Rash promise

The rash promise, also blind promise or rash boon is a promise given without considering its consequences. It is a common motif in medieval and folk literature, especially fairy tales.[1][2] It is classified in the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature as motif M223[3][4] and likely has an Oriental origin.[5]

Examples

Salome with the Head of the Baptist (1761)

Bible: Mark 6.14-29: the beheading of John the Baptist involves a rash promise of king Herod Antipas to Salome, the daughter of his second wife Herodias, who, by her mother's advice asked for the head of John.[6]

Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Franklin's Tale", itself partly based on Boccaccio's The Filocolo: Dorigen, a married woman whose husband is absent, promises another suitor that he may have her if he makes the rocks on the coast of Brittany disappear.[5][7]

Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale": the main character, a young rapist knight threatened with execution if he cannot answer the question "What do women want?," promises an older woman (the proverbial "loathly lady") anything she desires if she can provide the answer (she desires to marry him).[8][9]

References

1. Mitchell, Jerome (1987). Scott, Chaucer, and Medieval Romance: A Study in Sir Walter Scott's Indebtedness to the Literature of the Middle Ages. UP of Kentucky. p. 175. ISBN 9780813116099. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
2. "Franklin's Tale, The". Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Merriam-Webster. 1995. p. 433. ISBN 9780877790426. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
3. Thompson, Stith (1955–58). Motif-index of folk-literature : a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediaeval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends. Bloomington: Indiana UP.
4. Chaucer, Geoffrey; Benson, Larry Dean (2008). The riverside Chaucer: based on The works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford UP. pp. 895–. ISBN 9780199552092. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
5. Edwards, Robert R. (2003). "The Franklin's Tale". In Robert M. Correale (ed.). Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales. Vol. 1. Mary Hamel. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. pp. 211–65. ISBN 9780859918282.
6. Brenda Deen Schildgen, "A Blind Promise: Mark's Retrieval of Esther", Poetics Today Vol. 15, No. 1, Purim and the Cultural Poetics of Judaism (Spring, 1994), pp. 115-131
7. Clouston, W. A. (1872). "The Damsel's Rash Promise: Indian Original and Some Asiatic and European Variants of Chaucer's Franklin's Tale". In F.J. Furnivall (ed.). Originals and analogues of some of Chaucer's Canterbury tales. E. Brock, W.A. Clouston. Furnivall. pp. 289–340.
8. Mann, Jill (2002). Geoffrey Chaucer. Boydell & Brewer. p. 10. ISBN 9780859916134. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
9. Wollock, Jennifer G. (2011). Rethinking Chivalry and Courtly Love. ABC-CLIO. p. 169. ISBN 9780275984885. Retrieved 9 January 2013.

Further reading

• Green, Richard Firth (2002). "Rash Promises". A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England. The Middle Ages Series. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812218091.