Carnival Voices and the Envoy to the 'CLerk's Tale'

Description: Though the "Envoy" is in Chaucer's late, masterly style, there is no need to equate the two voices (Chaucer's, the Clerk's). The "carnival" tone of the lines (in M. M. Bakhtin's sense) is appropriate to the Clerk in his "playful, ironic student" role, as contrasted with his more sober role as narrator of the Walter-Griselda story. The virtuoso technique of the lines also fits the Clerk as intellectual gymnast.