What's in a Frame? The Medieval Textualization of Traditional Storytelling

Author / Editor
Irwin, Bonnie D.

Title
What's in a Frame? The Medieval Textualization of Traditional Storytelling

Published
Oral Tradition 10 (1995): 27-53.

Description
Describes the frame tale as a device of an "oral/literate continuum" that enabled medieval authors to draw on both traditions and to produce a flexible form.
Authors such as Chaucer in CT and Boccaccio in "Decameron" capitalize on the open-ended potential of oral and literate rhetorical forms, their competing time frames, and their variety of narrator-audience dynamics.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General.