Winny, James, ed., The Clerk's Prologue and Tale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.,1966).
The Canterbury Tales; The Clerk's Prologue and Tale
38
- Chaucer, Geoffrey
1380 - 1390
- English - Middle English
- Original language included
- England
Kent; Canterbury
- Literature - Verse
- Family / Children
- Literature - Epics, Romance
- Travel / Pilgrimage
- Women / Gender
- Glossary
- Appendix
- Introduction
The introduction (19 pages) includes the Clerk’s Tale’s place in the Canterbury Tales, the character of the Clerk, and the style of Chaucer’s writing in this Tale.
RLL
This edition of the Clerk’s Tale is meant for beginning readers of Chaucer. It includes a glossary and end-notes. The text is from F.N. Robinson’s The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales exist in ten pieces or fragments. With the exception of the first and last fragments, we do not know the order in which Chaucer meant the fragments to be read. The Clerk’s Tale belongs to the fourth fragment, along with the Merchant’s Tale. Both Tales are about marriage, but they present different views of marriage. In the Clerk’s Tale, Walter marries Griselda and has two children with her, but decides to test her by sending the children away and telling Griselda that they have died. The Italian poet Petrarch tells a similar story in the Epistolae Seniles, and Chaucer likely use “Le Livre Griseldis” as a source; those parts are given in French in the appendix. Considered by many to be one of the greatest poets of the English language, Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London in the 1340s. He was a page in the household of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, who was married to Prince Lionel, one of King Edward III’s sons, and fought in France in 1359. After that he served Edward as a messenger and diplomat, customs agent, clerk of the king’s works (where he oversaw construction and renovation of the king’s houses and properties), and Justice of the Peace. His literary career began in translating works such as the Romance of the Rose and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy into English, and his first original work, the Book of the Duchess, was written in 1369-70. He died in or around 1400; the date on his 16th-century tomb in Westminster Abbey is October 25, 1400. Appendix: Chaucer’s use of “Le Livre Griseldis”