A posteriori

BORROWING: As Simon Horobin defines it, "The process by which words are adopted into one language from another" (192). Linguists use this term because borrowing sounds better than the term stealing, which would be more accurate given that we do not typically return the words we borrow. See also loanword.

BOURGEOIS: See discussion under bourgeoisie, below.

BOURGEOISIE (French, "city-dwelling"): The French term bourgeoisie is a noun referring to the non-aristocratic middle-class, while the word bourgeois is the adjective-form. Calling something bourgeois implies that something is middle-class in its tendencies or values. Marxist literary critics use the term in a specialized sense to indicate the comfortable, well-to-do class of consumers that have more status than the proletariat, the lower-class workers who perform the "real" work of a civilization in actually producing goods and materials. In another sense--one particularly useful for medieval historians--the term bourgeoisie encompasses the city-dwelling yeomen in the late medieval period who were no longer tied to agricultural work as enfeoffed serfs. These city-dwellers--including craftsmen, guildsmen, traders, and skilled laborers--worked on a capitalistic model in which goods and services would be provided in exchange for cash. Though to a modern American this arangement seems normal enough, it was a revolutionary concept in a feudal society where transactions took place in barter, where most male citizens would swear loyalty to a liege lord in exchange for land or protection, and where serfs were bound to a section of land as the "property" of their feudal overlord. It was also a departure from the traditional "Three Estates" theory of government sanctioned by the church. The increasing number of bourgeois workers in cities and the diminishing number of serfs working in rural areas marked the transition from feudalism to modernity. Indeed, many of these so-called "middle class" citizens were fantastically wealthy--far richer in terms of their liquid assets than the knights and minor nobility who were their social "betters." The aristocrats attempted to distinguish themselves by the use of heraldic symbols, last-names, and sumptuary laws that made it illegal for "commoners" (no matter how rich) to wear particular types of clothing or jewelry.

The rise of the bourgeoisie accelerated after the Black Death of 1348, which killed on average about one-third of the European and Insular population. Suddenly, the earlier surplus of cheap labor vanished, and common laborers realized they could demand concessions from the nobility for their work. (If the nobleman refused, the serf could simply run away and find work in town, or on the lands of another nobleman who was less stingy with his demands; these outlets had been less accessible before. Previously, under the Three Estates system, the only social escape-hatch was to become a monk.) In England, aristocratic measures like the 1351 Statute of Laborers failed to freeze labor prices, and they failed to stop the slow slide from feudalism to capitalism. Such efforts along with ruinous taxes and corrupt government kindled widespread resentment amongst the lower classes. This anger exploded in the so-called Peasant's Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler. The uprising was more accurately a popular bourgeois revolt against the nobility and the corruption of the gentry, but the appellation shows how the aristocracy still tended to think of the "lower classes" as serfs and treat them accordingly.

The rise of the bourgeoisie is mirrored in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, where Chaucer depicts humanity as a collection of pilgrims. Each character is a member of a specific occupation. We also see signs of social tension between various pilgrims, which manifests itself in the Miller's parody of the Knight's love-triangle, in the pretensions of the Monk and Prioress, the Franklin's concern with the idea that even non-aristocratic people can be "noble," and so on.

BOUSTROPHEDON (Greek, "as the ox turns while plowing"): A method of writing in which the text is read alternately from left to right on odd numbered lines and then read right to left in even numbered lines. Some early Greek texts are written in this manner, including Solon's laws. This contrasts with English convention (left-to-right), Hebrew convention (right to left), and various Oriental conventions (top to bottom).

BOWDLERIZATION: A later editor's censorship of sexuality, profanity, and political sentiment of an earlier author's text. Editors and scholars usually use this term in a derogatory way to denote an inferior or incomplete text. A text censored in this way is said to be bowdlerized. The term comes from the name of Reverend Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) who produced The Family Shakespeare (1815-18). He removed whatever he considered "unfit to be read by a gentleman in the company of ladies."

The following passages are a few examples of lines still frequently bowdlerized in American high-school and college textbooks:

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  Mercutio's jokes with the Nurse about masturbation in Romeo and Juliet (Act II. scene iv. l12-19)
  
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  Sampson and Gregory's talk about raping virgins in Romeo and Juliet (Act I, scene i, 16-27)
  
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  Petruchio's joke with Kate about oral sex ("my tongue in your tail") in The Taming of the Shrew (Act II, i, 215-17)
  
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  Iago's claim that Othello and Desdemona are, in modern slang, "having doggy-style sex" ("making the beast with two backs") in Othello (Act I, scene i, 112-13).
  

