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2019 Tales, Tellers, and Frames: A Comparative Study of the Griselda Story in the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron Mae Espinosa

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

TALES, TELLERS, AND FRAMES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE GRISELDA

STORY IN THE CANTERBURY TALES AND THE DECAMERON

By

MAE ESPINOSA

A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded: Spring 2019

Espinosa 2

The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Mae Espinosa defended on April 9, 2019. SIGNATURES ON FILE WITH HONORS OFFICE

______Dr. Jamie Fumo Thesis Director

______Dr. David Johnson Committee Member

______Dr. Elizabeth Coggeshall Outside Committee Member

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ...... 4 Chapter 1: “The Clerk’s Tale” and Petrarch’s Latin Griselda Story ...... 14 Chapter 2: Decameron X.10 ...... 32 Chapter 3: Tales, Tellers, and Frames ...... 52 Conclusion ...... 73 Works Cited ...... 77

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Introduction

The relationship between Chaucer and Boccaccio has been the source of extensive scholarship. Particularly in reference to the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron, the existing scholarship has largely been focused on determining to what extent, if at all, Chaucer used the

Decameron as a source for the Canterbury Tales. The present comparative study seeks to offer a structural and thematic analysis of both works, with a special emphasis on “The Clerk’s Tale” and

Decameron X.10. My focus is on how the Griselda story changes between Boccaccio’s and

Chaucer’s versions in relation to the tellers and the tales’ functions within the larger framed story collections. Though this is not a study of translations, the Griselda story is translated and reinterpreted as it was recorded first by Boccaccio, then Petrarch, and finally Chaucer. Therefore, the existing scholarship on whether X.10 is a source or analogue for “The Clerk’s Tale” and the medieval concept of translatio comprise the theoretical framework for this study.

The similarities between the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron are notable. Firstly, they constitute two of the most famous examples of framed story collections in the Western literary tradition. Additionally, both are written in the vernacular, which at the time in England and Italy was still considered inferior to Latin for literary purposes. The authors’ choice to write in the vernacular corresponds to their interest in contemporary everyday life. Though Chaucer’s tales vary in temporal and physical settings, his pilgrims are grounded in the attitudes and prejudices prevalent in late fourteenth-century England. Boccaccio’s stories, meanwhile, largely take place in Italy, and his descriptions of the tales’ settings demonstrate an intimate knowledge of local geography; his characters often bear the names of real contemporary individuals, all of which ties the Decameron to the reality of Boccaccio’s Italy. Espinosa 5

The immediate concern of this study is the problematic and puzzling Griselda story. Not only is it included in both works, it occupies a special place in the overall structure of both frame narratives. “The Clerk’s Tale” is a self-reflective work that, beyond the complexities of the

Griselda story alone, takes on the controversies that the brazen and outspoken Wife of Bath initiates in her Prologue and Tale. “The Clerk’s Tale” is as much a tale about Griselda’s model wifely patience as it is a story about translation. The Clerk makes it clear that he is telling a story he learned from Petrarch: “I wol yow telle a tale which that I / Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk

/ … Fraunceys Petrak, the lauriat poete, / Highte this clerk…” (l. 26-33). Chaucer here cites

Petrarch, even before the tale begins, because Petrarch’s version of the Griselda story is the most immediate literary relation of “The Clerk’s Tale.” In a letter to Boccaccio, Petrarch translated into

Latin Boccaccio’s rendering of the Griselda story in the Decameron. It is this translation that

Chaucer then adapted into Middle English as “The Clerk’s Tale.” Chaucer again references his source at the end of the tale, when the Clerk clarifies that the purpose of the story is to teach

Christians to behave towards God as patiently as Griselda endured Walter’s torment, attributing this moral to Petrarch. Interestingly, the story does not end with this commentary; instead,

Chaucer’s Envoy contradicts the aforementioned resolution. While some other tales in the

Canterbury Tales include a section of commentary or interaction between the pilgrims after the end of the tale, it is always denoted as an epilogue; “The Clerk’s Tale” is the only tale to have an envoy.

In the Decameron, the Griselda story is the last tale in the entire collection. It is preceded by 99 others, but given its inherent complexities, it runs little risk of being forgotten among the other tales. Nevertheless, its placement at the end of such an ambitious collection is notable because Boccaccio dedicates the Decameron to women who are suffering in love, yet the Griselda Espinosa 6 story, an account of the torment of one woman at the hands of her husband, does not seem suited to Boccaccio’s stated purpose. Additionally, X.10 is one of only a few stories in the Decameron that provoke a debate among the brigata, though Boccaccio does not specify the finer points of the debate. This reaction to X.10 seems an appropriate conclusion to the Decameron, leaving the brigata—and readers—engaged with the Decameron’s stories after Dioneo concludes the ten-day retreat.

Literature Review

As Robin Kirkpatrick describes it, “the Griselda story is one that exerted a considerable influence upon the imagination of writers in the late Middle Ages” (231). It captivated three of the greatest medieval writers, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer, and from their works emerge three distinct versions of the same story in three languages. While the Griselda story first appears in written form in Boccaccio’s Decameron, it “has a long lineage lost in myth and fairy-tale”

(Thompson, Chaucer 280). According to J. Burke Severs in his seminal work, The Literary

Relations of Chaucer’s Clerkes Tale, the Griselda story originated as a folk tale, part of “the

Patience Group of the Cupid and Psyche genre” (4). The main elements of the Griselda story as it appears in Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer are characteristic of the Patience Group: a powerful, sometimes supernatural or otherworldly, husband demands that his wife show him obedience in all things without protesting; her children are taken away to be raised by friends or relatives but she is made to believe they will be killed; the wife makes preparations for her husband’s false wedding to a new bride but during the event, she is reinstated as his true and only wife and their children are returned (Severs 5).

On the other hand, Judith Bronfman points out that “the whole Cupid and Psyche theory” has one major flaw: “In the myth, the tabu is always broken, and it is this breaking that is Espinosa 7 responsible for the tasks or testing. In the Griselda story, the point is that she never loses her patience, that she remains absolutely constant to her premarital promise” (12-3). She echoes

William Edwin Bettridge and Francis Lee Utley’s hypothesis “that a Greek-Turkish tale titled ‘The

Patience of a Princess’ is a far more likely candidate than Cupid and Psyche” (13). As Bronfman explains, “the many rationalizations demanded by the Cupid and Psyche story are no longer needed,” and the relationship between the two protagonists of “The Patience of a Princess” is more similar, in terms of social status and the behavior of the spouses toward each other, to the marriage of Walter and Griselda (15). Bronfman points out that if this story was actually Boccaccio’s source, then he made changes to its plot and characterization, some of which she summarizes. Severs, on the other hand, points out the difficulty of determining the changes that Boccaccio made to his folk tale source when writing X.10. Nevertheless, given the similarities to other known folk tales, myths, and legends, Severs and Bronfman agree that it is clear that the Griselda story as we know it grew out of a folk tale tradition.

