ABSTRACT
In the Franklin's Tale Chaucer's Franklin bases his story upon a deliberately problematic geography. The Rescue is a 'Shallow' romance in which reality and fiction mix dangerously, each threatening to deconstruct the other. In a brief article Joel Kehler usefully draws comparisons between The Rescue and The Franklin's Tale, and makes a nod to the similarity of their themes without exploring the relationship between the surface and thematic similarities in any detail. Closer scrutiny of these similarities provides a useful way into The Rescue, in particular the use of strange geography. The fatal tradeoffs between reality and unreality embody a tension between realist and romance narrative schemas. In his essay 'The Rescue and the Ring of Meaning' Robert Caserio explores this tension in economic terms of gift giving, exchange and trade, symbolized by the emerald ring.
