A Transcendent Excess: Examining Griselda's Assent in Chaucer's 'Clerk's Tale' through Georges Bataille's Atheological Mysticism

Description: Suggests that Griselda's excesses of bodily humiliation, self-sacrifice, and assent to contractual obligations, in response to her husband's rational program of complete control, actually represent a mystical negation of the self as subject that in turn negates the imposition of boundaries typical of an "economy of use." Emphasizes how Chaucer's chief addition to his Petrarchan source--the narrating clerk devoted to logic--amplifies this reading of the Tale.

Chaucer Subjects: Clerk and His Tale; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations