Freer, Scott.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 27 (2007): 357-70.
Freer examines modernist uses of the past in Eliot's "The Waste Land" and the English movie "A Canterbury Tale," directed by Michael Powell. Explores several allusions to Chaucer.
Reads the "growth and decline" of friendship between Troilus and Pandarus in TC as an ongoing commentary on the love affair between Troilus and Criseyde; both relationships indicate worldly impermanence.
Freiwald, Leah Zeva.
Dissertation Abstracts International 44 (1984): 2467A-68A.
Chaucer treats and reshapes myth variously (allusion, catalogue, portrait, or narrative) to suit audience and purpose. BD, LGWP, KnT, and TC illustrate varied sustained techniques.
French, W. H.
Modern Language Notes 76 (1961): 293-95.
Supports the reading of "hors" as plural in GP 1.74 on the grounds that "goode" in the same line is a plural form that "determines the number of the entire construction."
French, W. H.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957): 231-41.
Reconsiders characterizations of the Dreamer of BD from George Lyman Kittredge (1915) forward, focusing on the Dreamer's reception of the Man in Black's song (475-86). Compares aspects of BD--especially the song--with sources and analogues from the…
Fresco, Karen.
Juliette Dor and Marie-Élisabeth Henneau, eds. Christine de Pizan: Une femme de science, une femme de lettres. Études christiniennes, no. 10 (Paris: Champion, 2008), pp. 289-300.
Fresco draws attention to the imitation of Chaucer's enchâssement (encasement, enshirement) in Christine's Enseignemens moraulx BnF fr. 1551.
Frese, Dolores Warwick.
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991.
The twofold purpose of this study is "first, to demonstrate the originality and complexity of Chaucer's intertextual practice . . .; second, to advance the claims of the Ellesmere manuscript as the poetic text best reflecting Chaucer's final…
Frese, Dolores Warwick.
Juliette Dor, ed. A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck (Liege: University of Liege, 1992), pp. 155-66.
The tradition of involucrum explains the Second Nun's preoccupation with the name Cecilie, associates the Prioress and the Monk with Abelard, associates the Wife of Bath with Bathsheba, and relates the Clerk's references to Petrarch and "Poo" to…
Frese, Dolores Warwick.
Charles Foulon, et al., eds. Actes du 14e Congres International Arthurien (Rennes: Presses Universitaires, 1985), pp. 184-207.
In contrast to the prevailing critical view that Chaucer eschewed the use of Arthurian romance material, two Arthurian themes--the quest and amorous fatality--become transposed as pilgrimage and marriage in CT. The Tale of Arveragus, told by the…
Following medieval rhetorical tradition, Chaucer has hidden his own name in the tale in anagrammatic fashion: "Ge" (for Geffrey, Chaucer's spelling of his own name) plus "Chau"ntl"c"l"er" results in "gentele Chaucer," employing the roman letters…
MilT's heterosexual focus gains comic resonance from its homoerotic underside--clearly present in Absolon's branding of Nicholas and the anal inversion of the oral functions of kissing and speaking. In its emphasis on vindictive sexuality, RvT…
Frese, Dolores Warwick.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 249-56.
Frese reads water, dressing, and "suckling" imagery in Boccaccio, Petrarch, and ClT as vestiges of Dante's concern in "De vulgari eloquentia" with using "vernacular" language for "literature of lasting value."
Examines the tension in ClT between human pathos and clerkly training and intelligence, reading the combination as a depiction of late-medieval "clerkishness." Additions to his sources and the use of "specialized vocabulary" make Chaucer's tale…
Friedman, Albert B.
Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 328-33.
The grain which the Virgin places on the clergeon's tongue and which is removed after his death to stop his singing is simply a prop necessary to the structure of the tale; elaborate allegorizations are unnecessary.
Friedman, Albert B.
Chaucer Review 9 (1974): 118-29.
Challenges critics who absolve Chaucer of anti-Semitism by blaming the Prioress instead. Anti-Semitism was rife in Chaucer's society, and he was likely complicit in the bias. Yet, the topic is a critical distraction in discussions of PrT, which…
Friedman, Bonita.
David Chamberlain, ed. New Readings of Late Medieval Love Poems (Lanham, Md.; New York; and London: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 173-90.
Thought to be the work of Chaucer until the 1870s, "The Court of Love" manipulates the conventions of love lyric and allegory, including several details from LGW, PF, and Pity. Such manipulation produces humor, depicting Philogenet as a kind of…
Examines "The King of Tars," "The Siege of Jerusalem," and KnT in order to demonstrate that identity, however embodied, was unfixed in these works and perhaps in the later Middle Ages at large.
Friedman, Jamie A.
Jeff Rider and Jamie Friedman, eds. The Inner Life of Women in Medieval Romance Literature: Grief, Guilt, and Hypocrisy. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 203-22.
Argues against reading Emelye as absent or purely symbolic and instead posits her as having a more complex subjectivity that can be more fully accessed when reading KnT alongside Boccaccio's "Teseida." Close reading of Emelye's prayer to Diana shows…
Friedman, John B.
Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992): 162-80.
In MilT, Nicholas's character and action may allude to medieval tales about a diabolical angel-imposter associated parodically with the Annunciation. John's final humiliation may echo tales of Ham and his sexual humiliation of his father, Noah.
Friedman, John B.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 75 (1976): 41-55.
The cushion Pandarus fetches Troilus in Book III of TC linked for Chaucer's audience "Luxuria" and "Fortuna." Juvenal, Boccaccio, and contemporary iconography associated cushions with Sardanapalus, and thence with beds and lust. The analogy of…
Friedman, John B.
Francis X. Newman, ed. Social Unrest in the Middle Ages (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1986), pp. 75-112.
Treats iconography, history of medicine, and history of science.
Friedman, John B.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 7 (1985): 137-60.
The Richard Thorpe section of the Pincus Codex may be the lost equatorium, or astronomical kalendar, listed in the library catalogue of the York Austin friars. An inscription to Penelope Thompson and disregard of manuscript duplications suggest that…
Friedman, John B.
Chaucer Review 31 (1996): 133-44.
Dorigen's home is in "lower" Brittany around Carnac and the Locmariaquer peninsula, an area replete with menhirs and dolmens. These megalithic pagan structures are the "grisly rokkes blake," and Dorigen's fear of them is both physical and spiritual.
Friedman, John B.
Marlene Villalobos Hennessy, ed. Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott. English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators (London: Harvey Miller), pp. 83-100.
CYPT shares details and concerns found in other late medieval and early modern English alchemical treatises, part of the genre of "alchemical autobiography." Like CYPT in considering the function of organic material (especially excrement) in…
Friedman, John Block.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Drawing from art, iconography, literature, canon law, theology, and cartography, Friedman examines the impact upon European culture of monstrous races.
