Canterbury

Canterbury The Clerk’s Tale is an indirect response to the Wife of Bath who stated that women desire complete sovereignty over their husbands and lovers. The Clerk puts forth a diametrically opposite view and draws the sketch of a totally submissive woman. Chaucer’s source for the Clerk’s tale is Petrarch’s ‘Fable of Obedience and Wifely Faith’ written in Latin that was in turn derived from Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’. Chaucer closely follows Petrarch’s text. Chaucer makes the Clerk candidly acknowledge that his tale is derived from "Frauncey's Petrak". The Clerk’s Tale is suited to his character as a serious student. His tale too has a scholarly theme and deals with the issue of genuine obedience and loyalty in a wife. Griselda’s story upholds faith in goodness even in times of adversity. It is definitely a moral tale and the Clerk relates it with all seriousness and economy of words. The Host’s warning to the Clerk to keep his language simple and to tell an entertaining and adventurous tale were not needed. The tale proves that the Clerk was not an ossified academic. However the Clerk does not relate an adventurous tale and does make use of rhetoric and figures of speech. When the canterbury, tale, clerk, clerk’s, wife, story, poor, student, serious, rather, marquis, interpret, griselda, chaucer, character, philosopher, times, thin, social, simply, philosophy, perseverance, perhaps, obedience, moral, middle, man, loyalty, long, logic, life, griselda’s, gold, girl, degree, comment, coffer, chaucer’s, being, ages, after, adversity, adventurous, tale, his, he, fable, decameron