The intellectual class included lawyers, professors, and scholars who spent their lives reading, studying, and writing but did not end up joining the clergy. The Clerk is the character in The Canterbury Tales that best represents this class.
What is the occupation of the Clerk in the Canterbury tales?
philosophy student
The Clerk is a philosophy student from Oxford, who claims that he originally heard the tale from Petrarch. As a philosopher, the Clerk is a thinking man, which means he’s pensive.
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).
What classes are represented in the Canterbury tales?
In conclusion, all the characters in The Canterbury Tales fall in one of the three social classes: nobility, clergy, and peasants, implying that England was structured during the feudal and medieval periods.
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.
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.
What is the purpose of the clerk’s tale?
The Clerk’s Tale in ‘The Canterbury Tales’ details the tests that Patient Griselda must endure to exemplify the nature of a good wife. However, his perspective on Griselda’s story presents the notion that loyalty should not undergo such extreme tests.
The five groups were Royalty, Nobility, Church, Merchants, and Peasantry.
What is higher than a peasant?
After the rank of king, the hierarchy was the nobles, the knights, the clergy (religious people), the tradesmen and the peasants.
the noble class
The Squire is a young knight in training, a member of the noble class. While he is chivalrous and genteel, he is not quite as perfect as his father, the Knight, as he wears fine clothes and is vain about his appearance.
The Knight, as the highest ranking member of the train of pilgrims, is chosen “whether by chance, luck, or destiny” (844) to tell the first of the Canterbury tales.
What class system is not represented in the Canterbury Tales?
Throughout the prologue, he finds an unusual uniqueness in their common lives and traits. Chaucer’s characters represent an extremely broad cross-section of all parts of society, except for the nobility. His stories represented the people themselves and touched on all of the social classes that existed.
In The Canterbury Tales, the Knight has the highest social rank amongst the pilgrims, and he is introduced first by the narrator. He is also the first person to tell his story.
Does the Pilgrim admire the clerk?
The pilgrims that he most seems to admire are the Knight, the Oxford Clerk and the Parson.
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.
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.
Who is the simplest character in Canterbury Tales?
The Manciple is a special character because of what can be learned from his actions and his words. He also has one of the shorter and simpler tales of all the characters in The Canterbury Tales.
Who is the most noble character in Canterbury Tales?
The nobility in The Canterbury Tales is represented by the knight, which Chaucer describes as loving, “trouthe and honour, freedom and curteisye” (46). Since the knight is a worthy defender and protector of the people, the modern-day equivalent would be our country’s police officers and military.
Who is the most ideal character in The Canterbury Tales?
Based on Chaucer’s analysis of each character, the most ideal characters in, The Canterbury Tales are the Knight from the ruling class, the Oxford Cleric from the middle class, and the Plowman from the peasant class; however, each social group also has a character who falls short of the ideal as established by the
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.
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.