'Trouthe' Without Consequences: Rhetoric and Gender in the 'Franklin's Tale'

Author / Editor
Wheeler, Bonnie.

Title
'Trouthe' Without Consequences: Rhetoric and Gender in the 'Franklin's Tale'

Published
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 91-116.

Description
Chaucer situates Dorigen, who is bound to contradictory roles as faithful wife and courtly mistress, within contradictory rhetorical schemes that metonymically reinforce and undercut notions of truth and "fin amors." Through carefully constructed textual fissures, he subverts utopian ideologies and exposes the human cost exacted by rhetorical displacements of desire.

Alternative Title
Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages.

Chaucer Subjects
Franklin and His Tale.