Bleeth, Kenneth (A.)
Kathryn Lynch, ed. Chaucer's Cultural Geography (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 21-31.
Bleeth surveys critical responses to SqT for the ways they reflect assumptions about and attitudes toward the East as a cultural Other. Considers criticism from Thomas Warton (1778) through recent efforts to come to terms with and go beyond Edward…
Bleeth, Kenneth A.
American Notes and Queries 20 (1982): 130-31.
In adapting the fourth "question d'amore" of the "Filocolo" into the story of FranT, Chaucer changed the task from a flowering garden in January to "remoeve alle the rokkes" from the Brittany coast. Chaucer may have derived this idea from Ovid's…
Bleeth, Kenneth A.
English Studies 74 (1993): 113-23.
The fantasies of the rocks and the garden, initially denoting personal obsession, lose their ominous character when Dorigen and Aurelius enter into dialogue, a discourse grounded in mutual understanding. Unlike the dangerous rocks, threats to our…
Bleeth, Kenneth A.
Larry D. Benson, ed. The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Harvard English Studies, no. 5 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 45-60.
Examines various evocations of paradise as a garden in MerT as parodic inversions of Christian understanding of the scene of the Fall.
Bleeth, Kenneth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 221-24.
Argues that written texts are not the only valid sources of PhyT and acknowledges the need to consider "remembered texts, semantic fields, and pictorial images" - "intertexts" theorized by Michael Riffaterre.
Bleeth, Kenneth.
Laura L. Howes, ed. Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp.107-17.
Bleeth examines the ways that gardens in TC, KnT, MerT, and FranT reveal Chaucer's discomfort with the aristocratic fantasy of "pure play," idealized in the Roman de la Rose and separated from the world.
Bleeth, Kenneth.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.
A complete annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical treatments of SqT, FranT, and PhyT from 1900 through 2005, subdivided into the following categories: editions and modernizations of each tale; sources, analogues, and later influence of each…
Bleier, Roman, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds.
New York: Peter Lang, 2022.
Collects twelve essays from the 2016 conference on memory and identity, with a preface and a cumulative index. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World under Alternative Title.
Bliss, Jane.
Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008.
Bliss surveys the variety of ways that names, naming, and namelessness in romance "contribute to our understanding" of the genre, focusing on Middle English narratives but also discussing French and Anglo-Norman analogues. She identifies a number…
Focuses on Elizabethan versions of the Griselda story but includes discussion of how the context of CT dislocates both allegorical and literal readings of ClT. Efforts to resolve this dislocation prompt Elizabethan and later versions.
Bloch, R. Howard.
Qui Parle 2 (1988): 22-45; Representations 28 (1989): 113-34.
Explicates Virginia's death by reference to patristic definitions of virginity as the desired ideal veiled in substance, a state inevitably transgressed by the gaze. By extension, the ideal that virginity implies is destroyed by its articulation. …
Ferster's and Fradenburg's essays problematize the critical act of reading medieval texts: Ferster's examination of "who speaks" in PrT extends to the critic's own voice; Fradenburg's articulation of medievalists' anxieties concerning the status of…
Bloch, R. Howard.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Explores the scriptural roots of medieval attitudes toward women, focusing on how various kinds of abstraction and aestheticizing led to fundamentally misogynistic contradictions. Examines French romances, lays, and lyrics for the ways they elevate…
Argues that the Host's mention of "half-wey pryme" in RvP 1.3906 refers to the canonical hour of prime rather than "modern clock time" and means 6:30 am, rather than 7:30 as it is often explained. Compares other chronological references in CT…
Medieval and classical notions of space and time cause "pryvetee" to be related to "oiseuse" and "otium." Spatial relationships emphasize that major events, like the little fall which occurs in the carpenter's house in MilT, are arranged around a…
Blodgett, James E.
Library 6th ser. 1 (1979): 97-113.
Identifies through examination of printer's marks the printer's copy for Thynne's text of Rom, Bo, "The Assembly of Ladies," and the final six stanzas of "La Belle Dame sans Merci." Comments on Hunterian MS 5.3.7 and Longleat MS 258.
Blodgett, James E.
Paul Ruggiers, ed. Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1984), pp. 35-52.
Summarizes the life of William Thynne and gauges the editorial practices and influence of his 1532 edition of Chaucer's "Workes," arguing that it introduced humanistic rigor into the editing of English works. Although Thynne's practices were…
Blodgett, James Edward.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1976): 5311A.
Two mss and a copy of Caxton's edition contain marks indicating that they provided printer's copy for Thynne's edition. The readings which differ from the printer's copy indicate that Thynne also collated with other mss. Because of his access to…
The anti-Robertsonian introduction (pp. 1-7) argues that Chaucer's art is realistic rather than a "system of tropes." Given over to the study of "codes, conventions,...and 'language,'" criticism fails Chaucer, and modern critical approaches…
The anti-Robertsonian introduction (pp. 1-10) sees Chaucer's KnT as a "triumph of Chaucer's comic rhetoric, monistic and life-enhancing." A collection of eight previously published articles on KnT by various hands.
The anti-Robertsonian introduction (pp. 1-7) rejects "systems of codes." If Chaucer had been writing in modern times, he would have written "The TV Evangelist's Tale." Chaucer's Pardoner is "obscenely formidable and a laughable charlatan."
Bloom, Harold, ed.
New York: Chelsea, 1985. Reissued in 1987.
Nine previously published essays or exerpts. Topics include Chaucer's "greatness" (G. K. Chesterton), the ending of TC (E. Talbot Donaldson), the impact of MerT (E. Talbot Donaldson), Wife of Bath as narrator (David Parker), Chaucer in the…
Bloom, Harold, ed.
Philadelphia : Chelsea House, 2003.
Five essays by various authors, a brief introduction by the editor, a chronology, and selective bibliographies on Chaucer's work, primary and secondary. Three essays are reprints (George L. Kittredge's on the marriage group; Larry D. Benson's on…
Bloom, Harold, ed.
New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2007.
Ten previously printed or excerpted essays by various authors, with an introduction by the editor, a Chaucer chronology, and a bibliography. Topics include the ending of TC (E. Talbot Donaldson); LGWP (Robert Worth Frank, Jr.); interplay between KnT…