In addition to his discussion of the Cupid and Psyche myth as a possible source for

Boccaccio’s Decameron X.10, Severs “established definitively that Chaucer’s principal sources for the Clerk’s Tale were Petrarch’s Latin Historia Griseldis and Le Livre Griseldis, an anonymous

French translation of Petrarch” (Farrell, Goodwin 101). In comparing Boccaccio and Petrarch’s versions, Severs concludes “that there can be no question of the superiority of Boccaccio’s rendering,” preferring the “characteristic Boccaccian simplicity, directness, and economy” over

Petrarch’s version “overlaid with rhetoric” (18). When discussing “The Clerk’s Tale” in relation to its Latin and French sources, Severs points out that Chaucer “made important and significant changes in characterization, in narrative technique, and in the whole tone and spirit which inform the tale” (229). He examines six instances in “The Clerk’s Tale” in which Chaucer “seems to desert Espinosa 8 the Latin of Petrarch and follow instead the Italian of Boccaccio”: the description of Griselda’s reaction to the news of “impending divorce;” Walter’s message asking for his children to return;

“Walter’s words concerning the shift;” Walter’s request for Griselda to oversee the wedding preparations; Chaucer’s lines “She koude nat adversitee endure / As koude a poure fostred creature;” and “Chaucer’s account of the ladies’ reclothing of Griselda, after she has been reinstated as marquise.” (125-8). Severs concludes that this is not sufficient evidence to indicate that Chaucer used Boccaccio’s text when writing “The Clerk’s Tale.” Much of the subsequent scholarship on “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 has focused on exploring the relationship between

Chaucer and Boccaccio’s versions of the story, with Petrarch’s translation as an intermediary.

Kirkpatrick summarizes the differences in Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s versions by pointing out that “the final effect of Boccaccio’s story is one of ambiguity” while Petrarch’s intention is to suggest “the possibility of an allegorical interpretation for the marriage of Griselda and Walter”

(233-4). Chaucer ostensibly supports Petrarch’s allegory by following very closely Petrarch’s translation, but the Clerk’s commentary at the end of the tale complicates the story’s interpretation.

After affirming Petrarch’s allegorical message, the Clerk warns that women that behave like

Griselda are very hard to find in real life. If that is the case, then it does not seem that many people will be able to follow the tale’s allegorical call to action, which then begs the question of why the

Clerk chose to tell this tale in the first place.

Meanwhile, N.S. Thompson argues that Boccaccio and Chaucer undermine Petrarch’s allegorical interpretation of the tale by “an overemphasis on realistic features” (Chaucer 280).

Exploring the relationship between the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron as a whole,

Thompson argues that Chaucer’s construction of the Canterbury Tales borrows heavily from

Boccaccio. In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer “illustrate[s] life around him in telling detail…by Espinosa 9 using a mixture and mixing of genres that in his antecedents is found only in Boccaccio” (“Local

Histories” 85). Additionally, like Boccaccio, Chaucer uses the frame to highlight “the contrast between the larger world and the local” (Thompson, “Local Histories” 90). Boccaccio’s brigata spend their days leisurely telling stories, eating well, singing, and dancing, with servants to attend them, while the city of Florence is ravaged by the plague. Chaucer, meanwhile, points out the irony of “the pilgrimage that should have been a religious retreat from everyday life becom[ing] instead a carnivalesque parade” (Thompson, “Local Histories” 90). Considering Petrarch as well, Warren

Ginsberg argues that Chaucer’s conceptualization of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio was a translation in the medieval sense of the word.

The medieval concept of translatio is essential to this study. Our modern understanding of translation refers to the act of expressing words—whether written or spoken—in a language other than the original. While this was certainly part of the medieval definition of translation, the term encompassed other, more interpretative, practices. According to Robert Wisnovsky et al.

“medieval translation…is heterogenous, polyvocalic, and transformative, rather than static, passive, or servile” (14). Furthermore, it “exemplifies what a recent theorist of intertextuality has described as the capacity of texts ‘for reingrafting themselves within new contexts, and thus remaining readable’” (Wisnovsky et al. 14). It was this capacity for adaptability that medieval writers appreciate because, in Bronfman’s words, “as a general rule, medieval writers saw little value in inventing new stories; instead, they reworked earlier materials” (10). This is especially pertinent for “The Clerk’s Tale,” the “first English rendering of the Griselda story” (Farrell,

Goodwin 101). “The Clerk’s Tale” conforms to the type of “Latin-vernacular translation” which

Jeanette Beer describes as one “in which the source text was completely reshaped and reinterpreted for a new public” (730). According to Ginsberg, Chaucer read the Italian writers—Dante, Petrarch, Espinosa 10 and Boccaccio— in relation to one another, and in doing so, encountered the differences between his own “customs and conventions and those he encountered in Florence and Milan” (7). The Clerk is a direct result of this interaction, “a product of Chaucer’s encounter with Petrarch, a poet like himself, but a man whose ideological and literary commitment differed considerably” (Ginsberg

244). At the end of the tale, the Clerk “suddenly converts Petrarch’s allegory of the soul’s surrender to God into an ironist’s handbook for wifely comportment” (Ginsberg 266). It is this conversion, as well as other changes that Chaucer makes, that necessitate an understanding of the medieval idea of translatio as part of this study. This is not a study of translations, meaning it is not concerned with the linguistic changes in the different versions of the Griselda story. However, the medieval idea of translatio, which encompasses our modern understanding of translation as well as authorial liberty to reinterpret an existing work, is essential to this study because this practice is the one that Chaucer is engaging in as he rewrites Petrarch’s Latin prose version into Middle

English verse.

Methodology

This comparative study focuses first on the changes that Chaucer makes to Petrarch’s version and how those changes, along with the Clerk’s portrayal in “The General Prologue” and

“The Clerk’s Prologue,” contribute to a reading of “The Clerk’s Tale” as a story about the practice of interpretation, which highlights the complexities of the Griselda story like Boccaccio does in

Decameron X.10. This comparison sheds light on the structural similarities between the

Canterbury Tales and the Decameron. Though this is not a source or translation study, any comparative analysis of the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron cannot be conducted in ignorance of the existing scholarship that attempts to define the relationship between both works.

Therefore, it is essential to define how this study will use the terms “source” and “analogue.” Espinosa 11

Thomas J. Farrell offers a tripartite definition: “a source is a text available to Chaucer as he wrote, a hard analogue is a text that Chaucer evidently knew but seems not to have used, and a soft analogue is a text that Chaucer did not know” (“Source” 351). He concludes that X.10 is a hard analogue for “The Clerk’s Tale” because of the narrative similarities between the two versions. In justifying his definitions, Farrell argues that “both sources and hard analogues are material for study that is ultimately philological in nature” (“Source” 360). Frederick Biggs, on the other hand, proposes a more general definition. He defines a source as “anything Chaucer used in composing his collection” (13). He is interested in “seeking the sources of [the Canterbury

Tales’] narratives, the origins, whatever they may be, of each of its stories” and therefore “use[s] the phrase ‘source of the narrative’ for the source or sources, be they narrative or not, necessary to account for the unfolding of the events in each of Chaucer’s tales” (14). Finally, Biggs defines an analogue as “a story that is neither the source of nor itself derived from one of Chaucer’s tales, but similar to it in some significant way” (14). Given this scholarly context, I propose a simplified, binary definition. I concur with Farrell’s and Biggs’s definitions of source as a text that Chaucer knew and used, and I will use that criteria to define a source. On the other hand, I will conflate

Farrell’s distinction between hard and soft analogue while accepting Biggs’s criteria that an analogue is similar to Chaucer’s original. Therefore, I define an analogue as a text that Chaucer may have known but did not use and that is clearly and mostly similar to Chaucer’s tale.

