Author/Authors :
BAYILTMIŞ ÖĞÜTCÜ, Oya Adıyaman University - Faculty of Science and Letters - Department of English Language and Literature, Turkey
Abstract :
Medieval university education provided an individual not only with a profession, which would provide him with great esteem and prestige, but also with scientific knowledge, which was unattainable for laymen. Accordingly, a medieval clerk was regarded to be a privileged individual who was endowed with theoretical and scientific knowledge, which might seem magical to laymen as reflected in Chaucer’s The Franklin’s Tale. Although he is not one of the main characters, there is a clerk from Orleans, who is important for the working of the plot as much as the main characters of the tale. This clerk is the very person to help Aurelius clear the shore off the rocks in accordance with Dorigen’s only condition for accepting Aurelius’s love. The clerk, first, calculates the movements of the moon and tides, and then decides the proper hour to show Aurelius that the rocks have disappeared from the shore. At this point, the scientific knowledge of the university educated clerk about the high tide times is believed to be magical and a product of occult sciences by Aurelius and all the other uneducated people. In line with these, the aim of this article 2 is to discuss the scientific knowledge of the clerk in The Franklin’s Tale, which seemed magical to lay people, who did not have the magical scientific knowledge of the clerk and to present the perceptions of magic and science in the late Middle Ages as reflected in The Franklin’s Tale.
NaturalLanguageKeyword :
Chaucer , The Franklin’s Tale , Magic , Science , Clerk , Medieval University Education