Other editors such as A. W. Verity continue to produce school editions of Shakespeare with such sections removed or altered. The tendency is not confined to Shakespearean plays, however. Victorian editions of Ovid's Art of Love and the poetry of Catallus often use ellipses in Latin editions to indicate expurgated lines dealing with sexual practices. Alternatively, Victorian "translations" of these texts would leave the Latin untranslated in those sections dealing with Ovid's advice in the bedroom or with adultery. Many modern editions of Greek mythology and many college anthologies of the Iliad quietly gloss over the homosexual nature of Achilles' relationship with Patroclus, or the lesbian aspects of Sappho's poetry (circa 7th century BCE). J. M. Manly's version of Chaucer's fabliaux and many other college Chaucer anthologies frequently remove or skip over the "naughty bits" in the Miller's, Reeve's, Wife's, and Shipman's tales. Other literary works frequently bowdlerized include Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), where later editors often remove the sections discussing how the protagonist saves the Lilliputian village by urinating on a fire and those discussing how the protagonist ends up hanging from the oversized nipples of a naked Brobdingnagian giantess. The 1001 Arabian Nights and the works of Sir Richard Burton are often bowdlerized to remove discussion of polygamous Arabic customs, sexuality, or violence.

Even the Bible itself has not escaped attempts at bowdlerization. In the nineteenth century, "decorous" versions of the Bible were printed in which "improper" verses were removed from the text and placed in a separately published appendix. To give some idea of the extent of the bowdlerization, these editors removed references to nudity in the Adam and Eve narrative (Gen 2:24-25), to Noah's drunkenness (Gen.9:20-25), genitalia (Deut.23:11-12), circumcision (Gen. 17: 12-14, Joshua 5:1-3, 1 Sam. 18:24-27), rape (Judges 19:22-26), homosexuality (Gen. 19-14), descriptions of incest (Gen. 19:30-36), masturbation (Gen. 38:8-10), Judah's sexual intercourse with his daughter-in-law (Gen. 38:15 et passim), and David's adultery with Bathsheba after seeing her bathing in the nude (2 Sam. 11:2 et passim). The list of expurgations goes on much further than this, but these few examples illustrate the over-zealous tendencies of censors. It seems that, for some editors, even God is guilty of puerile titillations.

Victorian and early twentieth-century editors were most likely to bowdlerize a text based on its sexual content. Today, texts tend to be censored or altered to remove racist or gender-biased content. The works of Ray Bradbury, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner also face bowdlerization when later editors and educators seek to remove racial epithets or stereotypes that African-American readers find insulting. Many anthologies of Chaucer leave out "The Prioress' Tale" because of her blatant antisemitism. Similar drives to edit sexist pronoun usage (i.e., using the masculine he in reference to individuals of indeterminate gender), or the use of masculine-tinged words like man or mankind instead of gender-neutral words like humanity have led to proposed alterations to the poems of John Milton and others, even though such attempts at bowdlerization often clash with the metrical or grammatical constraints of the original work, or elide the author's intentions and historical realities of the period. Click here to download a PDF handout discussing this material.

BOWDLERIZE: To censor or alter an earlier writer's work. See discussion under bowdlerization, above.

BOW-WOW THEORY: In linguistics, the idea that language began when humans imitated animal noises or other natural sounds. Contrast with the yo-he-ho theory.

BOX SET: A theatrical structure common to modern drama in which the stage consists of a single room setting in which the "fourth wall" is missing so the audience can view the events within the room. Contrast with the theater in the round and apron stage.

BRADSHAW SHIFT: Not to be confused with the Great Vowel Shift, the Bradshaw Shift is a suggested alteration to the order of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, one which differs radically from the manuscript tradition.

Chaucer never completed The Canterbury Tales, and he left us today ten fragments that can be organized in various ways to make a larger narrative. These fragments are bits of narrative linked together by internal signs--such as pieces of conversation or passages referring to an earlier story or the story about to come next. The fragments are usually designated with Roman numerals (i.e., I-X) in modern editions of the text, but the Chaucer Society uses alphabetical designations to refer to these fragments (i.e., Fragments A-I). Only between Fragments IX-X and (in the case of the Ellesmere family between Fragments IV-V) do we find explicit indication of an order. Consequently, modern editions differ in the order the tales are presented.

The most controversial and influential of these theorized orders is known as the Bradshaw Shift. In this arrangement, Fragment VII (B2) is moved to follow Fragment II (B1), with Fragment VI following. The complete arrangement thus looks like this: I (A), II (B), VII (B2), VI (C), III (D), IV (E), V (F), VIII (G), IX (H), and X (I). A slight variant of this order is that of Baugh and Pratt, who move Fragment V so that it follows Fragment VI. The controversy about such an arrangement stems from the fact that none of the surviving 82 manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales contains such a specific order, even though there is good evidence from the stories that such an order makes sense. Click here to download a detailed pdf handout discussing the Bradshaw Shift and the order of the tales.

BRANCH: One of the four groupings of Welsh tales in The Mabinogion. Tradition divides The Mabinogion into a series of loosely connected narratives revolving around one or more characters.

(1) First Branch: Pwyll

(2) Second Branch: Branwen

(3) Third Branch: Manawydan

(4) Fourth Branch: Math vab Mathonwy

Collectively, these are famously called "The Four Branches of the Mabinogi."

BRETON: A Celtic language spoken in the northwestern part of France. Not to be confused with a Briton with an -i (i.e., a British person). See further discussion under "Bretons" below.