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Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: The Clerk's Tale

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From: Monarch Notes
Date: 19630101
Author:Chaucer, Geoffrey

Chaucer, Geoffrey
Monarch Notes
01-01-1963
The Clerk's Tale

Introduction:

The Clerk's Tale is a literary version of what is ultimately a folk
tale involving a woman and an other-worldly lover. It seems to have been
first put into strictly literary form by Boccaccio, though Chaucer
acknowledges his immediate source to be a version by Petrarch. Just as
the Man of Law's Tale extols the virtue of constancy, so this tale
emphasizes the nobility of patience. All the difficulties inherent in the
excessive idealization of the Constance story are present in a reading of
the story of patient Griselda, and ...

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