Romance, Distraint, and the Gentry
- Author / Editor
- Johnston, Michael.
Romance, Distraint, and the Gentry
- Published
- Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112 (2013): 433-60.
- Description
- Argues that many late Middle English romances appeal to the gentry by coded references to the practice of "distraint," whereby gentry landowners were forced to take up knighthood or to pay fines. Concludes by comparing the attitudes expressed in these romances to those of Chaucer's Franklin, who desires a less elite status among landowning society.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Franklin and His Tale
- Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion