The Franklin's Tale could qualify as one of Chaucer's most sarcastic in the Canterbury Tales, and he applies his irony with a liberal brush to the issue of text. During the Franklin's Prologue, the franklin appears humble and self-deprecating, portraying himself as "a burel man" (716). While the footnote offers disparate meanings — uneducated man or layman — the implication is that the franklin wants to depict himself as uneducated. He adds that he "lerned nevere rhethorik" and that "colours of rhethoryk" are strange to him (719, 726). We need not wait to hear his tale to sense his duplicity; sandwiched between these two statements are references to Mt. Parnassus and Marcus Tullius Scithero. An uneducated, rude man would hardly be familiar with these elements of Greek and Roman history.
The franklin further undercuts his assertion of burelness throughout his tale. While he begins his tale plainly enough, without incorporating any references to myths or texts, he surprises the reader with an aside on line 813: "the book seith thus." The franklin is telling his fellow pilgrims and us a tale straight out of a book! As he proceeds with the tale, as more plot details emerge, Chaucer's contemporary readers — particularly those in his circle of friends — would have recognized the story as very similar to one by Boccaccio, which he wrote in two versions, one for his Decameron and another for Filocolo (Cooper 233). Thus, less than a hundred lines into his tale, the franklin has betrayed himself as at least middling educated.
The franklin, however, waits a couple hundred lines to begin completely dismantling his image of himself as burel. During Aurelius's plea to Apollo, he refers to a less well-known Greek goddess, Lucina, and as he languishes in grief, the franklin refers to a thirteenth-century poem about Pamphilus and Galathee (1110). During Aurelius and his brother's visit with the magician-clerk, the franklin again attempts to portray himself as ignorant, but Chaucer quickly and sarcastically reveals his falsehood. The franklin claims, "I ne kan no termes of astrologye" (1266). A few lines later, he rushes headlong into a manic list of astrological terms: tables Tolletanes, collect and expans yeris, rootes and geeris, centris and argumentz, proporcioneles convenientz, Alnath and Aries, and the heavenly spheres (1273-1282). Then, on line 1243, he again reminds us he's repeating a story he read: "this was, as thise bookes me remembre." The fatal blow to the franklin's posture of ignorance and illiteracy comes during Doringen's anguished lament, in which myth after story after myth about suicidal women tumbles out, again, "as the bookes telle" (1378).
Through the mouth of the quite educated franklin, Chaucer reintroduces the question of textual authority. It's a theme he has raised earlier in the Tales, particularly during the Wife of Bath's prologue in which Alison verbally espouses experience over education, but undercuts her own argument by citing Scripture and other texts. He continues this theme outside of the Tales, as well, in his shorter poems and envoys. Specifically, in Envoy to Bukton (see earlier blog post "Getting Personal: Chaucer's Envoy to Bukton"), he sarcastically cites the five-times-wed Alison of Bath as an established textual authority on marriage.
In the Franklin's Tale, Chaucer portrays the use of texts as dangerous and potentially misguiding. Aurelius goes astray by pleading with Apollo, a heathen god straight out of Greek mythology with whom educated people would be familiar. For Christians, this act is tantamount to making a deal with the devil. The squire Aurelius's brother, a clerk, further leads him down the path of self-destruction through the aid of book-learning. While trying to figure out how to help his brother with his grief, the clerk remembers his studies at Orleans, where clerks eagerly pursue arcane topics, and specifically recalls a book "of magyk natureel ... Which book spak muchel of the operaciouns / Touchyne the eighte and twenty mansiouns / That longen to the moone" (1125, 1129-31). The moon's 28 stations is a Far East, Buddhist tradition, and contradictory to Christian doctrine and teaching. Chaucer further emphasizes the danger of magic and astrology in connection with learning by portraying the magician-clerk Aurelius and his brother meet on the way to Orleans as a young, learned clerk who greets them in Latin (1174). This magician-clerk has a study full of books, a fact Chaucer tells us twice in 10 lines, on lines 1207 and 1214: "In his studie, ther as his bookes be" and "Into my studie, ther as my bookes be." With the aid of unChristian learning and texts, the magician-clerk enables Aurelius in his folly, and Aurelius' foolish trust in textual authority to win him his desire leads him to make a rash promise of 1,000 pounds of gold.
Aurelius is not the only character who textual learning leads astray and to a nearly tragic end. Dorigen, after Aurelius informs her the rocks are gone and reminds her of her troth, recalls a dozen examples from mythology and history of women who commit suicide rather than lose their virginity or honor. She uses these examples to support her argument with herself that she should also commit suicide to get out of the trap she built for herself through her hasty, foolish promise to Aurelius. What she is forgetting, and what Chaucer's contemporary readers would have known, is that suicide is prohibited by Christian doctrine. The franklin earlier establishes Dorigen as a Christian woman who laments to the Lord about the rocks (876), so her forgetfulness of Christian doctrine is inexcusable. Her reliance on the wrong kind of textual authority nearly leads her to commit a grievous sin.
With a couple twists, the franklin manages to end his story happily. Aurelius has a change of heart and releases Dorigen from her promise, and the magician-clerk subsequently releases Aurelius from his bond. However, Chaucer's warning is clear. Relying on the wrong kind of textual authority is dangerous and leads only to trouble and woe.
It is beyond ironic, then, that the franklin (and Chaucer) attempt to teach us a lesson by using a story from a text.
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