Why Chaucer Calls the 'Franklin's Tale' a Breton Lai

Author / Editor
Hume, Kathryn.

Title
Why Chaucer Calls the 'Franklin's Tale' a Breton Lai

Published
Philological Quarterly 51 (1972): 365-79.

Description
Surveys the characteristics of the genre of the Breton lai in French and English, and argues that Chaucer labeled FranT as such in order to "minimize the religious implications of certain elements in the story" and encourage response to its courtly concern with "gentilesse".

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