'The Franklin's Tale' and the Medieval Trivium: A Call for Critical Thinking

Author / Editor
Haas, Kurtis B.

Title
'The Franklin's Tale' and the Medieval Trivium: A Call for Critical Thinking

Published
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 106 (2007): 45-63.

Description
Dorigen and Arveragus of FranT "demonstrate . . . deficiency in the cognitive skills inculcated by the medieval trivium," making them "vulnerable to the Orleans clerk's corruptions of the quadrivium." Weak critical thinking undermines their ability to behave ethically, and FranT exposes a society in which "elementary reasoning skills have been lost to pseudoscience and thickheaded versions of chivalric honor."

Chaucer Subjects
Franklin and His Tale