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SUMMARY:‘Th’emprenting of hir consolacioun’: persuasive speech and r
 esistant listeners in ‘The Franklin’s Tale’ - Dr. Alastair Bennett\,
  Royal Holloway\, University of London
DTSTART:20151013T164500Z
DTEND:20151013T181500Z
UID:TALK59880@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Prof Jane Chapman
DESCRIPTION:When Dorigen mourns the absence of Arveragus in ‘The Frankli
 n’s Tale’\, her friends ‘prechen hire’ to ‘make hire leve hir he
 vinesse’. Their preaching takes effect in the same way that engraving le
 aves a ‘figure’ in a ‘stoon’\, wearing away ‘by proces’ at Dor
 igen’s sorrow and ‘emprenting’ consolation on her. The image\, which
  originates with Ovid\, appears in a different context in Il Filocolo\, as
  Tarolfo imagines how he might win his lady through his persistent wooing.
  It was also a common trope in sermons\, where preaching to resistant audi
 ences was likened to carving and eroding stones. Chaucer develops this ima
 gery in two key episodes in ‘The Franklin’s Tale’: when Dorigen curs
 es the rocks around the coast\, she says that no clerical argument could j
 ustify their existence as part of God’s creation\, questioning the power
  of preaching to imprint meanings on stone\; later\, she challenges Aureli
 us to remove them ‘stoon by stoon’\, chipping away at them like a pers
 istent preacher\, presenting this action as an impossible task. In this pa
 per\, I argue that the metaphor of ‘emprenting’ stone structures a wid
 e-ranging investigation into the operations of persuasive language in ‘T
 he Franklin’s Tale’. It provides a way to theorise\, and also sometime
 s to fantasise\, about the effects of persuasive language\, and\, at the s
 ame time\, a set of terms to imagine the troubling situation of the unrece
 ptive listener\, who remains unmoved\, unpersuaded\, and unconsoled. 
LOCATION:Gatsby Room\, Wolfson College
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