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What Is This Life?: Responses To Contingency In Chaucer's Pagan Romances, Luke Landtroop

Undergraduate Research Conference

In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims’ host Harry Bailey invites the Monk to “quyte” or “repay” the Knight’s tale. Intrigued by various thematic and verbal connections between The Knight’s Taleand The Franklin’s Tale, and informed by critical opinions which identify the former as the “other” against which the remainder of the Canterbury Talesis arrayed, I set out to examine the ways in which The Franklin’s Tale “quytes” or responds to the issues raised in The Knight’s Tale. Not only are both tales chivalric romances set in the pagan past, but both also address the question …