"The Franklin's Tale" (Middle English : The Frankeleyns Tale) is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It focuses on issues of providence, truth, generosity and gentillesse in human relationships.
"The Franklin's Tale" (Middle English : The Frankeleyns Tale) is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It focuses on issues of providence, truth, generosity and gentillesse in human relationships.
A medieval franklin was free, non-serf yet did not have noble status, and this pilgrim's words when interrupting the Squire are often seen as displaying his sense of an inferior social status.
The story opens and closes by recounting how two lovers, Arveragus and Dorigen, decide that their marriage should be one of equal partnership, although they agree that, in public, Arveragus should appear to have overall authority to preserve his high status. Arveragus then travels to Britain to seek honour and fame. He leaves Dorigen alone in France near the coastal town of Pedmark (today Penmarc'h) in Armorik (or Brittany as it is now known). She misses her husband terribly while he is gone, and is particularly concerned that his ship will be wrecked on the black rocks of Brittany as he returns home. [1]
While Arveragus is absent, Dorigen is courted against her will by another suitor, a squire named Aurelius. Finally, to get rid of him and in a lighthearted mood, she makes a rash promise and tells Aurelius that he might have her love providing he can dispose of all the rocks on the coast of Brittany. Aurelius finally manages to secure the services of a magician-scholar of the arcane arts, who, taking pity on the young man, for the princely sum of a thousand pounds agrees "thurgh his magik" to make all the rocks "aweye" "for a wyke or tweye" (possibly by association with an exceptionally high tide). [2]
When the "rokkes" vanish, Aurelius confronts Dorigen and demands that she fulfil her bargain. By this time Arveragus has returned safely. Dorigen lists numerous examples of legendary women who committed suicide to maintain their honour. Dorigen explains her moral predicament to her husband who calmly says that in good conscience she must go and keep her promise to Aurelius.
When Aurelius hears from a distraught Dorigen that Arveragus has told her to fulfil her promise, he releases Dorigen from her oath. The magician-scholar is so moved by Aurelius' story that he cancels the enormous debt that Aurelius owes him. The tale concludes with a demande d'amour, asking 'which was the mooste fre?' (1622) - who acted most nobly, or generously?
While the Franklin claims in his prologue that his story is in the form of a Breton lai, it is actually based on two closely related tales by the Italian poet and author Boccaccio. These appear in Book 4 of Il Filocolo, 1336, and as the 5th tale on the 10th day of the Decameron . In both stories, a young knight is in love with a lady married to another knight. He persuades her to promise to satisfy his desire if he can create a flowering Maytime garden in winter, which he achieves with the help of a magician, but releases her from her rash promise when he learns that her husband has nobly approved her keeping it. [3] In Chaucer's telling, the setting and style are radically altered. The relationship between the knight and his wife is explored, continuing the theme of marriage which runs through many of the pilgrims' tales. Although the Tale has a Breton setting, it differs from traditional 'Breton lais'. Whereas these mostly involved the fairy supernatural, here magic is presented as a learned business performed by clerks with university training.
This is fitting for a writer like Chaucer who wrote a book (for his son Lewis) on the use of the astrolabe, was reported by Holinshed to be "a man so exquisitely learned in al sciences, that hys matche was not lightly founde anye where in those dayes" and was even considered one of the "secret masters" of alchemy. [4]
While the idea of the magical disappearance of rocks has a variety of potential sources, there is no direct source for the rest of the story. The rocks possibly come from the legends of Merlin performing a similar feat, or might stem from an actual event that happened around the time of Chaucer's birth. In a recent paper, Olson et al. analyzed the Franklin's Tale in terms of medieval astronomy. He noted that on 19 December 1340 the sun and moon were each at their closest possible distance to earth while simultaneously the sun, moon and earth were in a linear alignment; a rare configuration which causes massive high tides. This configuration could be predicted using the astronomical tables and the types of calculations cited in the tale. [5] The theme of the story, though, is less obscure—that of the "rash promise", in which an oath is made that the person does not envisage having to fulfil. The earliest examples of the "rash promise" motif are found in the Sanskrit stories of the Vetala as well as Bojardo's Orlando Innamorto and Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor . [6] There are also rash promises in the Breton lays 'Sir Orfeo' and 'Sir Launfal', which Chaucer may have known.
