ABSTRACT
The Monk’s tale presents parent-child relationships as simple functions of its overriding theme. The Clerk, faithfully translating Petrarch or the anonymous French version of the story, finds Grisilde ‘fair ynogh to sighte’; the Man of Law speaks of Custance’s ‘heigh beautee’; the Second Nun, of ‘faire Cecilie’. The Man of Law and Clerk may emphasise their heroines’ physical beauty, but neither is inclined to linger over it. The narrator also warns of the damage adults can do to innocents in their charge. He turns first to the ‘maistresses’ among his audience. The conspiracy gets under way with the entry of Claudius ‘a ful greet pas’ to the court over which Appius is presiding, with a bill of complaint against not Virginia but her father. Virginius is sent for, and the bill is read immediately. It claims that Virginius has come by, and is holding, property belonging to Claudius, a young servant girl stolen from him ‘upon a nyght’.
