Canterbury Tales - Linking Griselda of The Clerks Tale to the Biblical

Linking Griselda of The Clerks Tale and the Biblical Sacrifice of Abraham The Clerks Tale seems to strike approximately readersas a distasteful representation of corrupt sovereignty and emotional sadism few can find any value in Walters incessant compel to test his wifes constancy, and the sense that woman is built for suffering is fairly revolting to most modern sensibilities. Nevill Coghill, for instance, described the tale as too cruel, too undreamt a story, and he notes that even Chaucer could not stand it and had to write his marvelously versified ironic disclaimer (104-5). It seems, however, even more incredible that a great poet should nark composing a tale for which he himself had little taste that is, there must be some point, however strange, to the ordeal of Griselda. One of the words Chaucer oft uses to describe her character is sadness. The word obviously had a very different meaning in fourteenth-century England from what it has today In Chaucer it does not denote a low-spirited moral or psychological state, but a way of reacting to events which takes them thoroughly seriously without letting them disturb ones internal composure. This kind of sadness can outflank be understood in terms of the biblical models Griselda follows. She explicitly echoes the Stoic resolve of Job when she declares, Naked out of my fadreshous, ...I cam, and naked moote I turn once more (871-2) this quote needs a / to show line breaks and should use spaced periods with square brackets for ellipses. But the allusions to Job may momentarily throw the reader pip the trail of an even stronger biblical model the story of Abrahams sacrifice of Isaac The affinities b... ...ch the intoxicated security of the flesh (in Calvins phrase), puffed up in its own satisfaction at an unbroken system of moral debts and repayments, is negated by the knowledge of an intractable sinfulness, and in which all human activity turns out to have bee n an anguished cry for forgiveness. whole caboodle Cited Benson, Larry. Ed. The Riverside Chaucer. Boston Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Clerks Tale.The Riverside Chaucer.Ed. Larry Benson. Boston Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987. 137-53. Coghill, Nevill. The Poet Chaucer. London Oxford University Press, 1967. Kierkegaard, Sren. Fear and Trembling.Trans. Walter Lowrie. Princeton PrincetonUniversity Press, 1941.