Apologies for the belated reply, Martin--due to nothing more than the hectic
pace of life-its-own-self (as they say in these parts).
That's an interesting point you make about "construction," and it applies to
the whole so-called marriage group debate, with Chaucer having taken pains
to overtly link the Franklin's Tale to the Squire's while covertly relating
it (back) to the Wife of Bath's. Was a "marriage group" constructed at all,
or was the intention to construct a magic-and-marriage sequence maybe? Or
did the construction turn on the speakers' characterizations and some social
argument to do with them? And if "naivety" is an element in a comparative
set of characterizations, what do we make of prologue/tale disjunctions in
that regard? The Franklin's Tale contradicts what it purports to exemplify
in terms of its rhetorical "colors," or figures, the inadequacy of which is
apologetically claimed in the Prologue and then disproved by the Tale, which
is more sophisticated generically (as a parable) than the naive Franklin
apparently realizes. The same can be said of the disjunction between the
Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale--but in reverse--raising the question of
which speaker is the more (or less) naïve. As far as Chaucer's constructions
go, then, it's always seemed to me that he was more intent on constructing
such questions than on answering them via these speaker/speaker,
prologue/tale, or speaker/tale relations, so where you see "equivocation" or
"double-think," I'm inclined to read it open-endedly, as a
narrative-interrogative device--an artifice that signals Chaucer's
sophistication (or maybe just my naivety about Chaucer!).
This relates also to your question about his punning on or playing with
"degree" in that passage and elsewhere (throughout the Tales, in fact). The
ME literal meaning is not simply "rank" but "relative rank," which makes all
the difference in this Tale--not least to the class-conscious Franklin
himself--where Dorigen outranks Arveragus and both are higher-born than
Aurelius, whose topping gesture of gentilesse makes such a profound impact
on the Franklin for that very reason. So what I meant by the playfulness of
"degree" in the Franklin's advancing "for shame of his degree" as the reason
for Arveragus's retaining sovereignty over Dorigen in _appearance_ only was
in reference to his relative rank vis-à-vis her and in relation to the
subsequently unfolding plot, which turns on the literal and figurative
senses of "nobility" connoted by "gentilesse" as well as the double meaning
of "appearance" in its social and magical senses of "illusion."
The relationship with artifice, including both the author's and the
speaker's in terms of their relative rather than respective plots, cuts a
number of ways throughout the Tales and in other works by Chaucer as
well--the Book of the Duchess, for instance, toward which Christopher's last
post seemed to be gesturing ("love does not die"). And if that was an
invitation to discuss the Duchess, you're on, Christopher! (It's probably my
favorite Chaucer text.)
Candice
> I understood "shame" here as pudor, a strong shared sense of what is right &
> proper, Candice, and it was the double-think involved (in what you call
> "face-saving") that made me use "equivocation", not any imputed subtlety on
> the part of the Franklin, though "naivety" is of course very much a
> construction in a double sense. Could you explain the "pun" on "degree",
> apart from it meaning "rank"? I'm afraid I missed it.
> Martin
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