Solving Dorigen's Trilemma: Oath and Law in the Franklin's and Physician's Tales

Author / Editor
Bugbee, John.

Title
Solving Dorigen's Trilemma: Oath and Law in the Franklin's and Physician's Tales

Published
Medievalia et Humanistica 36 (2010) 49-76.

Description
Dorigen in FranT has more than the two options of shame or death: she can also choose to break a bad law, even though the decision to let bad law stand "seems somehow, tragically, to have been taken long before the characters became conscious of choosing." In PhyT as well as in FranT, characters respond to their situations in ways that legitimize bad law.

Chaucer Subjects
Franklin and His Tale
Physician and His Tale