The Story and the Story within the Story: Rethinking Chaucer''s "The Clerk''s Tale"

• Main Authors: Pei-Ching Liu, 劉倍菁
• Other Authors: John Griffith
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/49503336711593402761

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 應用英文系碩士班 === 101 === Critics have characterized Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Clerk’s Tale” as a secular tale, a non-secular tale, an exemplary religious tale, a worldly story enriched with religious symbolism, and a symbolic fairy tale. But Griselda’s suffering, Walter’s cruelty and the structure of “The Clerk’s Tale” reveals the tale is more like a realistic tale than a symbolic one which tries to uncover some Medieval truths about the relationship between men and women. This thesis aims to find out Chaucer’s purpose in writing a tale of patience within a frame tale structure. The deep-rooted misogynous thought in the Medieval Ages, the anti-misogynous discussions in the late Middle Ages, “The Clerk’s Tale” as a realistic tale, Griselda’s virtue, Chaucer’s dream visions, and the relationship between Freudian dream visions and Chaucer’s frame tale will be discussed in the thesis. Freud’s concept of “The dream and the dream within a dream” is used to help us understand how Chaucer uses the structure of “a story within a story” as a mask to provide his opinions on the misogynous phenomena in the Medieval society without offending the authorities.