How to Say 'I': the Clerk, the Wife and Petrarch

Author / Editor
Carney. Clíodhna.

Title
How to Say 'I': the Clerk, the Wife and Petrarch

Published
Clíodhna Carney and Frances McCormack, eds. Chaucer's Poetry: Words, Authority and Ethics (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 61-74.

Description
Considers the relationship between the Wife of Bath and the Clerk, focusing on their shared approach to self-presentation through the words of other writers and their interrelationship as speakers. Highlights the Wife's use of clerical authority and the Clerk's sudden "verbal ingenuity" when speaking about marital issues in his Envoy, after he departs from his Petrarchan source material and speaks, in a sense, in his own voice.

Alternative Title
Chaucer's Poetry: Words, Authority and Ethics.

Chaucer Subjects
Clerk and His Tale
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations