The labors of Hercules, employed by Boethius to show how man may determine his own fortune, are misused by the Monk, who sees the "Consolation" only as a source for secular tales.
Discusses church treatises, didactic works, and books of advice to daughters, or of clerical instruction to women, and mirrors for princesses, to reveal medieval images of women: the virgin, the coquette, the wife and mother, the ruler, the worker.
Christine de Pizan uses the Griselda tale to illustrate the virtues of patience and constancy in her "Livre de la Cite des Dames," derived from a French prose version of Philippe de Mezieres, perhaps also consulting the anonymous French prose…
In Mel Chaucer's idiomatic translation from the French of Renaud de Louens skillfully imitates and elaborates the "style clergial," especially in its use of introductory phrases, doublets, subordinate clauses, and trailing sentence structures.
Boro, Joyce.
Mary Ellen Lamb and Valerie Wayne, eds. Staging Early Modern Romance: Prose Fiction, Dramatic Romance, and Shakespeare (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 188-202.
Includes comments on Fletcher's sources for his "Women Pleased": WBT and "Grisel y Mirabella" by Juan de Flores.
Borowitz, Albert.
Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2005.
Traces the development of the traditional story of Herostratos, the arsonist of Diana's temple in Ephesus, and comments (pp. 23-24) that, in light of its inconsistencies with the traditional account, Chaucer's reference (HF 1844) to one who set fire…
Borroff, Marie.
Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector, eds. The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 229-35.
Considers whether the Prioress was capable of "love celestial," examining her invocation to the Virgin Mary and suggesting that the heaviness of Mary's pregnancy is analogous to the Prioress's need to be delivered of her tale. In PrT, "affective…
Borroff, Marie.
Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe, ed. Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson (Toronto, Buffalo, and New York: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 223-42.
Defines kinds of rhyme by their varying degrees of "richness," from "simple rhymes" to "triple rhymes" (in which three successive terminal syllables rhyme).
Borroff, Marie.
Traditions and Renewals: Chaucer, The Gawain-Poet, and Beyond (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 50-70.
Clearly implied but not stated, May's pregnancy in MerT results from having sex with Damian and helps to punish January's foolishness. In similarly covert ways, the parson of RvT is punished by the pregnancy of Malyne, and all pardoners are…
Borroff, Marie.
New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2003.
Ten essays by the author, three of them published here for the first time. Topics include CT, "Pearl," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Shakespeare's "Hamlet." For two new essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Traditions and Renewals under…
Borroff, Marie.
Traditions and Renewals: Chaucer, The Gawain-Poet, and Beyond (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 3-49.
Wycliffite elements of SumT and of the GP description of the Friar are submerged, but Chaucer sympathized with Wycliffite thought and believed that the Summoner's friar was damned. Borroff surveys anti-fraternal tradition, comments on Fals-Semblant…
Revisiting E. Talbot Donaldson's scholarship provokes nostalgia as well as the recognition that, for Donaldson, "poems of the order of Chaucer's arouse feelings as well as thoughts, feelings based on the critic's own experience."
Borthwick, Sister Mary Charlotte.
Modern Language Quarterly 22 (1961): 227-35.
Reads Antigone's song (TC 2.827-75) as a "reply to Criseyde's objections to love" which precedes it in the narrative. Much of the song derives from Guillaume de Machaut's "Paradis d'Amour," but its sequence and several ideas mirror Criseyde's earlier…
Borysławski, Rafał.
Marcin Krygier and Liliana Sikorska, eds. To Make His Englissh Sweete upon His Tonge (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 121-33.
Discusses how sheela-na-gig carvings share appearance and function with loathly lady figures in Middle English literature, including the one found in WBT.
Bose, Mishtooni.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Caambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 191-204.
Surveys the critical history of NPT, including the scant comments focused on the tale between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Argues that the "tale's interest in direct experience acts as means of liberations from the plethora of discourses…
Bose, Mishtooni.
Louise D'Arcens, and Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, eds. Medieval Literary Voices: Embodiment, Materiality and Performance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), pp. 75-94.
Examines the ""fissure between spoken utterances and the body's voice" in Arveragus's burst into tears (FranT 5.1479–80), engaging the theme of truth in the Tale and the "dynamic between . . . irruptions of the somatic voice and the dissociative…
Boswell, Jackson C.
Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 1 (1977): 30-32.
In the prefatory note to the 1592 "A Declaration of the True Causes" (STC 10005), there is an allusion to the pseudo-Chaucerian verses "Chaucer's Prophesie."
Boswell, Jackson C.
Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2021.
Tallies 1,060 entries that identify references to, allusions to, and echoes of Chaucer and his works in books published from 1641 through 1700, with an appendix of 131 references and allusions from 1475 through 1640, all in addition to or expansions…
Boswell, Jackson Campbel.
Chaucer Review 45 (2011): 435-65.
Adding to the work both of Spurgeon in "Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion" and of the author and Holton in "Chaucer's Fame in England," this annotated bibliography presents forty-five new citations, including one to a hitherto…
Boswell, Jackson Campbell, and Sylvia Wallace Holton.
New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2004.
Tallies 1,378 "references to, allusions to, and echoes of Chaucer and his works in printed books published between 1475 and 1640," updating and correcting a portion of Caroline Spurgeon's landmark bibliography. Entries are arranged chronologically by…
Catalogues thirty-one previously unlisted references to Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandaras published 1475-1640. Part of a work in progress: an updating of the "Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed ... 1475-1640" and of Caroline Spurgeon's "Five…
Listings of references to Chaucer and his work published 1475-1640, updating Caroline Spurgeon's "Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, 1357-1900."
Assembles references to Chaucer's character and literary reputation recorded in English books 1475-1640, the dates of the Short Title Catalog. Entries include author, title, publisher, and STC and University Microfilm (UMD) numbers and establish the…
