philosophy student.
The Clerk is a philosophy student from Oxford, who claims that he originally heard the tale from Petrarch.
What does the clerk do in the Canterbury Tales?
The clerk spends his days reading and learning. Wherever he goes he always has a book with him. He might also be keeping records and administering various things. Every character in Canterbury Tales has their own tale to tell, and the clerk is no different.
How is the clerk described in The Canterbury Tales?
The Clerk is a poor student of philosophy. Having spent his money on books and learning rather than on fine clothes, he is threadbare and wan. He speaks little, but when he does, his words are wise and full of moral virtue.
What class is the clerk in Canterbury Tales?
During Chaucer’s time, two new classes emerged in Medieval England: the intellectual class which included The Clerk, and the mercantile class where we’d find The Cook, Merchant, Reeve, Shipman, and Wife of Bath.
What does Chaucer say about the clerk?
Here Chaucer describes the clerk as some one who used to study philosophy and his horse was starved and so was he. Had got him yet no churchly benefice, Nor he was worldly to accept secular office. Than rich robes, fiddle, or gay psaltery.
What is the moral of the clerk’s tale?
2. The Clerk’s Tale is best read allegorically, not as a realistic story. Petrarch’s moral, translated at 1142-1162, is the best one: we should understand Griselda’s patience and obedience to Walter as an image of the duty we all owe God, and “lyve in vertuous suffraunce.”
What does the clerk most desire?
The Clerk, a scholar, desires total control. He longs for the abdication of his beloved’s freedom more than anything. He is similar, in certain respects, to the cosmopolitan Wife of Bath. He is, however, different from the Wife of Bath in that he argues in favor of boundaries.
Where does the clerk get his tale?
As the Clerk tells us in his Prologue, the tale doesn’t originate with him; it comes from the Italian poet Petrarch. Petrarch, in turn, translated the tale from a famous Italian story collection, Boccaccio’s Decameron. It’s a popular story, and people have been telling and retelling it for centuries.
What class is a clerk?
Clerical workers are considered working class by American sociologists such as William Thompson, Joseph Hickey or James Henslin as they perform highly routinized tasks with relatively little autonomy.
The five groups were Royalty, Nobility, Church, Merchants, and Peasantry.
Who is middle class in Canterbury Tales?
And Chaucer’s interest in middle class characters, such as a cook, carpenter, miller, lawyer, merchant, clerk, physician reflects the rise of the middle class in the fourteenth century (Collin 1).
Is clerk an ideal character of Chaucer?
The Clerk of Oxenford in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is often maligned for lacking development as a literary character. Frequently, the Clerk has been dismissed as a stereotype or an ideal rather than a multi-dimensional character.
Does the Pilgrim admire the clerk?
The pilgrims that he most seems to admire are the Knight, the Oxford Clerk and the Parson.
What two things would the clerk gladly do?
In The Prologue, Chaucer tells us that the Clerk “never spoke a word more than was need” and that he would “gladly learn and gladly teach.” Therefore the reader must assume that his tale will teach some sort of moral or ethical lesson.
Who does the clerk borrow this tale from?
Petrarch
The Clerk’s Tale, one of the 24 stories in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, published 1387–1400. Chaucer borrowed the story of Patient Griselda from Petrarch’s Latin translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron.
Is the clerk as full of moral virtue as his speech?
Yes, the Clerk is full of “moral virtue” when he speaks because he is formal, short, to the point, lofty to his theme and was willing to teach others though his words. The narrator tells the readers that the Clerk wishes to be rich with knowledge rather than money/materialistic objects.
Why is the clerk a mismatch in the third group of pilgrims?
The Clerk seems to be somewhat mismatch in this group because he is the only one who is not interested in any worldly and material possession except books.
What advice did the clerk give money?
Mani persists, and eventually the clerk gives him advice about what to study, despite not actually knowing what will be on the exam.
Why did the clerk stare at Charley?
He paid the currency of the present world which was totally different from 1890s world. On seeing the big notes, the clerk got stunned and he thought that Charley was trying to skin him. He threatened to get him arrested.
Why did the clerk threaten Charley?
Answer: When Charley took out the modem currency to pay for the two tickets to Galesburg, the ticket clerk accused him of trying to cheat him. He threatened to hand Charley over to the police. Charley was frightened and he decided to rush back from the third level, lest he was arrested and put into prison.
How does the clerk’s tale end?
The Clerk concludes his tale by saying that women like Griselda are hard to find nowadays. However, shortly before he ends his story, the Clerk says that its moral is not that all women should do what men tell them to but that everybody should face adversity and accept their fate without complaining.