Given these definitions, Petrarch’s Latin translation of X.10 is clearly a source for

Chaucer—sufficient scholarship has been published establishing this status for Petrarch’s text, most famously by Severs. Determining whether X.10 is indeed a source for “The Clerk’s Tale” is beyond the scope of this study. It is nevertheless interesting to note that Boccaccio is an underlying source for Chaucer elsewhere: “The Knight’s Tale” is derived from Boccaccio’s Teseida and Espinosa 12

Troilus and Criseyde is based on Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato. However, Chaucer notably never cites

Boccaccio as his source, though he points to other writers, including Petrarch, as sources. For the purpose of this study, it is sufficient to recognize that X.10 and “The Clerk’s Tale” are analogues.

Additionally, as discussed earlier, the medieval notion of translatio is essential to understanding the relation between Chaucer’s and Petrarch’s versions of the Griselda story. As I have already stated, there is no doubt that Chaucer had Petrarch’s text in front of him as he was writing “The Clerk’s Tale” given the close dictional similarities. In translating Petrarch’s Latin into Middle English, Chaucer altered the tale, which renders his version of the Griselda story more than a translation because, as Douglas Kelly explains, “if the poet adopts the same matter but expresses new meanings through it or in it with different language, then the new work will be original” (51). In fitting the Griselda story to the Clerk as a teller, how does Chaucer exercise his agency as a translator? This question leads to one of the criteria for comparison on which this study is based.

“The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 are inseparable from the characters that tell the tales. On the one hand, Chaucer presents the Clerk—a poor, meek, and studious fellow, whom the Host describes as “coy and stille as…a mayde” (l. 2). On the other hand, Boccaccio assigns the Griselda story to Dioneo, who, by the time he tells X.10, is the well-established trickster figure, witty and rambunctious, delighting in telling racy, bawdy stories that make the ladies of the company blush.

The Clerk’s longer, formal tale fits his personality as a studious figure, and his wordiness is established in his Prologue, while Dioneo’s short, action-driven rendition is sprinkled with characteristic sarcastic comments. Furthermore, the larger frame narrative affects the context in which the stories operate. In the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims are competing with each other for a prize, and the winner will be whoever tells a story “of best sentence and moost solaas” (l. 798). Espinosa 13

In the Decameron, however, the brigata tell stories simply to entertain themselves until they can return to Florence, although they must conform to the prescribed daily theme, with the exception of Dioneo. Finally, the tales’ placement in the larger frame narrative is also significant, as discussed earlier.

This study will consist of three chapters. Firstly, I will analyze “The Clerk’s Tale” in relation to Petrarch’s Latin translation, surveying the changes that Chaucer makes to his source material. Next, I will analyze Decameron X.10 individually, reconciling existing scholarship to arrive at an overarching interpretation of the tale—mainly, that there is no single interpretation that can encompass all aspects of X.10 and, thus, the story functions to showcase the interpretative multiplicity of fiction. In the final chapter, I will demonstrate how the Clerk’s portrayal and the

Envoy contribute to a similar interpretation of “The Clerk’s Tale” as the one I argue for X.10 in the previous chapter. I will conclude with an analysis of the Griselda story in relation to the frame of the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron, which will demonstrate how these works destigmatize popular literature and reveal how fiction can encourage reflection and discussion of social values.

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Chapter 1: “The Clerk’s Tale” and Petrarch’s Latin Griselda Story

In translating and rewriting Petrarch’s Latin translation of the Griselda story as “The

Clerk’s Tale,” Chaucer heightens the emotional appeal of the story. As J. Burke Severs demonstrated, Chaucer “followed his sources closely, paraphrasing them as he went along, frequently retaining even their diction, turns of phrase, and grammatical construction” (229).1

However, Chaucer notably departs from Petrarch’s Latin translation in two respects: (1) his characters utter longer and more emotionally impactful speeches, and (2) the Clerk inserts his personal comments throughout the story. Before discussing these two examples of Chaucer’s authorial agency, it is important to note the most obvious change: Chaucer transforms Latin prose into Middle English verse. Even more striking, Chaucer writes “The Clerk’s Tale” in rhyme royal, a poetic form he pioneered. Martin Stevens suggests that Chaucer used rhyme royal in the

Canterbury Tales to characterize tellers. According to Stevens, in “The Clerk’s Tale,” rhyme royal serves “to explore the domain of ‘heigh style,’ for while Harry Baillie implores the Clerk not to adopt this mode, the Clerk deliberately ignores this request” (68). On the other hand, Saul

Nathaniel Brody argues that the tales written in rhyme royal “study the shifting moral and aesthetic principles accompanying the development of a bourgeois perspective on the saint’s life” (113).

“The Clerk’s Tale” specifically explores “how the very idea of saintly narrative…is deprived of force when it is used to describe a world that compromises religious values” (Brody 123). Overall,

Brody argues that “The Clerk’s Tale” belongs to both the Marriage Group and what Brody calls the Rhyme Royal Group, and, as a result, “deals not only with the Wife of Bath’s ideas on marriage,

1 Severs refers to Petrarch’s Latin translation of the Griselda story and an anonymous French translation of Petrarch known as Le Livre Griseldis as the two principal sources for “The Clerk’s Tale.” Of these two texts, only Petrarch’s version of the Griselda story forms part of this study due to its close association with Boccaccio’s own interpretation of the story in the Decameron X.10—Petrarch enclosed his Latin translation in a letter to Boccaccio. Espinosa 15 but also with themes raised by the two nuns and the Man of Law: the attachment of mothers to children, the murder of children, the vulnerability of innocence in a corrupt world, the idea of a passive and suffering saint, the possibility of sainthood itself” (123). Brody’s point about the passivity of saints is particularly interesting because, while this theme aligns with “The Clerk’s

Tale” when read in conjunction with the other rhyme royal tales, I argue that Chaucer complicates the idea of a passive saint in the figure of Grisildis.2 At the same time that Grisildis complies with

Walter’s orders without complaint, her responses convey a subtle criticism of her husband and hint at the true feelings she conceals until the reunion with her children at the end of the tale. I will return to this idea, but for now, I want to highlight the significance of Chaucer’s use of rhyme royal in the Canterbury Tales. While Stevens and Brody differ on what this use means precisely, the fact remains that the four rhyme royal tales—“The Second Nun’s Tale,” “The Prioress’s Tale,”

“The Man of Law’s Tale,” and “The Clerk’s Tale”—stand out in a story collection primarily written in rhyming couplets.

