Introduction

Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, the Griselda story, may be the most disliked of all the Canterbury Tales. Charles Muscatine, writing in the 1950’s, noted that it “has been very little appreciated [and] much condemned.” ¹ In her witty and wonderful essay, “Critical Approaches to the Clerk’s Tale” ² Charlotte Morse pointed out that with the exception of Howard Patch in 1939, no critic between 1906 and 1952 was sympathetic to the story. Analysis was combined with distaste.