling a story that deals out justice to its dishonest miller, this revenge does not accord with the moral virtue of justice nor with the amoral fabliau genre, undermining the Reeve's sanctimony and…
Blake, Kathleen A.
Modern Language Quarterly 34 (1973): 3-19.
Examines in KnT the rhetorical and thematic concerns with order, choice, and the difficulties of achieving resolution. Reads Palamon and Arcite as a balanced pair, and Theseus as a figure of the limited human ability to avert fortune and determine…
Blake, N. F.
A. J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer, eds. Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 19-38.
Critiques Root's and Windeatt's editions of TC for their lack of a clear and consistent theory of textual transmission and explores the problems of producing a valid edition of CT, exposing difficulties by examining the limitations of the Riverside…
Blake, N. F.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 90 (1989): 295-310.
Closer attention to external and internal evidence should make scholars more cautious about accepting as canonical such passages as NPE, BD 31-96, Ret, and the lists of Chaucerian works in MLT and LGWP.