In addition to using rhyme royal, Chaucer writes longer, more emotionally impactful speeches for his characters in “The Clerk’s Tale.” Beginning with Walter’s response to his men’s plea to marry, the Clerk himself describes Walter as feeling “pitee” for his subjects (l. 142). In

“The Clerk’s Tale,” Walter alludes to his longstanding trust in his subjects’ intelligence:

“But nathelees I se youre trewe entente,

And truste upon youre wit, and have doon ay;

Wherfore of my free wyl I wole assente

2 When writing about “The Clerk’s Tale,” I will use the names that Chaucer assigns to the two main characters: Grisildis and Walter. Similarly, I will use the characters’ names in the English translation of Petrarch’s Latin version: Griselda and Walter. Because the name of the Marquis is the same in both of these versions, I will distinguish between authors. In subsequent sections in which I will discuss Decameron X.10, I will use Boccaccio’s character names, Gualtieri and Griselda. Espinosa 16

To wedde me, as soone as evere I may.” (l. 148-51)

Walter reminds his subjects that he has always trusted in their cleverness, an addition that Chaucer makes to Petrarch’s version. Walter’s faith in his subjects suggests a closer relationship between the Marquis and his nobles in “The Clerk’s Tale” than in Petrarch’s version, in which Walter says simply:

Ceterum subiectorum michi voluntatibus me sponte subicio, et prudencie vestre fisus et

fidei.

[“I submit myself freely to the will of my subjects, confident in your prudence and faith”]

(Petrarch 112-3).

By establishing a legacy of Walter complying with the wishes of his subjects, Chaucer makes his acquiescence with his men’s plea at the beginning of the tale more believable, despite Walter’s admission that he has never desired to be married. Additionally, Walter’s response confirms his earlier description as “A fair persone, and strong, and yong of age, / And ful of honour and of curteisye” (l. 73-4). Likewise, the use of the word “pitee” in line 142 suggests his virtue as a ruler.

The Middle English Dictionary defines “pitee” as “a disposition to mercy; the quality of being merciful” and “a feeling of pity aroused by suffering, distress, grief, etc., of another, sympathy, commiseration” (“Pit”). In both cases, the word points to a favorable quality in Walter: his understanding of the concerns of his subjects and his willingness to take the steps necessary to remedy their worries.

Chaucer also makes his own addition to Griselda’s speech when her daughter is taken away. Petrarch describes the scene much more succinctly:

Sed tranquilla fronte puellulam accipiens, aliquantulum respexit, et simul osculans,

benedixit ac signum sancte crucis impressit, porrexitque satelliti et Vade, ait, quodque tibi Espinosa 17

dominus noster iniunxerit exequere. Unum queso: cura ne corpusculum hoc fere lacerent

aut volucres, ita tamen nisi contrarium sit preceptum.

[But taking the little girl with a tranquil countenance, [Griselda] gazed at her a while, then,

kissing her, blessed her, and marked her with the sign of the holy cross, and gave her to the

retainer, saying, “Go, and carry out whatever orders our lord has given you. I ask one thing:

take care that wild beasts or birds do not mutilate this little body, unless you are

commanded to the contrary.”] (Petrarch 120-1)

In “The Clerk’s Tale,” however, Grisildis speaks directly to her daughter before handing her to the servant and repeating her plea that the baby’s body not be left to be devoured by wild animals:

And thus she seyde in hire benigne voys,

“Fareweel my child! I shal thee nevere see.

But sith I thee have marked with the croys

Of thilke Fader—blessed moore he be!—

That for us deyde upon a croys of tree,

Thy soule, litel child, I hym bitake,

For this nyght shaltow dyen for my sake.” (l. 554-60)

While Grisildis meekly accepts what she believes is her daughter’s death without complaint, her acknowledgement of her own guilt in her daughter’s assassination is a highly emotive addition and pathetic strategy on Chaucer’s part. As Walter’s trials continue, Grisildis accepts them submissively, repeatedly recognizing her own poor and lowly background. The effect is a stirring portrayal of Grisildis’s meekness, which comes to a head at the tale’s conclusion, as Chaucer describes how she weeps and swoons upon being reunited with her children. Espinosa 18

Prior to the tale’s resolution, Grisildis once again shows her submissiveness in response to

Walter’s repeated tests. When Walter tells Griselda that he will do with their son as he did with their daughter, Chaucer’s Grisildis responds with more subservience than Petrarch’s Griselda. In both versions, Griselda covers the same basic points in her response: she reminds Walter that she has told him in the past, and it remains true, that she does not desire or eschew anything except that which pleases him, and recognizes Walter as her lord and her children’s, affirming his resulting authority over them. She also states that she left her “wyl and…libertee” (l. 656) along with her clothes when she came to live with Walter and explains that if she could foretell his will, she would have already done as he wishes, but because she cannot predict his desires, she will simply acquiesce now. Finally, she declares that she would die gladly if it pleased Walter because

“deth may noght make no comparisoun / unto youre love” (l. 666-7). Chaucer makes two important additions to this speech in “The Clerk’s Tale.” The first is seemingly insignificant but nevertheless enhances the pathetic appeal of Grisildis’s response. In Petrarch’s version, Griselda tells Walter:

Neque vero in hiis filiis quicquam habeo preter laborem.

[“I have no part in these children except the labor.”] (Petrarch 120-1)

In “The Clerk’s Tale,” Chaucer writes, “I have noght had no part of children tweyne / But first siknesse, and after, wo and peyne” (l. 650-1). By changing labor to sickness, woe, and pain,

Chaucer exacerbates the negative associations that Grisildis has with her children. The use of the phrase “and after” (l. 651) in “The Clerk’s Tale” erases the potential for post-natal happiness that

Petrarch establishes. Petrarch allows for readers to infer that Griselda, after the pain of labor, was able to enjoy her time with her children. Walter tests Griselda after the birth of their children only when the children have stopped nursing. In fact, Petrarch specifies two years between the birth of their son and Walter’s pretense that his nobles resent their son: Espinosa 19

Quo nutricis ab ubere post biennium subducto, ad curiositatem solitam reversus pater,

uxorem rursus.

[When the child stopped nursing after two years, however, the father returned to his former

inquisitiveness.] (Petrarch 120-1).

Grisildis in the “The Clerk’s Tale,” however, declares that her children have brought her nothing but suffering. Furthermore, Petrarch’s Griselda makes reference only to the physical pain of labor, emphasizing her role as a mere instrument of Walter’s will. She has fulfilled her duty as his wife of bearing him children, and thus, can make no claim upon her children after birth. Chaucer’s

Griseldis, on the other hand, emerges as more human, acknowledging both the physical pain of labor and the emotional suffering she later endured, ostensibly because her husband ordered her children to be killed.

