Identifies several examples of "semi-legal" or "quasi-legal language" and a "legalistic turn of mind" in the Franklin's association with the Man of Law, his exchanges with Host, and the "explicit use of legal formulae" in FranT. Argues that Chaucer's…
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…
Provides historical background for Chaucer's associations of millers with bagpipes in GP 1.565 and in RvT 1.3927, assessing them as an important characterizing details--vivid, realistic, appropriate, and symbolically suggestive of lechery and…
Analyzes differences between MLT and its source in Nicholas Trevet's "Cronicles," with some attention to Chaucer's use of Gower's version in "Confessio Amantis." Shows that Chaucer streamlines quotidian details, adds rhetorical flourishes, and…
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…
Bloom, Harold, ed.
Broomall, Pa. : Chelsea House, 1999.
Includes a brief biography, bibliography, and introduction to CT; summaries of GP, KnT, WBPT, and PardPT; and excerpts from critical studies of these sections of CT.
Eleven essays previously published between 1999 and 2004. Includes essays by Fiona Somerset on SumT and on clerical hypocrisy, Colin Wilcockson on GP, Katherine Little on ParsT, Lee Patterson on PrT, Elizabeth Robertson on MLT, Louise M. Bishop on…
Bloom, Harold, ed.
New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2008.
A summary/introduction to the pilgrims and plots (Part 7 excepted) of CT, with brief excerpts from fourteen critical commentaries written between 1956 and 2007; annotations of twenty-one book-length studies; and an index.
Includes selections from GP, WBP, and PardP in Middle English, with glosses, and an introduction in which Bloom comments on Chaucer's characterizations, his influence on Shakespeare and Spenser, and reading Chaucer in its original Middle English.
Bloom, Harold, ed. [Cornelius, Michael G., vol. ed.]
New York: Infobase, 2008.
An anthology of eighty-three responses to Chaucer and his works excerpted from commentaries written from the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries: fourteenth (2), fifteenth (9), sixteenth (20), seventeenth (4), eighteenth (10), nineteenth (35),…
Bloom, Harold.
Harold Bloom. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York, San Diego, and London: Harcourt, 1994), pp. 105-26.
Appreciative criticism of Chaucer and his contribution to Western literary tradition, especially his anticipation of Shakespeare as a comic ironist and creator of self-conscious characters. Focuses on CT--in particular, the Falstaffian vitality of…
