Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and the Monstrous Critics.

Abstract

Over thirty years ago, James Sledd reversed the prevailing critical opinion about one of Chaucer's most perplexing tales in his essay, "The Clerk's Tale: The Monsters and the Critics." He refuted the arguments about the monstrous cruelty of Walter in testing his wife and of Griselda in surrendering her children by insisting that the tale must not be read as a realistic fiction. "Our difficulties will be lessened," Sledd writes, "if we remember that Chaucer does not invite us, but ultimately forbids us, to apply the rules of his fictional world outside his fiction" (169).

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