In addition to this alteration, Chaucer adds a phrase that does not appear in Petrarch’s rendition of Griselda’s speech at all. In “The Clerk’s Tale,” Grisildis assures Walter, “Naught greveth me at al, / Though that my doughter and my sone be slayn— / At youre comandement, this is to sayn” (l. 647-9). Grisildis confronts Walter about the supposed death of their children only to absolve him of his crime, reassuring him that she does not suffer “at al” because the children’s death was Walter’s wish. It is difficult for readers to accept Grisildis’s passive response as her true feelings—we inevitably question whether she can truly feel no remorse or sorrow over the deaths of her children. This is a deliberate rhetorical strategy that Chaucer employs to complicate Grisildis’s portrayal and the tale as a whole. On the surface, however, Grisildis’s stoic response to her children’s death fulfills her wedding-day promise of obedience. On the day of their marriage, Griselda assures Walter that she will never disobey him in thought or deed: Espinosa 20

Ac si voluntas tua, sique sors mea est, [nil] ego umquan sciens, ne dum faciam, sed [eciam]

cogitabo, quod contra animum tuum sit; nec tu aliquid facies, et si me mori iusseris, quod

moleste feram.

[“I will never knowingly do—no, I will not even think anything contrary to your will. Nor

will you do anything to which I will object, even if you command my death.”] (Petrarch

116-7)

In “The Clerk’s Tale,” Grisildis expresses a similar sentiment:

But as ye wole youreself, right to wol I.

And heere I swere that nevere willingly,

In werk ne thoght, I nyl yow disobeye,

For to be deed, though me were looth to deye.” (l. 361-4)

It is not enough that Griselda remain stoic through the torment that Walter inflicts on her because this passivity would only fulfill part of her promise. She must tell Walter how she feels—how she thinks—to prove to him that she does not believe what he is doing is cruel or evil. Additionally, her restrained countenance every time she speaks to him assures him of her patience, devotion, and obedience.

Chaucer ends “The Clerk’s Tale” with a dramatic and emotional reunion between Grisildis and her children. Petrarch’s description is powerful but comparatively short:

Hec illa audiens, pene gaudio exanimis et pietate [amens] iocundissimisque cum lacrimis,

suorum pignorum in amplexus ruit, fatigatque osculis, pioque gemitu madefacit.

[His words produced almost unbearable joy and frantic devotion: Griselda rushes with the

happiest tears to embrace her children, wearies them with kisses, and bedews them with

maternal tears] (Petrarch 128-9). Espinosa 21

Chaucer, on the other hand, devotes four stanzas (l. 1079-1106) to Grisildis’s reaction. She swoons twice (l. 1079, 1099) and weeps so “pitously” (l. 1082) that “she bathed bothe hire visage and hire heeres” (l. 1085). She hugs her children so tightly “that with greet sleighte and greet difficultee / the children from hire arm they gonne arace” (l. 1102-3). The most striking part of Chaucer’s description is Grisildis’s speech to her children, which does not appear in Petrarch:

“Grauntmercy, lord, God thanke it yow,” quod she,

“That ye han saved me my children deere!

Now rekke I nevere to been deed right heere;

Sith I stonde in youre love and in youre grace,

No fors of deeth, ne whan my spirit pace!

“O tendre, o deere, o yonge children myne!

Youre woful mooder wende stedfastly

That crueel houndes or som foul vermyne

Hadde eten yow; but God of his mercy

And youre benyngne fader tendrely

Hath doon yow kept” (l. 1088-98)

Grisildis’s speech is, on the surface, the epitome of her submissiveness. She thanks God—twice— and Walter for having kept her children safe. Her gratitude to her husband seems misplaced; while

Walter did send the children to Bologna to be raised by family members in luxury, he initiated the deception that the children had to be killed. Therefore, Grisildis’s gratefulness seems odd, given that, had Walter never decided to torment Grisildis with the children’s supposed deaths, there would be no need for the reunion. Espinosa 22

The most important part of her speech is when she refers to herself as “wooful mooder” because her self-description confirms that, despite her obedience and stoicism, she has indeed suffered Walter’s torment. She is careful not to lay blame on Walter for her sorrow over her children’s death; instead, she names wild beasts as the source of her worry. She had to bear

“stedfastly” the thought that her children had been devoured by wild animals, not that her husband ordered her children killed. The irony of her statements is inescapable, and, I argue, purposeful.

While at first glance Grisildis seems to accept without complaint or feeling Walter’s decisions, her comments throughout the tale reveal a subtle criticism of her husband. She references his cruelty, enumerating the various trials to which he has subjected her, without ever confronting him directly.

Nevertheless, she draws attention to all that Walter has made her endure, and, in this way, “The

Clerk’s Tale” complicates “the idea of a passive and suffering saint” that Brody discusses (123).

I have already discussed the first two examples of this rhetorical strategy: Grisildis’s guilt over her daughter’s death and her denial of sorrow over both children’s deaths. When Grisildis tells her daughter “this nyght shaltow dyen for my sake,” she alludes to the alleged resentment the people of Saluzzo feel over her humble origins (l. 560). Before sending his servant to take away the baby, Walter tells Grisildis that “to hem [his nobles] it is greet shame and wo / For to be subgetz and been in servage / To thee, that born art of a smal village” (l. 481-3). Walter begins this speech by reminding Grisildis of her previous life, emphasizing his role in bringing her out of poverty:

“Grisilde,” quod he, “that day

That I yow took out of youre povere array,

And putte yow in estaat of heigh noblesse—

Ye have nat that forgeten, as I gesse?” (l. 466-9) Espinosa 23

The use of first-person pronouns highlights Walter’s power over Grisildis as her husband and one who was born noble. It also emphasizes his decision to marry Grisildis despite her peasant background and recalls the promise he extracted from his subjects to honor whomever he chose to marry. We know that Walter’s claim that his nobles resent Grisildis is false because, earlier in the tale, the Clerk narrates “that ech hire lovede that looked on hir face” (l. 413). Thus, not only does

Walter make an individual choice to marry the poor Grisildis, elevating her from a shepherd’s daughter to his wife and a noblewoman, he then fabricates his men’s resentment of Grisildis as their Marquess. As a result, when Grisildis ascribes her daughter’s death to herself, she effectively critiques Walter’s decision to marry her. He knew her parentage when he decided to marry her and he announced her as his bride just outside of her father’s cottage, meaning that his nobles were aware of Grisildis’s peasant background when Walter married her. Thus, it is not really Grisildis’s fault that her daughter must be killed to appease the nobles of Saluzzo, but rather Walter’s, who deliberately and knowingly chose to marry Grisildis despite her heritage.

Similarly, when Grisildis assures Walter that “Naught greveth me at al, / Though that my doughter and my sone be slayn— / At youre comandement, this is to sayn,” she calls attention to the fact that Walter decided to kill the children (l. 647-9). At the same time that she fulfills her promise to never disobey Walter, regardless of what he commands, she reminds him of his cruelty.

The syntax of her statement serves this purpose because she shocks the audience by first declaring that her children’s death does not grieve her at all, then clarifies that her calmness is due to Walter’s desire to kill their children. Once again, Grisildis’s obedience draws attention to Walter’s cruelty.

