Biding Time: Knowledge and the Balance of Power in 'The Clerk's Tale'

Description: Argues that Chaucer (like Michel Foucault) understands power to be, at times, in the control of the "traditionally powerless" (e.g., servants and women), largely because they have subversive knowledge of their subjugators' private behavior. In ClT, for example, Griselda "warns" the tyrannical Walter that she will reveal his secrets to the Bolognese aristocracy and thereby compels her husband to treat her in a new way, even though much of the warning is couched in wordplay.