The Ambivalence of Truth: Chaucer's "Clerkes Tale."

Author / Editor
Morrow, Patrick.

Title
The Ambivalence of Truth: Chaucer's "Clerkes Tale."

Published
Bucknell Review 16.3 (1968): 74-90.

Description
Explores the combination of religion and secularity in ClT, discussing its fusion of ideals and practical realities as Chaucer's means to increase the ambivalences of his sources. The tension between the Clerk's moralization of the Tale and its action increases the ambivalence, as does the Envoi, perhaps a result of the Clerk's own disturbed awareness of the "discrepancy between the ideal and real worlds" and maybe the reason he is on pilgrimage.

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