DORIGEN’S LAMENT AND THE RESOLUTION OF THE FRANKLIN’S TALEby Warren S. SmithIn a 1997 article in Chaucer Review, I argued that the Wife of Bath in herPrologue “defends the plain truth of Scripture against the polemics of St.Jerome, and adopts what is in essence an Augustinian position on mar-riage.”1In this paper I extend my argument to the Franklin’s Tale. In thistale, as in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, we have another instance of a passageof considerable length in which Chaucer causes a character to react to,and offer an implicit reply to, an argument from Jerome’s Against Jovinian,this time relating to the virginity and marital relationships of pagan orpre-Christian wives. As in the case of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, our under-standing of the function of Dorigen’s Lament in its context will be greatlyenhanced by a close study of how it relates to and softens the message ofAgainst Jovinian, its principal model.Arguments about Dorigen’s Lament (FT 1355–1456) sometimes recallthe critical debate about the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, to the detriment ofDorigen, who, like the Wife, has been accused of rambling and incoher-ent speech (although occasionally this fault is transferred to Chaucer him-self). The Lament has been characterised as “hasty writing” indicatinglack of interest in the material on the part of Chaucer,2has been called a“tragicomic role call” marked by “irrelevance,”3an argument which“degenerat[es] into confusion”4and “incoherence.”5Even Dorigen’s mosteloquent defenders, those who see her as the most sympathetic charac-ter in the tale, tend to be numbed by the rhetoric of her lament, so thatAnne Thompson Lee, for example, bluntly says, “The biggest problemwith her speech . . . is its utter dreariness: none of the critics have beenable to get round that . . .”6A more thoughtful attempt to interpret thestructure of the passage is the close analysis and defense of the Lamentby Morgan (1977),7who traces the history of the apostrophe or complaintas a classical rhetorical device, and argues that Dorigen’s Lament hascoherent divisions by subject matter. In this paper I go further in arguingthat, as in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, Chaucer’s clear and careful distinc-tions from Jerome, here taking the form of Dorigen’s sincere but naïveTHE CHAUCER REVIEW, Vol. 36, No. 4, 2002.Copyright © 2002 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA02/36/4/3rd PROOF 5/26/02 9:47 AM Page 374WARREN S. SMITH375emotional responses to the grim stories in Against Jovinian, point to hisefforts to mark out a differentiation from Jerome’s position on marriageand virginity, again with a favorable glance toward the position ofAugustine in contrast with that of Jerome. I also argue that the mannerin which Dorigen presents her lament justifies the length to which it isdrawn out, by pointing to a favorable resolution of the dilemma causedby her rash promise to Aurelius. Dorigen’s Lament in the Franklin’s Tale is just over 100 lines long(1355–1456) and thus occupies about one-ninth of the entire tale (alength which Chaucer seems humorously to acknowledge by saying thatDorigen needed “a day or two” [1348] to complete it). It contains a seriesof approximately 22 exempla, some consisting of a single proper name,others several lines long, which she examines as possible precedents forher to decide whether suicide is justifiable as an alternative, either tobreaking her word with Aurelius (now that he has fulfilled the conditionshe set down in return for giving her love to him, of removing the rocksfrom the coast of Brittany), or shaming herself by committing adulterywith him. The seeming hopelessness of her plight is the theme of theopening lines in which she feels herself a victim of Fortune:“Allas” quod she “on thee, Fortune, I pleyne,That unwar wrapped hast me in thy cheyne,Fro which t’escape woot I no socour,Save oonly deeth or elles dishonour.” (1355–1358)As so stated she indeed has no hope, but the exaggeration has a humor-ous side, since she seems to have already reached her conclusion at thestart of the lament rather than drawing on her nearly two dozen examplesas an aid to judgment; but we, as readers, are thereby invited to readbetween the lines and to look closely in the rest of the soliloquy for a pos-sible way out. Dorigen’s despair, sincere as it is, anticipates the tragic bathosof the clown players in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (andprompts us as readers to react indulgently to her, as Theseus did to the rus-tic players). Part of Pyramus’ lament in MND follows Dorigen in surren-dering tragically to the power of cosmic forces:”What, stain’d with blood?Approach, ye Furies fell! O Fates, come, come,” etc. (MND 5.1.283–287).Death or dishonor—those are the choices Dorigen sees before her: Hath ther nat many a noble wyf er this,And many a mayde, yslayn hirself, allas,Rather than with hir body doon trespas? (1364–66)02/36/4/3rd PROOF 5/26/02 9:47 AM Page 375The twenty-two exempla which follow in her long lament are all takenfrom St. Jerome’s Against Jovinian 1.41–46, the second half of Book One,where Jerome has finished his look at Biblical examples and announces,“I will quickly run through Greek and Roman and Foreign History, andwill show that virginity ever took the lead of chastity.” (1.41. init.)The Wife of Bath’s Prologue draws its Jerome material largely from thefirst forty chapters of Book I of AJ, where the issue is Biblical exegesis. Inthe Franklin’s Tale, Chaucer focuses on the pagan exempla of the laterchapters, in accordance with the occasional pagan or pre-Christianassumptions of the tale. As a highly rhetorical passage the Lament givesthe lie to the disavowal of rhetorical color made by the Franklin in hisPrologue (716–27). This inconsistency is a clear example of irony orhumor, but those who dismiss the Lament as a long-winded rhetoricalexercise miss its more serious point, which becomes evident only in closecomparison with its source. It would be accurate to say that the rhetoricof Dorigen “corrects” the highly artificial rhetoric of Jerome along withits stern moral system, which is seemingly rigid but is also riddled withinconsistency and undermined by inappropriate humor. By subtle butunmistakable touches, Dorigen sends Jerome’s rhetoric in a different andmore humane direction, one which implies a strong insistence on thedistinction