Chaucer's Clerk's Tale: Interrogating 'Virtue' Through Violence

Author / Editor
Bodden, M. C.

Title
Chaucer's Clerk's Tale: Interrogating 'Virtue' Through Violence

Published
Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thiery, and Oren Falk, eds. 'A Great Effusion of Blood'? Interpreting Medieval Violence (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2004), pp. 216-40.

Description
Bodden reads ClT as Chaucer's deconstruction of the violence of hagiography. Plot and purported allegory clash in the Tale, and Walter is concerned not with Griselda's obedience but with her outward show. Virtue without will is no virtue at all. The Envoy repudiates ClT, which is rife with the stuff of torture: spectacle, pain, and ritualized time.

Contributor
Meyerson, Mark D., ed.
Thiery, Daniel, ed.
Falk, Oren, ed.

Alternative Title
Great Effusion of Blood'? Interpreting Medieval Violence.

Chaucer Subjects
Clerk and His Tale.