Chaucer's Clerk and the Wife of Bath on the Subject of "Gentilesse."
- Author / Editor
- Baker, Donald C.
Chaucer's Clerk and the Wife of Bath on the Subject of "Gentilesse."
- Published
- Studies in Philology 59 (1962): 631-40.
- Description
- Treats the theme of "gentilesse" in ClT as a response to its presence in WBT, arguing that it helps to characterize the Clerk, underlies Walter's decisions, and encouraged Chaucer to choose "precisely this legend for exactly this spot" in CT. Comments on the theme in Dante, Petrarch, and "Le Livre Griseldis," and argues that ClT sets the Wife's and Dante's concepts of gentillesse "against one another," an aspect of the humor of the Clerk's envoy.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Clerk and His Tale
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations