The Gentilesse of Chaucer's Franklin

Abstract

The status of Chaucer's Franklin, both ethical and social, has proven to be a complex literary problem, centering on our under standing of that central but elusive fourteenth-century word, gen tilesse. Clearly the Franklin is an important man, but whether his function in the tales is satiric or idealized, whether he is to be regarded as a moral blockhead or a wise counsellor especially of the verbally extravagant young Squire, is a matter of irreconcilable critical dis agreement. Some of this ambivalence is undeniably in the figure which Chaucer created, but a portion is due to failure to distinguish properly among the various semantic contexts involved in the narrative. The Franklin is a figure whose verbal lineaments are drawn not from one context but from several distinct ones, each of which crucially affects our perception. These contexts of meaning can be both interior (as between headlink and tale or portrait and tale) and external, sometimes idealized and exemplary, literary and/or ethical in nature, sometimes quite particularly social, economic, or even political. I propose in this paper to suggest the Franklin's function in The Canterbury Tales within the range of meaning delineated by these diverse contexts as they occur in Chaucer's construction of the Frank lin's character in portrait, headlink, and tale. He is first of all in the portrait given a gentleman's rank. Franklins were free landholders, and though they were not aristocrats, it is evident that they were a long established, respected class of wealthy gentry.1 The expectation which this rank creates in us concerning the Franklin's worth is then developed by a series of evaluating details. He is elderly, and his white beard reminds the poet of his favorite

Cite this

Mary Carruthers (1981). The Gentilesse of Chaucer's Franklin. Human Biology.

@article{mary1981the,
  title  = {The Gentilesse of Chaucer's Franklin},
  author = {Carruthers, Mary},
  year   = {1981},
  journal = {Human Biology}
}