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.
Reiss, Edmund.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 62 (1963): 481-85.
Identifies associations of the name "Huberd" (Hubert) with the Man in the Moon, the magpie, Cain, and theft, arguing that Chaucer's use of it for his Friar (GP 1.269) reveals the character's "inherently evil nature" and the "incongruity" of Chaucer's…
Justifies various differences between FrT and its analogues by attributing them to the literal mindedness of the narrator, "one who takes distinctions seriously."
Hatton, Tom.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 67 (1968): 266-71.
Reads the widow of FrT as a figural "type of the Church" that contributes to the "comic irony" of the Tale and deepens the guilt of the summoner by "playing off" of the biblical story of Rebecca.
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey. House of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, Tx,: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 111-16.
Explores ecclesiastical connotations of the word "rente" in the GP description of the Friar, in SumT, and elsewhere in medieval usage.
Silvia, Daniel S., Jr.
English Language Notes 1.4 (1964): 248-50.
Reads the noun "swan" as "swain" in the rhyming comparison with "Jovinyan" in SumT 3.1930, adducing logic, consistency of imagery, and source material.
Hoeber, Daniel R.
Chaucer Newsletter 2.2 (1980): 8-10.
Disputes Lowe's interpretation of KnT 1534-39. Arcite's sudden changes of mood, that of Chauntecleer (on a Friday) in NPT, the meaning of "gere" (a wild or changeful mood), and the first Adam's fall on the sixth day all suggest that Friday is not…
Dillon, Janette.
Essays in Criticism 41 (1991): 208-21.
The discrepancy between the vice of the teller and the moral of his tale requires the pilgrim audience to revise and postpone its judgment and thus to contribute to the meaning of the exemplum.
Howes, Laura L.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997.
Examines gardens in Chaucer's narratives as a means to show how literary and social conventions impose constraints and provide opportunities for the poet and characters alike to react to conventions. Surveys literary and historical gardens with…
