The Clerk's Tale: For Better or Worse

Author / Editor
Chessell, Del.

Title
The Clerk's Tale: For Better or Worse

Published
Critical Review 29 (1989): 77-89.

Description
Outrage at Walter's treatment of Griselda, seeing Griselda's story as a religious allegory of patience, even seeing it as a folk tale rewritten--such responses indicate that ClT is a poem "divided against itself." One way to resolve these conflicts is to see the tale as the "center of the marriage group," illustrating the perilous nature of marriage and the vulnerability of the partners in it to pain and betrayal.

Chaucer Subjects
Clerk and His Tale.