When Walter decides to stage a divorce and remarry, Grisildis’s long speech in response repeatedly affirms her lowliness and the inherent inequality between her and Walter at the same time that it keenly points out Walter’s cruelty. She declares that “unto my fader gladly wol I Espinosa 24 wende,” yet reminds Walter, “for sith I yaf to yow my maydenhede, / And am youre trewe wyf, it is no drede” (l. 832, 837-8). She does not argue with Walter when he commands her to return to her father’s house, but she undermines the validity of his upcoming marriage, casting herself as his true wife. She then briefly, circumspectly, reflects on the torment that Walter has inflicted on her: “O goode God! How gentil and how kynde / Ye semed by youre speche and youre visage /

The day that maked was oure mariage!” (l. 852-4). The implication of this statement is that

Grisildis was deceived on her wedding day into believing that Walter was genteel and kind but has since then realized that he is not given his behavior toward her. She adds, in an uncharacteristically dejected tone, “But sooth is seyd—algate I fynde it trewe, / For in effect it preeved is on me— /

Love is noght oold as whan that it is newe” (l. 855-7). She again calls attention to the promising start of their marriage, compared to what has since happened, culminating in what she believes is the dissolution of her marriage to Walter. Though she never blames Walter outright for his cruelty and never makes a direct reference in her speech to the children’s death, these brief comments, hidden in her predominantly submissive and self-deprecating speech, recall Walter’s actions and hint at the suppressed feelings that finally emerge when Grisildis is reunited with her children at the end of the story. It is important to note that the parts of her speech quoted above are original to

Chaucer; Petrarch’s version of this speech is much shorter and almost entirely focused on

Griselda’s lowliness.

As he does throughout the tale, Chaucer heightens the story’s pathetic appeal with

Grisildis’s affirmation, “It shal nat bee / That evere in word or werk I shal repente / That I yow yaf myn herte in hool entente” (l. 859-61). On the one hand, her comment is in line with her portrayal as a meek and obedient wife. On the other hand, it draws a contrast between her faithfulness, despite Walter’s trials, and his harsh dismissal of her prior to his impending remarriage. While Espinosa 25 telling Grisildis that she must return to her father’s house, Walter’s kindest words are, “With evene herte I rede yow t’endure / The strook of Fortune or of aventure” (l. 811-2). The irony of his words is prevalent—it is not luck or chance that is responsible for Grisildis’s circumstances, but Walter himself, who has concocted the elaborate scheme to test her obedience. In contrast to his disingenuous remark, she tells him that she will never repent falling in love with him. She later restates her undying love for him when Walter asks her to make the preparations for his false wedding: “Ne nevere, for no wele ne no wo, / Ne shal the goost withinne myn herte stente / To love yow best with al my trewe entente” (l. 971-3). Not only does Grisildis emerge as a pitiful figure, faithful to a husband who torments her, her steadfastness exacerbates Walter’s cruel whims.

In fact, the Clerk comments on the capricious nature of Walter’s trials several times. When

Walter first decides to test Grisildis’s patience, the Clerk interjects:

He hadde assayed hire ynogh bifore,

And foond hire evere good; what neded it

Hire for to tempte, and alwey moore and moore,

Though som men preise it for a subtil wit?

But as for me, I seye that yvele it sit

To assaye a wyf whan that it is no nede,

And putten hire in angwyssh and in drede. (l. 456-63)

From the first mention of Walter’s decision to test Grisildis, the Clerk voices his opposition to

Walter’s “merveillous desir” (l. 454). He eliminates any ambiguity over who is speaking in the lines above—the use of the first-person pronoun (“I seye”) clarifies that what follows is the Clerk’s opinion. There is no disembodied, omniscient narrative voice here; it is the Clerk as an individual Espinosa 26 who interrupts his own narration to share his opinion with his pilgrim audience and, by extension, with readers.

The Clerk’s interjections in his own story, which occur frequently throughout the narration, are largely Chaucer’s addition. There are only two examples of Petrarch offering his own commentary on his story (excluding the introduction in his letter and his allegorical interpretation at the end). First, he writes a brief reflection on Walter’s decision to test Griselda:

Cepit, ut fit, interim Walterum…mirabilis quedam, quam [laudabilis] doctiores iudicent

cupiditas, satis expertam care fidem coniugis experiendi altius et iterum retemptandi.

[As can happen, however, Walter was seized by a desire—wiser heads will call it more

amazing than worthy.] (Petrarch 118-9)

Petrarch’s brief aside does not clearly distinguish whether the statement after the dash is part of the narration or Petrarch’s own voice speaking. Later on, referring to the counterfeit papal dispensation for divorce that Walter presents, Petrarch writes,

Que fama cum ad Griseldis noticiam pervenisset, tristis, ut puto.

[When this rumor came to Griselda, she was sad, I imagine.] (Petrarch 122-3).

Here, Petrarch’s authorial voice emerges quite clearly, but he does not dwell on his own opinion.

He continues with the narration, describing Griselda’s steadfastness in the face of her impending divorce.

The Clerk’s interjections in his own story are more frequent and dramatic than Petrarch’s.

He repeats his opposition to Walter’s testing of Grisildis later in the tale: “O nedelees was she tempted in assay! / But wedded men ne knowe no mesure, / Whan that they fynde a pacient creature” (l. 621-3). The Clerk’s criticism here extends from Walter to married men in general, which seems to align with his invocation of the Wife of Bath at the end of the tale. The end of Espinosa 27

“The Clerk’s Tale” is complicated and contradictory and the subject of discussion later in this study. For now, I want to emphasize the Clerk’s criticism of Walter, particularly the way in which the Clerk interjects his own voice, beyond the scope of his narration, to comment on his own story.

The Clerk’s criticism of Walter begins with the tale; while introducing Walter, the Clerk mentions his refusal to marry—an important detail for the story’s progression. Petrarch and the

Clerk heap praise upon Walter but point out his reluctance to be married as a flaw. Petrarch describes Walter favorably

Et hic quidem forma virens atque etate, nec minus moribus quam sanguine nobilis, et ad

summam omni ex parte vir insignis, nisi quod presenti sua sorte contentus, incuriosissimus

[futurorum erat].

[Young and handsome, no less noble in behavior than in blood, he was in short an

admirable man in every way, except that, content with his present lot, he gave no thought

to the future.] (Petrarch 112-3)

In contrast, the Clerk’s disapproval of Walter is more direct and relentless:

I blame hym thus: that he considered noght

In tyme comynge what myghte hym bityde,

But on his lust present was al his thoght,

As for to hauke and hunte on every syde. (l. 78-81)

The Clerk’s use of the first-person pronoun makes the censure of Walter unmistakably his own opinion. The use of the word “blame” also renders the statement more forceful and dramatic. The effect of the Clerk’s comments is to draw attention to Walter’s short-sightedness and selfishness as a ruler. Even before his decision to test Grisildis, the Clerk casts Walter in a negative light. Espinosa 28

The Clerk’s interjections do not apply only to Walter; he comments on Grisildis as well.

When the servant takes away Grisildis’s daughter, the Clerk marvels at her stoicism:

I trowe that to a norice in this cas

It had been hard this reuthe for to se;

Wel myghte a mooder thanne han cryd “allas!”

But nathelees so sad stidefast was she

That she endured al adversitee (l. 561-5)

The Clerk does not criticize Grisildis as he does Walter, but his comment nevertheless draws attention to Grisildis’s passive reaction to her daughter’s impending death. His observation of

Grisildis’s steadfastness underlines her characteristic patience, the central aspect of the story.

