La musique du vers dans les lais bretons et le décasyllabe du Franklin’s Tale
This paper studies Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale, a self-styled Breton lay, and compares it to three typical Middle English Breton lays, Sir Launfal, Sir Orfeo and Lay le Freine. The Franklin’s Tale is written in pentameters while the other three are written in tetrameters. Beyond this first difference,...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institut du Monde Anglophone
2014-04-01
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| Series: | Etudes Epistémè |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/227 |
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| Summary: | This paper studies Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale, a self-styled Breton lay, and compares it to three typical Middle English Breton lays, Sir Launfal, Sir Orfeo and Lay le Freine. The Franklin’s Tale is written in pentameters while the other three are written in tetrameters. Beyond this first difference, the poetic devices used by Chaucer and by the other two poets differ. Three types of passages are examined here: complaints, descriptions of wonderful places, and dialogues. The authors of Sir Launfal and Sir Orfeo both use sounds and rhythm for plaintive effects in complaints, while Chaucer, and also the Freine-poet, have a more intellectual tone. Descriptions of wonderful places are based on specific details in the lays and on the evocative power of vague words in the Franklin’s Tale. The natural tone of the dialogues in the lays contrasts with the deliberate use of polysyllables in the Franklin’s Tale. In fact, the Franklin’s is both a success as a poem and a failure as a would-be Breton lay. |
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| ISSN: | 1634-0450 |