Boffey, Julia.
Anne Marie D'Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher, eds. Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), pp. 53-64.
Discusses William Calverley's "Dyalogue Bitwene the Playntife and the Defendaunt" (ca. 1530-35?) in light of the "Boethian motif of the prisoner of fortune," discussing Chaucer's influence, especially among printers interested in religious or…
Distraint, established in the thirteenth century, required that landholders whose lands produced 20 pounds a year must become knights, the rank involving both military and civil service. The remark that he would rather have a son with the Squire's…
Characterizes the Franklin in light of his social status, administrative and judicial offices, his "Epicurean concern for externals," and his association with the Sergeant at Law. Then reads FranT as an ironic indictment of the narrator's foolish…
Eckhardt, Caroline D.
Modern Philology 87 (1990): 239-48.
Chaucer's descripiton of the Franklin as a "vavasour" (GP 360) reflects his acquaintance with the Vavasour family. Like Chaucer, Sir William Vavasour testified in the Scrope-Grosvenor controversy; other Vavasours held offices similar to the…
Surveys the literary tradition of the term "vavasour" and explores the implications of its use to describe the Franklin in GP. Focuses on encounters between vavasours and knights in French Arthurian romances, the juxtaposition of FranT and SqT, and…
Wurtele, Douglas J.
English Studies in Canada 13 (1987): 359-74.
Arveragus's choice between allowing himself to be cuckolded or making Dorigen break her promise to Aurelius is a false dichotomy: he could have found a "tertium quid" in leaving the choice to her and thereby acting as lover rather than husband, as…
Discusses the Franklin "class" of late-medieval England: etymology, legal status, land tenure, wealth, rank, and social position. Adducing contemporary evidence, some of which is here discussed for the first time, the author explores the clues…
Compares FranT with the tenth tale (Madassena and Her Rash Promise) of the "Vetalapachisi," identifying common motifs (rash promise, promise to return, and noble theft) and differences in frame, characterization, and setting. Observes relations with…
Posits FranT as a major source for Shakespeare play, focusing on similarities between the two magicians. Revised version published as "Deceiving Appearances: Neo-Chaucerian Magic in 'The Tempest'," in Hillman's Intertextuality and Romance in…
Chaucer drew from more than one segment of Filocolo to design FranT. He incorporated the larger frame narrative of Florio and Biancafiore, a tale of Byzantine origin that allowed him to draw on various elements of the copious and complicated…
Beidler, Peter G.
Holly A. Crocker, ed. Comic Provocations: Exposing the Corpus of Old French Fabliaux. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 149-61.
When Chaucer used Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 as his source for ShT, he was also influenced by French fabliaux, particularly a garden scene in the thirteenth-century "Aloul" and, more generally, the animal euphemisms typical of the genre in French…
Palmer, R. Barton, ed.
New York : AMS Press, 1999.
Fourteen essays by various authors on French poets Machaut, Froissart, Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, Charles d'Orelans, and Villon. The essays emphasize the determining material effects of the courtly mode of production, especially the roles of the…
Butterfield, Ardis.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), pp. 20-36.
Butterfield surveys the French literature available to Chaucer and argues that French language and literature pervade Chaucer's entire career. The French influence is a fundamental "habit of mind" that resides in the deep and surface structures of…
Dor, Juliette (De Caluwe).
A. M. Simon-Vandenbergen, ed. Studies in Honour of Rene Derolez. (Ghent: Seminarie voor Englese en Oud-Germaanse Taalkunde, 1987), pp.143-56.
Part of a larger sociolinguistic project on the status of French in fourteenth-century England, Dor's study examines the uses, distribution, and frequency of words of French origin in the conversational sections of CT.
Guthrie, Steven R.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 2289A.
The similarity in "rhythmic structure and characteristic variations" of Chaucer's iambic pentameter in TC to Machaut's French "decasyllabe" in "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne" has "implications for wider issues" in criticism. Using Parkes-Salter…
Elson, Madeleine Beth.
Dissertation Abstracts International A78.02 (2016): n.p.
Examines Chaucer's engagement with his French contemporaries (e.g., Machaut, Froissart, Deschamps), suggesting that Chaucer may have adapted elements from those writers such as voice and form in establishing his own poetic authority.
Examines four principles in Chaucer's translations: redistribution, themes from works, syntactic symmetry, and homonym translation. Relates these principles to medieval practices of reading, writing, and translation, showing that the distinction…
Explores the relation between language and psychology, arguing that Chaucer's increasing use of French loan-words throughout his poetic career reflects a growth in conceptual richness, a microcosm of the growth of English, culturally and…
Viewed in both historical and literary contexts, the Friar's "typet" (probably a shoulder cape with a deep hood) and his "semycope" (a short cloak) show that he is breaking sumptuary laws for his fraternal order. That he also dresses in the finest…
Havely, Nicholas R.
Chaucer Review 13 (1979): 337-45.
The Friar's varied activities are recounted in terms that have both commercial and non-materialistic applications. Ambigous diction points toward deeper questions about the use of wealth and, together with the sexual innuendoes and the enumeration…
The Friar's name alludes to St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters. Thiel investigates Chaucer's knowledge of the saint and invites comparison with St. Thomas.
Szövérffy, Joseph.
Notes and Queries 214 (1969): 166-67.
Shows that the legend of St. Nicholas may be a source of the detail about the marrying young women in Chaucer's description of the Friar in GP 1.212-13.
