The "Clerk's Tale" and the Theme of Obedience.

Author / Editor
McCall, John P.

Title
The "Clerk's Tale" and the Theme of Obedience.

Published
Modern Language Quarterly 27 (1966): 260-69.

Description
Judges ClT to be "more successful than it has been thought" because it is a tale of "idealized obedience" in which Griselda's submissiveness is an "imitation" of Christ's Passion and Resurrection and a demonstration that the human will can achieve sovereignty through submission and defeat of death through acceptance. Chaucer's "humanizes" Walter's tests and discloses that the "unfathomable reality of death is conquered only by the supernatural death of the will."

Chaucer Subjects
Clerk and His Tale