The Clerk's Prologue and Tale

by Geoffrey Chaucer, James Winny (Editor)

A well-established and respected series. Texts are in the original Middle English, and each has an introduction, detailed notes and a glossary. Selected titles are also available as CD recordings.

Genres: Classics, Poetry, British Literature, School, Fiction, Medieval, Literature

124 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English). Almost two thousand English words are first attested to in Chaucerian manuscripts. As scholar Bruce Holsinger has argued, charting Chaucer's life and work comes with many challenges related to the "difficult disjunction between the written record of his public and private life and the literary corpus he left behind". His recorded works and his life show many personas that are "ironic, mysterious, elusive [or] cagey" in nature, ever-changing with new discoveries.

Reviews

[Vaishali · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only Canterbury Tale I didn't need a translation guide for, though I did prep myself with a Course Hero video. Very cruel story with inaccessible characters, but polarized enough to keep people talking about it for centuries.

Check out Chaucer's advice to women (!) :
---------------------------------

1183
O noble wyves, ful of heigh prudence,
Oh noble wives, full of great prudence,

1184
Lat noon humylitee youre tonge naille,
Let no humility nail down your tongue,

1196
Syn ye be strong as is a greet camaille;
Since you are strong as is a great camel

1197
Ne suffreth nat that men yow doon offense.
Suffer not that men do offense to you.

1199
Beth egre as is a tygre yond in Ynde;
Be fierce as is a tiger yonder in India

1201
Ne dreed hem nat; doth hem no reverence,
Fear them not; do them no reverence,

1211
Be ay of chiere as light as leef on lynde,
Be ever in behavior as light as a leaf on a linden tree,

1212
And lat hym care, and wepe, and wrynge, and waille !
And let him grieve, and weep, and wring his hands, and wail !


.

[mia :•) · Rating 3 out of 5]

oxford boys being insufferable since the 14th century

[sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

dump him griselda!!!

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now more than ever, everyone should read this in order to better understand tyranny.

[William_Furneaux · Rating 4 out of 5]

writer brain go brrr

[Dale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolutely insane.

[Jada Rosá · Rating 4 out of 5]

the tale of the infinitely humble and patient Griselda in the hands of her husband, who tests her beyond endurance.

I don’t want to slander any of the characters, but point to what the Clerk emphasizes: the similarities between Griselda and Job. Both characters are steadfast in trial sent directly from their masters (the Marquis and God, respectively). This is all about Griselda’s sainthood and an exploration of the limits of her virtue (spoiler: there are none), similarly to Job’s story arc. Both stories have a redemption, though only Job’s is Good.

The cruelty of the Marquis displayed in his 1) need for dominion and 2) “testing” and 3) lack of morality & remorse takes away YEARS from his wife. Readers only see Griselda from the outside - an important fact, as we are left wondering what she really feels : does she writhe with hatred or sink into despair because of her husband? We don’t know.

Is this what women should aspire to? Is this the “ideal” woman? How can injustice like that by a man be endured?

[zaivry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Men ~suck~

[Bal · Rating 1 out of 5]

i had to read this short story because of my english class that i have for this semester. honestly, if it wasn’t a task, i wouldn’t really read it by free will.

the language is hard, at least for me. i had to translate every other word in order to understand it.

i don’t like the characters. i don’t like walter for being such a jerk (excuse my language). i don’t understand why he in the first place choose a wife from a poor family, if his plan is to constantly remind her that he is the reason why she’s so rich now and blame her for that….

i don’t like the wife for so so submissive and being scared of take up some space and stood up for herself. i do feel emphatic towards her, cuz i get why she doesnt leave her husband. probably because of the stigma of being a shamed and bla bla.

this story also makes me think of how it affected people in the middle years when they read it. probably men expected women to act the same way as the wife acts herself. to eat up all the shit her husband says without a single complaint. and women (if they of course were educated enough) set their opinions on marriage based on this book. no wonder why patriarchy is happening nowadays.

the thing that i liked and why i gave this story one start was the fact that the narrator wasn’t fully supporting the wife. he stated that he doesn’t see any point of doing this tests on the wife and in the end he also stated that the readers shouldn’t take a wife as their bias in respectful way. so yeah, didn’t enjoy it. piece of s***

[Kitty Red-Eye · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very cruel tale about absolute power over another human. It’s quite well-told, without the digressions (or what I call blablabla) which some of the tales are so full of, so throughout the story, I was able to go with it and feel compassion for Griselda. I’m not sure all is well that ends well, but it sure beats a story like this not ending well, which would have been absolutely disgusting.

[˗ ˏ ˋ Lili ˎ ˊ ˗ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very cruel tale about dominance and tyranny. It was pretty misogynistic until Chaucer's envoy, which turned the tale into a feminist manifesto. Love this guy!
I had fun studying it, but definitely not my favorite Chaucer work.

[sk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Griselda, the original pick me.

At least Chaucer’s version of this story has some smart critiques of Petrarch (and clerks in general), speaks to women a little more in its commentary, and acknowledges how demented this story is.

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting... but horrific...

[PJ Evans]

From the 1989 Norton Critical Edition of the Canterbury Tales

[Need2ReadClub]

Selected by the Randles

[mumu · Rating 1 out of 5]

marquis deserved a flogging tbh, what a vile man

[Natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh goodness. What if the Clerk was found dead the next morning and The Canterbury Tales became a murder mystery?

[Matt Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's tricky talking about these in isolation, because every tale is responding to the one before it. It gets stickier when we're not sure about the actual order of the tales. All that to say, the story itself is only interesting in relation to the questions it generates. Why did Chaucer add "human" touches to a story generally accepted as allegorical? What was the clerk's actual point and motive for telling the tale? And where were Chaucer's alliances in all this? Was he really mad at the Wife of Bath, and how does that show? Answering questions like these is part of the fun of reading Chaucer.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Clerk's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer is an odd one, to say the least. I'm not a huge fan of this tale due to the writing style and I am unsure if I will read more of his work. Though, I loved the actual narrative of this tale! However, I think the power dynamics of Walter and Griselda were displayed well in this story

Synopsis: This is one of the many tales in 'The Canterbury Classics' and tells the story of a man who marries a woman named Griselda. To test her loyalty to him, he takes away her children and says he is going to kill them. After saying he is going to annul their marriage and presents the firstborn as his wife, he reveals his actions to Griselda and they live happily.