Invention and Disjunction: Chaucer's Rewriting of Boccaccio in the Franklin's Tale

Author / Editor
Finlayson, John.

Title
Invention and Disjunction: Chaucer's Rewriting of Boccaccio in the Franklin's Tale

Published
English Studies 89 (2008): 385-402.

Description
In FranT, Chaucer reshapes the source material found in Boccaccio's "Filocolo" and "Decameron," adding the "pre-story" of a courtly love marriage, increasing the pathos of Dorigen, undercutting Arveragus's "self-serving" views of honor and truth, and leaving the final question unanswered. Chaucer amplifies and humanizes the "story of the Rash Promise" and "casts into question the 'unreal' literary world of the demande d'amour."

Chaucer Subjects
Franklin and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations