The Uses of Enchantment in The Franklin’s Tale

Abstract

Chaucer drew on several sources (essentially Boccaccio’s Decameron) and resorted to the Breton lays as a genre he imitated in The Franklin’s Tale. Courtly love, magic and supernatural situations make up the expected framework of the tale claiming to be an apparently well-rounded lay. Yet the role played by binding agreements, contracts and consent in the tale alters the traditional definition of magic, emphasizes the natural and suggests that more pragmatic issues are at stake in late 14th century society in which creation questions the place of the marvellous, one of the components of romance, as the medieval world was gradually turning to techné.