Chaucer's Experiments with the 'Thrifty Tale': The Narratives of the Man of Law, the Clerk, and the Physician

Author / Editor
Baker, Denise N.

Title
Chaucer's Experiments with the 'Thrifty Tale': The Narratives of the Man of Law, the Clerk, and the Physician

Published
Mediaevalia 14 (1988): 115-26.

Description
MLT, ClT, and PhyT address the same question: how can God allow the innocent to suffer and the wicked to go unpunished? Although in each case Chaucer enhances the virtue of the protagonist and the pathos of her suffering, he tests diverse resolutions through differences in genre, point of view, and plot, thereby relating aesthetic choices to ethical assumptions.

Chaucer Subjects
Man of Law and His Tale.
Clerk and His Tale.
Physician and His Tale.