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British Poetry

Notes Analysis

The Franklin’s Tale is, as the narrator acknowledges at the start, a Breton lay, a brief romance
supposedly descending from Celtic origins, and usually dealing with themes of romance, love and
usually containing some sort of supernatural ingredient. Chaucer took the story from Boccaccio’s
Decameron though the tale weaves well into many of the other Tales, including the Merchant’s
Tale, which is echoed in many of the Franklin’s descriptions.
The tale seems to offer the solution to the problem raised and complicated in the other “Marriage
Group” tales in its initial comments that “maistrie” has no place in love. Dorigen and Arvigarus are
among the few happy couples in Chaucer’s Tales, and yet one suspects that the problem of “maistrie”
is sidelined so as to focus on an entirely different problem, and one close to the heart of the Tales:
the problem of language, words, and keeping one’s word.
“Trouthe” is a central word in the tale, meaning “fidelity”, and “truth”, as well as “keeping one’s
word”, and the idea of pledging troth (an Elizabethanism)–giving one’s word as a binding promise–
is central to the agreements between Dorigen and Aurelius. What the Franklin’s Tale shows us is
not dissimilar from the Friar’s Tale-that we have to watch what we say because, like Dorigen’s
promise made “in pley”, we never quite know how things are going to work out. The word becomes
the marker of the deed, and, not to break her word, Dorigen is almost forced to perform the deed. In
a work so concerned with stories and tale-telling, it is significant that Chaucer (as in the Friar’s and
Manciple’s Tales) takes time to remind us of the value of each individual word we speak, and write.
The tale itself, of course, also bequeaths a word to both of its audiences (that is, the pilgrim audience
of characters and the real-world audience reading or listening to Chaucer) and asks us to evaluate it
in relation to what we have heard. “Fre”, the root of our modern word “free”, can mean generous
(i.e. to give freely) but also has overtones of nobleness, “good behavior”. Who, then, is the most
generous and noble at the end of the tale?

Self Assessment

Short Answer Type Questions:
5. In what literary genre is this story written?
6. What is the effect on Aurelius when Dorigen rebuffs him?
7. Who stands by Aurelius during all of his trials?
8. What does the magician do in response?
Arviragus, Jill Mann argues, by being noble enough to become a cuckold to preserve his wife’s
reputation, sparks off a chain of passivity, which she thinks is an extremely positive thing. Arviragus
giving up his rights in Dorigen leads to Aurelius giving up his which in turn leads to the law
student giving up his. When one person backs down, Mann interprets, so will the rest of the world.
Mann’s is an interesting reading, but it does not quash entirely the thought that Arviragus’ priorities
might be in the wrong order-is it really more important that his wife holds to a bargain (made only
in jest) rather than she sleeps with someone she does not want to sleep with?
Or at least, so she says. It is worth noting that, on Aurelius’ first appearance, the tale stresses his
good looks and charm, and one wonders precisely what motivates Dorigen, even in jest (and Freud
has much to say about the meaning of jokes) to make the bargain. For surely Dorigen is the person
who, were the bargain to go ahead, gets the best deal-not only is her husband safely home (and the
rocks, for the moment, vanished) but she gets to sleep with both (extremely handsome, so the tale
says) men. How, in fact, has Dorigen been generous or free at all?
Is Aurelius perhaps the most generous: willingly giving up the thing he most desired? Perhaps –
but we might perhaps also argue that the thing he gave up, he had no real right to have anyway,
considering that the “thing” was sex with another man’s wife. The same might be said of the law

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