"Following Echo": Speech and Common Profit in Chaucer's "Clerk's Tale."

Author / Editor
Bryan, Jennifer E.

Title
"Following Echo": Speech and Common Profit in Chaucer's "Clerk's Tale."

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 42 (2020): 73-109.

Description
Extends discussions of ClT as a "political fable," focusing on the theme of common profit and on the Clerk as a philosopher, assessing both in light of Bo as an "account of the philosopher's duty to the common profit." Rejects the "Griseldean values of abject obedience and self-abnegation," arguing that ClT and its comic envoy affirm the need to speak reasonably against political absolutism and to resist "bad Boethianism" and nostalgic Petrarchan eloquence.

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