So far, I have discussed what I argue are the two main changes that Chaucer makes to

Petrarch’s Latin translation of the Griselda story: longer and more pathetic speeches for Walter and Grisildis and frequent and more dramatic interjections by the Clerk. These changes heighten the emotional appeal of the story as a whole, with the Clerk’s comments underscoring Walter’s cruelty and Grisildis’s speeches subtly drawing attention to the torment she has endured during her marriage. In addition, the Clerk’s comment on Grisildis’s steadfastness highlights her unbelievable patience and submissiveness. There is another change that Chaucer makes in “The

Clerk’s Tale,” much smaller but no less significant, that likewise heightens the emotional appeal of the story and contributes to the complexity and ambiguity of the tale.

In Petrarch, after Griselda answers Walter’s questions prior to their wedding, Walter tells her “satis est” [enough] when he is satisfied with her promise of obedience (Petrarch 116-7). Later, when Walter decides to end Griselda’s tests and restore her as his wife, he tells her “satis…mea

Griseldis” [enough, my Griselda] (Petrarch 128-9). In both of these instances in “The Clerk’s Espinosa 29

Tale,” Chaucer writes “this is ynogh, Grisilde myn” (l. 365, 1051). The use of this exact phrase twice is significant when considering that Chaucer writes “The Clerk’s Tale” in rhyme royal, a poetic form with a distinct rhyme pattern. Thus, Chaucer went to the trouble of ensuring that this precise phrase fit metrically into the stanza both times that it appears in “The Clerk’s Tale.” I argue that Chaucer uses this phrase ambiguously, playing on the dual connotation of “Grisilde myn” as both a term of endearment and a sign of possessiveness. In doing so, Chaucer highlights the emotional conflict of the Griselda story and demonstrates his authorial agency by subtly altering his source’s language.

Walter first says “this is ynogh, Grisilde myn” to signify that he is satisfied with Grisildis’s promise to obey him if they are married. Walter asks Grisildis if he will be able to do with her as he wishes once they marry:

“I seye this: be ye redy with good herte

To al my lust, and that I frely may,

As me best thynketh, do yow laughe or smerte,

And nevere ye to grucche it, nyght ne day? (l. 351-4)

In her response, Grisildis promises to merge her will with Walter’s (“As ye wole youreself, right so wol I”) and recognizes inherent disparity in their social station (“Lord, undigne and unworthy /

Am I to thilke honour that ye me beede”); thus, Walter’s words suggest a sense of possession (l.

359-61). Petrarch’s Walter simply tells Griselda “enough” once he is content with her promise and this short phrase registers as the command of a ruler to one of his subjects. Chaucer’s Walter enhances this tone of authority with the possessive “Grisilde myn.” It is he who has decided to marry Grisildis and it is he who will hold the upper hand in the marriage because only she has Espinosa 30 made a promise of obedience. Their marriage will allow Walter to do with Grisildis as he wishes, and he proves his ability to do so during the rest of the story.

By the end of the tale, however, Walter is satisfied that his wife has kept the promise she made before their wedding and, therefore, in both versions, Walter uses the phrase “enough, my

Griselda/this is ynogh, Grisilde myn,” signifying the end of the trials he has imposed on her. She has withstood these tests and proven her vow of obedience; thus, his words register as a term of endearment. While the shift from authoritative to tender manifests in Petrarch’s version, it is all the more salient in Chaucer’s due to the repetition of the same phrase. At the end of the story,

Walter can now display his love for Grisildis, which he had concealed in order to make believable his claims that he and his people resented her. During the reunion with the children, the Clerk describes how “Walter hire [Grisildis] dooth so feithfully plesaunce / That it was deyntee for to seen the cheere / Bitwixe hem two, now they been met yfeere” (l. 1111-3). The story then ends with the revelation that “ful many a yeer in heigh prosperitee / Lyven thise two in concord and in reste” (l. 1128-9). This happy ending seems simplistic when compared to the emotional complexity of the rest of the story, but the Clerk’s comments at the end of his narration bring to the forefront the tale’s difficulties, namely Walter’s trials and Grisildis’s patience in enduring them.

The repetition of “Grisilde myn” in the “The Clerk’s Tale” serves as a microcosm for

Chaucer’s reworking of Petrarch’s version of the Griselda story. It demonstrates a similar tactic of subtle subversion that permeates all three levels of the Canterbury Tales: the world of the tale itself, the frame context of the pilgrimage, and the reality of Chaucer as the author. As we have seen, Grisildis’s responses to Walter seem to affirm her lowliness and demonstrate her submissiveness, but they manage to highlight Walter’s cruelty at the same time. Similarly, the

Clerk, while he repeatedly affirms Petrarch as his source, ends up challenging the allegorical Espinosa 31 interpretation of the Griselda story that Petrarch establishes in his own version. The end of “The

Clerk’s Tale,” particularly the Envoy, dispute Petrarch’s allegory, as I will discuss in Chapter 3.

Finally, Chaucer, despite translating quite closely Petrarch’s language in “The Clerk’s Tale,” alters the tone and meaning of the Griselda story. The longer speeches for Chaucer’s characters and his

Clerk’s interjections heighten the emotional appeal of the story, portraying Grisildis as an even more pitiful figure and highlighting the cruelty of Walter’s tests. More specifically, Chaucer draws on the elements that Petrarch establishes and intensifies their effect. When comparing Petrarch’s version to his source Boccaccio’s rendering of the Griselda story, Severs explains that “on the whole, Petrarch’s Griseldis emerges as more emotional, more deeply touched with wifely and motherly love, than Boccaccio’s Griselda” (18). Despite the enhanced pathetic appeal of Petrarch’s

Griselda story, his allegorical interpretation reduces the inner lives of his characters to exemplary actions of figures designed only to demonstrate the virtue of patience. Walter and Griselda act the way they do because the allegory requires it. In “The Clerk’s Tale,” however, the Clerk challenges the allegory, allowing for analysis of Walter and Grisildis as characters in their own right, rather than puppets in a moralistic tale. The conclusion of “The Clerk’s Tale” introduces various interpretations of the Griselda story, which complicate the allegorical reading of the Griselda story that Petrarch establishes and emphasize an interpretative multiplicity reminiscent of Decameron

X.10 that Petrarch counters in his own version through the allegory. In fact, a close analysis of

Decameron X.10 reveals a deep intertextual relationship to “The Clerk’s Tale” than its status as an analogue may suggest. The following chapter will examine the interpretative multiplicity that

Boccaccio builds into X.10 before turning, in the last chapter, to the similarities between X.10 and

“The Clerk’s Tale.”