Gerald Morgan argues that the Franklin's Tale is organised around moral and philosophical ideas about the reality of Providence and hence of man's moral freedom, as well as the need for generosity in all human contracts. [7] Morgan considers that Aquinas' Summa Theologiae and Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae were important influences on Chaucer in writing the Franklin's Tale. [8] Hodgson likewise emphasises how in phraseology reminiscent of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae , Dorigen ponders why a wise and benevolent God could create in "thise grisly feendly rokkes blake" means to destroy and to produce no good "but evere anoyen". [9] D. W. Robertson considers that Arveragus comes across as "not much of a husband"; he exerts himself with many a labour and many a "great emprise" not for the sake of becoming virtuous, but to impress his lady and when he learns of her rash promise he advises her to go ahead and commit adultery, but only to keep quiet about it "up peyne of deeth." [10] This sour view of Arveragus is disputed by Bowden, who refers to Arveragus' honest belief that "trouthe is the hyest thyng that man may kepe" so that he too may be called "a verray parfit gentil knyght". [11] Gardner considers that the Franklin's Tale comes close to Chaucer's own philosophical position that all classes must be ruled by "patience". [12]
On the theme in the Canterbury Tales about freedom and sovereignty in marriage, the Franklin's Tale arguably explores three successive acts of conscience or gentilesse springing from rich human generosity: by Dorigen's husband, her suitor and the magician who cancels the debt owed to him. [13] Howard, however, considers it unlikely that the Franklin's Tale represents Chaucer's view on marriage, the Franklin being "not the sort of character to whom Chaucer would assign a tale meant to settle an issue". [14] Helen Cooper writes that the absolutes considered in the tale are moral qualities (patience, fredom or generosity, gentillesse, trouthe): "Averagus comforts his wife, and then bursts into tears. He and the other men make their choices for good without privileged knowledge and out of free will: a free will that reflects the liberty given to Dorigen within her marriage. A happy ending requires not that God should unmake the rocks, but that a series of individuals should opt to yield up and give, rather than take." [15] Darragh Greene argues that the Franklin's most distinctive characteristic, liberality, is essential to solving the ethical problem explored in his story; it is not law-based morality but the virtue ethics of living in accordance with the value system of gentillesse which secures such happiness as is possible in an imperfect world. [16] Whittock considers that this tale represents, beyond the Franklin's own consciousness of it, a "fearful symmetry" in the universe; where acting from conscience on qualities of truth, generosity and gentillesse must shift from being a secular ethical attitude to one that represents man's grateful (but always imperfect) response to the bounty of a transcendent consciousness. [17] A. C. Spearing writes that one of the important messages of the Franklin's Tale is that our vision of the right way to live, or how to do the right thing in problematic circumstances "does not come to us directly from God or conscience, but is mediated by internalised images of ourselves as judged by other human beings. The very terms we use to assess conduct (right, decent, mean, rotten, and so on) belong to languages we did not invent for ourselves, and their meanings are given by the communities to which we belong." [18]
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
"The Parson's Tale" seems, from the evidence of its prologue, to have been intended as the final tale of Geoffrey Chaucer's poetic cycle The Canterbury Tales. The "tale", which is the longest of all the surviving contributions by Chaucer's pilgrims, is in fact neither a story nor a poem, but a long and unrelieved prose treatise on penance. Critics and readers are generally unclear what rhetorical effect Chaucer may have intended by ending his cycle in this unlikely, extra-generic fashion.
"The Miller's Tale" is the second of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1380s–1390s), told by the drunken miller Robin to "quite" "The Knight's Tale". The Miller's Prologue is the first "quite" that occurs in the tales.
