ENGL 330: Medieval Literature, Winter 2010 Dr. Debora B. Schwartz English Department, California Polytechnic State University     Introduction to Chaucer / The Middle English World View Chaucer's Breton lai, The Franklin's Tale (FT) [Read in modern translation only in W10; text is found in The Portable Chaucer (= CH), pp. 293-314] NOTE:  this quarter (W10), The Franklin's Tale has been moved up from its normal ENGL 330 position within the unit on the Canterbury Tales to provide a transition betwen Marie de France's lai Lanval and Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida.   You will therefore find some study questions below that you cannot yet answer (e.g. asking you to compare an aspect of the Franklin's Tale to works we will read later this quarter, such as the Wife of Bath's Tale or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.)  I have left these references in the study questions below so that this guide can help you identify connections between these texts when you review this material for exams or when you consider topics for your final paper. As you read, pay attention to any references to words / concepts like nobility, nobleness, gentry, gentleman, lady, aristocracy (Middle English gentilesse / gentil) and to words / concepts such as promise, vow, oath, word of honor, troth, truth, integrity or faithfulness (Middle English trouthe /trewe). The Franklin is one of a group of story-telling pilgrims who tells his travelling companions a tale to pass the time while on the way to visit the shrine of St. Thomas à Beckett in Canterbury Cathedral (in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, a frame-narrative collection from which we will read a number of other selections later this quarter).   A "franklin" was a "freeholder," i.e. a free-born land-owner who did not owe military service (like a knight) or manual labor (like a peasant) to a noble overlord.   Franklins appear to have occupied an intermediary status between the higher nobility (the "landed gentry") and the peasantry.  We might consider them to be something like the very lowest rank of the nobility -- akin to the well off country gentlemen found in some of Jane Austen's novels -- or the very top of the new middle class.  But in Chaucer's time, the higher-ranking nobility were unlikely to consider Franklins to be their equals.  The Franklin's Tale is an example of a Breton lai (see Prologue, CH 293), a short narrative genre with romance-like characteristics of which the best known are the Lais of Marie de France (e.g. Lanval , which we read last week; see NA 141-54).  These vernacular poems were decidedly secular, frequently contained supernatural or fairy-tale elements, and most often were concerned with male/female love relationships. Why might the Franklin have chosen this sort of tale? (Consider such things as:  his station in life, social class, profession, personality traits). The Franklin's Tale is the story of a marriage based on love and trust rather than domination; for the Franklin, "Love will not be constrained" (CH 295; Middle English "love wol nat be constrayned by maistrye," FT line 92).   Pay attention to the way in which the Franklin defines the relationship between Dorigen and her husband Arveragus.   What is the initial social rank of each?  What power does each have over the other prior to their marriage?  after their marriage?  What does Dorigen give up when she agrees to marry Arveragus?  What promises do they make each other?  To what extent to they keep those promises? How does the Franklin appear to define gentilesse? Is it a function of social class? What are its attributes? What is the relationship between "gentilesse" and "trouthe"? What is the significance of keeping one's word (trouthe)? Why is it so important? What promises are made within the tale, and how is the trouthe of the various characters tested? LOOKING AHEAD:  later this quarter, you will be able to compare/contrast the importance of keeping one's word in the Franklin's Tale with the treatment of this theme in  SGGK. Chaucer's lyric poem "Trouthe" (NA 199) ends with the refrain, "And Trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede" -- "The Truth shall set you free." To what extent do the Franklin's Tale (and SGGK) illustrate this notion? Consider the ways in which the Franklin's Tale offers alternatives to a typical "courtly love" relationship (review online reading). Before their marriage, the relationship between Dorigen and Arveragus resembles a courtly love relationship in that he serves her and she is in a position of power over him (the reverse of the legal status of a wife within marriage), and even after marriage, Arveragus promises not to assert his legal right of total authority over his wife -- that is, he will continues to treat her like a lover treats his lady (see CH 294).  The squire Aurelius aspires to a prototypical "courtly love" relationship with Dorigen -- a clandestine, extra-marital relationship linking a married lady with an unmarried man of noble birth (who is frequently younger, handsomer, and more cultivated than her husband -- and who puts her in a position of power which she lacks within her marriage). Aurelius even meets Dorigen in the prototypical setting for a courtly love relationship -- a springtime garden burgeoning with flowers and birdsong, where husbands are absent and handsome young people indulge in all manner of courtly pursuits (the setting of the thirteenth-century allegorical dream vision The Romance of the Rose, a work well-known to Chaucer, who had partially translated it from French into English).  But Dorigen does not behave the way Aurelius expects her to, because she happens to be in love with her husband.  What does her rejection of Aurelius's courtship suggest about the Franklin's views on marriage and love?  Does Chaucer's vision coincide with traditional views of "courtly love" or of marriage? Where/how does it differ? LOOKING AHEAD:  later this quarter, you will be able to compare the noble squire Aurelius with the portrait of the Squire in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales; consider what the parallels between the two tell us about Aurelius's motivation for courting Dorigen.  Compare/contrast the Franklin's attitude towards extra-marital affairs with the rejection of so-called "courtly love" offered by a contemporary of Chaucer, the Pearl-Poet, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight [= SGGK].  Finally, compare/contrast the  fictional marriage of Dorigen and Arveragus with the five supposedly "real" marriages of the Wife of Bath. To what extent do the two pilgrims' visions of marriage coincide?  Where and how do they differ?  Is the message about marriage in these two works really contradictory? What is the role of maistrye in each case?  Compare the WB's relationship with her fifth husband Janekin (esp. lines WB 819-831 -- the END point of the Wife's personal history) and the END of her tale (esp. WB 1225-1270) with the BEGINNING of FT (esp. FT 57-130).  The WB clearly regards her marriage with Janekin as her best marriage, and she says he was the only husband she married for love.  While she claims maistrye over her husband, once she gets it, she tells us that she became a good, trewe wife.  That being the case, is the ideal of marriage presented by the Franklin and the Wife of Bath really that different?  What accounts for the differences between them? Contents of this and linked pages Copyright Debora B. Schwartz, 1999-2010   Return to ENGL 330 homepage Return to ENGL 512 homepage Return to Dr. Schwartz's Teaching Page Return to Dr. Schwartz's homepage Send me mail!