SOURCE: Billingsley, Dale B. “The Pastime of Master F. J.” Renaissance and Reformation 17, no. 3 (summer 1993): 5-18.

In this essay, Billingsley suggests that The Adventures of Master F. J. portrays reading as leisure pastime that is also a mode for the attainment of power.

To one class of literary works, variously descended from the Platonic dialogue, the representation of leisure is a necessary prerequisite. Without it, philosophical conversation in the gymnasium or at dinner parties is impossible; night-long discourse about the best courtier, unlikely; garden-talk about perfect societies, merely utopian. For another class of works, leisure is a central problem. Where philosophy provides no occupation, leisure transforms itself from luxury into burden. Faced with empty hours, the characters must either fall into lassitude or find a pastime. Many of these characters turn for such a pastime to sorting out—or, in some cases, complicating—their relationships with others. The...