Forkin, Thomas Carney.
Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 31-41.
Close reading of CkT, of descriptions of Roger the Cook in CT, and of relevant late fourteenth-century laws and statutes reveals that Chaucer's powers of observation extend to the lower levels of society and the workings of London's "underworld."
Forni, Kathleen
.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 23 (2016): 107-14.
Utilizes Peter Ackroyd's "'The Canterbury Tales': A Retelling" and argues that modern English prose translations of CT are valuable teaching tools for contemporary students.
Forni, Kathleen Rose.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 206A,
The body of Chaucerian apocrypha, "largely ignored" since 1900, deserves reconsideration for its relation to the canon and to Chaucer's reputation. The latter was affected less by the apocrypha than by linguistic factors and changing tastes. …
Forni, Kathleen, ed.
Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute, 2005.
Edits sixteen medieval narrative poems and lyrics "prized and preserved because of their associations with Chaucer." Includes glosses, notes, and textual information, with a cumulative bibliography and brief glossary. The selection includes "The…
The attribution of "Testament of Love" and "The Plowman's Tale" to Chaucer seems to have had no unfavourable effect, though the acceptance of his authorship of "The Plowman's Tale" may have fueled the belief that Ret was a monkish forgery.
Forni, Kathleen.
Studia Neophilologica 70 (1998): 173-80.
The black-letter editions of Chaucer from 1532 to 1721 are "valuable books with worthless texts." However, their financial value may give some indication of their readers and their readers' socioeconomic status.
Claiming "there is no clear textual evidence for the assertion that [the Ellesmere order] reflects Chaucer's intention," Forni questions the authority of the Ellesmere order and examines how that order was canonized as Chaucerian. She contends that…
As the first printer to collect Chaucer's works, Pynson has been accused of "inflating" and "contaminating" Chaucer's canon. But the concept of an author's "complete works" did not solidify until the nineteenth century. Pynson used Chaucer's name to…
Critics of "The Floure and the Leafe" respond less to the text than to its critical history. Detraction by W. W. Skeat and other members of the Chaucer Society is compensation for earlier praise of the work by Dryden, Pope, Keats, and others.
"The Isle of Ladies" --first published as "Chaucer's Dreame" with the "Fairest of the Fair" as "Additions" in Speght's 1598 edition--has been confused by both scribes and early editors with BD and Lydgate's "Temple of Glass." This confused…
Forni, Kathleen.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2001.
Forni traces the complex relationship between Chaucer's canon and the apocrypha, with particular focus on the "Folio" canon, from Thynne's 1532 "Workes" edition to editions of the eighteenth century. The first part examines the formation of the Folio…
Despite inaccuracies and major differences from Chaucer's KnT, Helgeland's film "A Knight's Tale" does maintain a "Chaucer effect" that has secured the poet's "iconic status" since the Renaissance. Yet anachronisms abound; rock music replaces chant;…
Forni, Kathleen.
Literature / Film Quarterly 30: 256-63, 2002
Not a realization of CT, Pasolini's I racconti di Canterbury is a subversive parody, providing a critical model different from many contemporary approaches.
Forni lauds the BBC's modernized television adaptation of CT (2003) for its appeal to a wide audience while retaining fidelity to the original texts; for its intertextuality; and for its highlighting of aspects of Chaucer that appeal to contemporary…
Distinguishes between academic and popular versions of Chaucer, defining and discussing various categories of popular intertextuality: adaptations, appropriations, invocations, and citations--diminishing degrees of engagement with original works.…
Reflects on the importance of incorporating the "professional and popular" representations of CT to enhance classroom teaching of Chaucer. Films, including Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale," Jonathan Myerson's animated "Canterbury Tales" trilogy,…
Forni, Kathleen.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, eds. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the Canterbury Tales (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 56-66.
Posits that Chaucer's box-office appeal is limited in the U.S. by his "relatively low cultural profile," his association with "British linguistic and literary nationalism," and the "paradoxical stigma" of being both too high-brow and too bawdy.…
Forni, Kathleen.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 29 (2022): 43-57.
Considers the vexed critical history of MkT as a possibility for engaging classroom discussion about issues of theme, aesthetics, political perspective, and critical predilection. Focuses on various approaches to the tale before and after the heyday…
Forrest, Ian.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 421-42.
Reveals the Summonor to be an "unattractive caricature" and posits reasons for Chaucer's description and portrayal in GP and SumT. Provides historical background on medieval summoners, and claims that the Summoner is "part of a Chaucerian critique"…
Forste-Grupp, Sheryl L.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 674-75A.
Analysis of legal documents and letters (especially treacherous or forged) in Middle English romances reveals that these fictions (including MLT) reflect popular attitudes of the 1300s and 1400s. Though speech had been preferred earlier, written…
Foster, Edward E.
Lewiston : N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999.
Chaucer's fictions are opaque and self-conscious. Neither ordinary ironist nor allegorist, Chaucer is a nominalist "philosophical poet" for whom "divine truth is stable; human knowledge is provisional; and fiction is the means by which nominalist…
Foster, Edward E.
Chaucer Review 34: 398-409, 2000.
Chaucer possibly intended for Mel to be a take-it-or-leave-it kind of work. Its storyline was extremely familiar in the fourteenth century, and its very presence within CT made a statement. Mel is a tale to be known rather than read, both by…
Foster, Edward E.
Ball State University Forum 11.4 (1971): 14-20.
Explores the extent to which the narrator and the dreamer, as separate psychologies, experience consolation through the progress of BD, assessing parallels between the Ceyx and Alcyone account and the dream of the knight' sorrow.
Foster, Edward E.
Chaucer Review 3.2 (1968): 88-94.
Examines several bawdy puns, "incongruous situations," and other humorous ironies in KnT, suggesting that they are unintended by the Knight yet consistent with Chaucer's depiction of him as "a romantic, caught by reality but aspiring to the ideal"…
