Bloomfield, Morton W.
Chaucer Review 17 (1983): 286-91.
Folklorists describe liminal tales as experiences that are part of a rite of passage from one realm of experience to another. Viewed thus, FrT assumes new complexities: it reflects the total pilgrimage experience of CT.
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 189-98.
Chaucer moves away from the Catholic concept of love, which abhors adultery. FranT is a happy tale in spite of the serious unanswered questions about God and life and love.
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Chaucer Review 14 (1980): 287-97.
The stylistic device occurs when a noun is given personification by the poet's use of a verb (or occasionally a verb phrase, adjective, or adverb). Chaucer uses few of them: the lyrics have more than do the longer narratives.
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 23-36.
We need an "over-all metaphysics" such as the fourteenth-century "Aristotelian ontology and psychology," or such modern systems as "phenomenology, Marxism, Heideggarian ontology, positivism,...existentialism, and Chomskyean rationalism" as approaches…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 70-82.
Generically and rhetorically NPT is a fable devoted to the teaching of wisdom, undercut by its mock quality, by its characterization, by its scholastic reasoning; but finally leading us back, on a higher level, to its original didactic purpose. NPT…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Siegfried Wenzel, ed. Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 37-50.
MerT is about limits and trangressions. January violates a limit marrying May; May violates moral limits; modes of parody and irony raze barriers between tragic and comic, making the tale its own anti-tale. The explicit cynicism and "realism" of…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Poetica (Tokyo) 12 (1981): 28-35
Bloomfield considers natural law, an interest in distant geography, and the similarities between magic and technology in SqT as evidence of the "new spirit of the Renaissance" in Chaucer's works.
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Unisa English Studies 11 (1973): 1-3.
Claims that Chaucer is a "rationalistic" poet, and suggests prospects for assessing Chaucer's use of dialectic or the "scholastic mode of reasoning" in his art, commenting on aspects of GP, ParsT, Mel, WBPT, Bo, TC, and HF.
Assesses modern "unease" with Chaucer's "pathetic" tales, focusing on the combination of the "superficially tragic and the slightly comic" aspects of MLT in which the subject matter invites audience sympathy or empathy while the style encourages…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73 (1972): 15-24.
Identifies antecedents to Troilus's address to Criseyde's empty palace and his reference to its doors (the rhetorical topos "paraclausithyron"), comparing Chaucer's and Boccaccio's versions of the scene, discarding suggestions of astrological…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Harry Levin, ed. Veins of Humor. Harvard English Series, no. 3 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 57-68.
Describes Chaucer's comic perspective as one that "takes all things lightly because fundamentally they are too serious . . . a way of faring the universe bravely." Exemplifies the poet's narrative device of offering rhetorical "defence of the…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg, eds. Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970), pp. 205-11.
Contends that MilT differs from both KnT and RvT in its presentation of a world that lacks rational order or poetic justice. Alison escapes punishment and John is punished unfairly so that behind the jollity and illusion of order in the MilT lies…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Thought: A Review of Culture and Ideas 39 (1964): 335-58.
Explores the narrative devices used by modern and premodern writers of fiction to establish "an air of truth or plausibility"--first-person point of view, intimate tone, details drawn from the real world, and various "tricks" used to compel readers…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Modern Language Review 53 (1958): 408-10.
Argues that the correct reading of TC 5.1809 is the eighth sphere (not seventh as in some manuscripts), and that Chaucer's "making use consciously or unconsciously of an old tradition, placed his hero for all eternity in the sphere of the fixed…
Assesses the "artistic role" in TC of the narrator--a commentator and a "historian [who] meticulously maintains a distance between himself and the events in the story." Explores "temporal, spatial, aesthetic, and religious" devices in the poem…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Modern Language Notes 70 (1955): 559-65.
Connects the use of "In principio" in the GP description of the Friar (1.254) with WBP 3.857-81, citing evidence from a wide array of material to show that the phrase, derived from the Gospel of John, evokes a "well-known apotropaic formula"…
Explores "varieties of the medieval unspeakable," from ineffability and mysticism to same-sex eroticism, in Old and Middle English literary tradition, employing an analytical method adapted from Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Giorgio Agamben,…
Blum, Martin Albert.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 163A.
Examines various ways gender, ethnicity, and disease interact with social class in selected texts. In MLT, race is less important than place in salvation history. The tale of Lucrece (LGW) seeks to keep women virginal for marital traffic. Erotic…
Blum, Martin.
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. 37-52.
John, Nicholas, and Absolon are, each in his own way, feminized in MilT, while Alison is masculinized and thereby escapes punishment.
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, and Timea Szell, eds.
Ithaca, N. Y: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Adopting a variety of critical approaches, the fourteen essays range from detailed analyses of religious discourse to theoretical inquiries into the forces that shaped ideas of sanctity. Essays discuss representations of sainthood in the Middle…
Blurton, Heather, and Hannah Johnson.
Chaucer Review 50.1-2 (2015): 134–58.
Examines manuscript circulation of PrT showing Chaucer's reception as a Marian poet. This tale was not only used in devotional texts but was responded to in this register by Lydgate and Hoccleve.
Blurton, Heather, and Hannah Johnson.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.
Explores the anti-Semitism of PrT, producing "a discussion animated by the ways in which antisemitism has emerged as the problematic that organizes scholarly response," and resists dismissing or excusing prejudice and hate in PrT. Tracks history of…
Blurton, Heather, and Hannah Johnson.
Miriamne Ara Krummel and Tison Pugh, eds. Jews in Medieval England:Teaching Representations of the Other (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 87-100.
Applies Freudian-based neighboring theory to PrT, comparing it with several medieval exempla about Jews, and explaining how such comparisons can help students to see the necessity of interpretation in determining affection and prejudice, crime and…
Considers PrT and its depiction of premodern antisemitism and relation to premodern race. Ties PrT's construction of Jews as a cursed monolith to the workings of structural racism. Discusses Agbabi's "Sharps an Flats," which demonstrates "how…
Sixteenth-century editions of Chaucer's works "reflect a gradual transition from text-based definitions of what constitutes Chaucer to author-focused ones." Bly considers Thynne's edition of 1532, Stowe's of 1561, and Speght's of 1602, discussing…
