Two Tales Enter, One Post Leave

For this blog post I thought I would present some final thoughts on the pre-Spring Break tales. Both the Squire’s Tale and the Franklin’s Tale present a few concepts we have already seen in new ways.

First of all, I think the Squire’s Tale was purposefully made to be so “interesting” to reflect the youth of the teller. We’ve got talking birds that wear sandals, magical mirrors, and a sword that is literally double-edged. Chaucer is either poking fun at the Squire or poking fun at the sort of tale the Squire is telling. There is just way too much going on for the tale to fit properly within Chaucer’s format. It reflects the noble education of the teller while also proving that too much education can be downright boring. If the Squire is to be taken at face value as a generalist and future master in the tradition of his father, he also has to be viewed as a punk kid with a hell of an imagination and a short attention span. Chaucer not only opens up the Squire to be interrupted by the Franklin, he is also providing an example to support his own monopoly on tale-telling. He appears to be reinforcing the idea that though many of the pilgrims are more than capable of telling well-constructed and entertaining tales, at the end of the day it is best that tale-telling is left to professionals, or at least those mature enough to stick to the plot and keep the time reasonable. It is both a criticism of over-eager youth and the misuse of education.

As far as the Franklin’s Tale goes, it is refreshing to see a tale where no one gets swyved, literally or figuratively. It is the first tale where no one gets punished, destroys themselves or others, tricks someone into doing something they dont want to, or generally making a mess of things. Everything comes out happy in the end and everyone demonstrates self-control and mutual respect. Therefore it is probably the most boring tale and I can almost picture the pilgrims rolling their eyes at one another as the Franklin tells of Aurelius' change of heart at the end. It provides a solution to many of the issues with marriage we have seen up to this point, but it stops short of allowing the woman complete agency. Despite having an “ideal” marriage, she is forced to give up her public rights in order to maintain this private arrangement. Also, a large measure of her capital is committed to preserving her husband’s reputation and the sanctity of her marriage, which is the primary source of conflict in the tale. In many of the previous marriage tales (Wife of Bath, Clerk, etc.) we see a marriage that starts with conflicts of social status, beauty, and behavior that must be reconciled with marriage, while this tale starts with a marriage that must be reconciled with external conflict. The tale presents an opposing conflict to the others we’ve seen because the marital chicken comes before the social egg. Instead of figuring out how to get along with each other, like Walter and Griselda or the Knight and the Old Woman, Arveragus and Dorigen have to figure out how to make their arrangement work within their social context.

Heere taketh the makere of this post his leve.