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" is among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and was probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. He also goes so far as to describe two sets of clothing for her in his General Prologue. She holds her own among the bickering pilgrims, and evidence in the manuscripts suggests that although she was first assigned a different, plainer tale—perhaps the one told by the Shipman—she received her present tale as her significance increased. She calls herself both Alyson and Alys in the prologue, but to confuse matters these are also the names of her 'gossib', whom she mentions several times, as well as many female characters throughout The Canterbury Tales.
"The Merchant's Tale" is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In it Chaucer subtly mocks antifeminist literature like that of Theophrastus ("Theofraste"). The tale also shows the influence of Boccaccio, Deschamps' Le Miroir de Mariage, Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris, Andreas Capellanus, Statius, and Cato. The tale is found in Persia in the Bahar Danush, in which the husband climbs a date tree instead of a pear tree. It could have arrived in Europe through the One Thousand and One Nights, or perhaps the version in book VI of the Masnavi by Rumi. Though several of the tales are sexually explicit by modern standards, this one is especially so. Larry Benson remarks:
The central episode of the Merchant's Tale is like a fabliau, though of a very unusual sort: It is cast in the high style, and some of the scenes are among Chaucer's most elaborate displays of rhetorical art.
"The Pardoner's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. In the order of the Tales, it comes after The Physician's Tale and before The Shipman's Tale; it is prompted by the Host's desire to hear something positive after the physician's depressing tale. The Pardoner initiates his Prologue—briefly accounting his methods of swindling people—and then proceeds to tell a moral tale.
"The Nun's Priest's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales by the Middle English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Composed in the 1390s, it is a beast fable and mock epic based on an incident in the Reynard cycle. The story of Chanticleer and the Fox became further popularised in Britain through this means.
"The Man of Law's Tale" is the fifth of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written around 1387. John Gower's "Tale of Constance" in Confessio Amantis tells the same story and may have been a source for Chaucer. Nicholas Trivet's Les chronicles was a source for both authors.
The General Prologue is the first part of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It introduces the frame story, in which a group of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury agree to take part in a storytelling competition, and describes the pilgrims themselves. The Prologue is arguably the most familiar section of The Canterbury Tales, depicting traffic between places, languages and cultures as well as introducing and describing the pilgrims who will narrate the tales.
"The Squire's Tale" is a tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. It is unfinished, because it is interrupted by the next story-teller, the Franklin, who then continues with his own prologue and tale. The Squire is the Knight's son, a novice warrior and lover with more enthusiasm than experience. His tale is an epic romance, which, if completed, would probably have been longer than rest of the Tales combined. It contains many literary allusions and vivid descriptions.
"The Clerk's Tale" is the first tale of Group E in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. It is preceded by The Summoner's Tale and followed by The Merchant's Tale. The Clerk of Oxenford is a student of what would nowadays be considered philosophy or theology. He tells the tale of Griselda, a young woman whose husband tests her loyalty in a series of cruel torments that recall the biblical Book of Job.
"The Tale of Melibee" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
The Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer during the fourteenth century.
Confessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II. It stands with the works of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl poet as one of the great works of late 14th-century English literature. The Index of Middle English Verse shows that in the era before the printing press it was one of the most-often copied manuscripts along with Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman.
The Prologue and Tale of Beryn are spurious fifteenth century additions to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They are both written in Middle English.
Trinity Tales is a 1975 British television series, consisting of six 50-minute programmes, written by Alan Plater and shown on BBC2. It was loosely based on Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, updated to a modern setting.
The rash promise is a common motif in medieval and folk literature, especially fairy tales. It was also termed a blind promise or rash boon. It is classified in the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature as motif M223 and likely has an Oriental origin.
Emeritus Professor Phyllis Hodgson (1909–2000) was a Medievalist and translator of medieval texts.
Aristoclides was a painter mentioned by Pliny the Elder as one of those who deserved to be ranked next to the "masters" in their art. His age and country are unknown. He painted the temple of Apollo at Delphi. It is said that he was famous before the public of Athens, and attracted many great artists to himself.