Espinosa 32

Chapter 2: Decameron X.10

Much more than a collection of entertaining, sometimes tragic, sometimes racy, tales, the

Decameron serves as a mirror for fourteenth-century Tuscan society. Boccaccio dedicates the book as a source of relief for women who are suffering in love:

Adunque, acciò che in parte per me s’amendi il pecato della fortuna, la quale dove meno

era di forza, si come noi nelle dilicate donne veggiamo, quivi più avara fu di sostegno, in

soccorso e rifugio di quelle che amano. (Boccaccio, Branca 5)

[So in order that I may to some extent repair the omissions of Fortune, which (as we may

see in the case of the more delicate sex) was a always more sparing of support wherever

natural strength was more deficient, I intend to provide succour and diversion for the ladies,

but only for those who are in love.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 3)

He recognizes women’s more restricted lifestyle and its effect on their emotional health:

E oltre a ciò, ristrette da’ voleri, da’ piaceri, da’ comandamenti de’ padri, delle madri, de’

fratelli e de’ mariti, il più de tempo nel piccolo circuito delle loro camere racchiuse

dimorano e quasi oziose sedendosi, volendo e non volendo in una mendesima ora, seco

rivolgendo diversi pensieri, li quali non è possibile che sempre sieno allegri. (Boccaccio,

Branca 4)

[Moreover they are forced to follow the whims, fancies and dictates of their fathers,

mothers, brothers and husbands, so that they spend most of their time cooped up within the

narrow confines of their rooms, where they sit in apparent idleness, wishing one thing and

at the same time wishing its opposite, and reflecting on various matters, which cannot

possibly always be pleasant to contemplate.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 2) Espinosa 33

This dedication highlights the themes of love and women’s social status that are prevalent throughout the work as a whole. Even if it strikes an ironic tone, Boccaccio devotes much space to female personas, whether as members of the story-telling brigata or as characters, often protagonists, of the tales that the brigata tells. There are other controversial narrative threads, such as the frequent satire of the clergy and the use of historical names for characters, that knit together the various tales in the Decameron. Even when focusing only on the portrayal of women, we find such disparate and provocative stories as those of the empowered Madonna Filippa (VI.7) and

Joseph’s unnamed wife, initially rebellious but severely beaten into obedience (IX.9). With Dioneo as king, the stories of the Seventh Day extol clever women who play tricks on their husbands, only for Pampinea to tell a long story the next day, detailing the harsh vengeance of a scorned lover on his lady, forcing her to spend hours naked at the top of a tower (VIII.7). Surprisingly, after laughing at the wittiness of the wives of the Seventh Day, the brigata sympathizes with the scorned lover of Pampinea’s story of the Eighth Day.

Among all these contrasting stories, one tale emerges as the most perplexing portrayal of women in the Decameron: the last story in the entire collection, X.10. At the end of X.10, when

Gualtieri justifies his abominable behavior toward Griselda, he explains that

Volendoti insegnar d’esser moglie e a loro di saperla tenere, e a me partorire perpetua

quiete mentre teco a vivere avessi. (Boccaccio, Branca 953)

[“I wished to show you [Griselda] how to be a wife, to teach these people how to choose

and keep a wife, and to guarantee my own peace and quiet for as long as we were living

beneath the same roof”] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 793)

Griselda’s patience and meekness in enduring the emotional abuse that Gualtieri inflicts on her, and indeed, Gualtieri’s own explanation suggest that the story serves as a medieval exemplum, Espinosa 34 designed to instruct wives on how to properly behave in matrimony. Interpreted in this way,

Griselda’s obedience to her husband is rewarded with the return of her children and her reinstatement as Gualtieri’s wife. Petrarch certainly endorses the idea of reading X.10 as an exemplum and suggests that, instead of a model for wives, the Griselda story is a model of patience for all Christians.

The reality of X.10, however, is not as straightforward as a medieval exemplum would suggest, and, in fact, the tale provokes disagreement and debate among the brigata. I want to point that this instance of debate in the Decameron is rare—the brigata’s response to the stories tends to be uniform. There are a few exceptions to this, namely III.1:

Della quale erano alcuna volta un poco le donne arrossate e alcuna altra se n’avean riso.

(Boccaccio, Branca 247)

[There were some parts of Filostrato’s tale that caused the ladies to blush, others that

provoked their laughter.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 199)

IX.9 is a similar exception:

Questa novella dalla reina detta diede un poco da mormorare alle donne e da ridere a’

giovani. (Boccaccio, Branca 838)

[This story of the queen’s produced one or two murmurs from the ladies, and one or two

laughs from the young men.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 695)

At the conclusion of both of these tales, the brigata does not express a single, unanimous response.

However, there are only three other stories beside X.10 that include direct references to debate:

IV.3, X.3, and X.6. By this I mean that only these three tales describe the brigata’s non-uniform response as a debate, using that precise language. That said, the reference to debate after X.3 is as follows: Espinosa 35

Maravigliosa cosa parve a tutti che alcuno del propio sangue fosse liberale: e veramente

affermaron Natan aver quella del re di Spagna e dello abata di Clignì trapassata. Ma poi

che assai e una cosa e altra detta ne fu, il re, verso Lauretta riguardando, le dimostrò che

egli desiderava che ella dicesse. (Boccaccio, Branca 868)

[Miraculous indeed did it seem to all those present that anyone should be liberal with his

own blood; and everyone agreed that Nathan’s generosity had certainly exceeded that of

the King of Spain or the Abbot of Cluny. But after they had debated the matter at some

length, the king fixed his gaze on Lauretta, thus showing that he wanted her to tell the next

story.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 718-9)

In this context, it seems that Boccaccio employs the verb debate in the sense of a discussion; he makes it clear that all members of the brigata agree on their opinion of the central character of

X.3. Thus, IV.3 and X.6 are the only stories aside from X.10 that incite true debate, meaning disagreement and a discussion of differing opinions, among the brigata.

The brigata’s reaction to X.10 is central to my argument because it suggests that the

Griselda story’s inherent complexity is precisely the point of X.10—the brigata’s debate is

Boccaccio’s way of nudging us toward our own discussion of the story. In this section, I will begin by reviewing Joshua Landy’s and Millicent Marcus’s arguments about the ways in which literature incites debate and supports multiple interpretations at once. I will then survey two opposing readings of X.10, and, in doing so, I will show how neither one of the two interpretations can fully encapsulate the entirety of the tale. From these arguments, we will see that X.10 is meant to be read through multiple lenses at once because these various interpretations are woven into the tale itself. X.10 serves as an example of the experiment on fiction that Boccaccio carries out throughout the entirety of the Decameron. His collection of stories is primarily concerned with the Espinosa 36 contemporary reality of mid-fourteenth-century Tuscan society and serves as a series of vignettes that allow readers to debate and articulate their—or our—own values.

In How to Do Things with Fiction, Joshua Landy argues that “fiction cannot edify, but it can clarify” because “literature, in short, helps us to find our own [emphasis original] values” (38).

In order for literature, and more specifically fiction, to have this effect, Landy names two conditions. The first is that “its background scheme of facts and values is close enough to our own, so that it makes sense to speak of a simulation shedding light on the intuitions of our real-world self” (Landy 38). For a contemporary audience, the world that Boccaccio depicts in the Decameron is very different from the current one, but through research, we can become familiar enough with its particulars to understand and empathize with the characters that Boccaccio creates. Secondly,

Landy explains that “if [fiction] is to spur us to serious reflection on our attitudes, then it must challenge us by placing at least two of our values into conflict, allowing each to assert its claim on us, rather than simply reinforcing one of them (in imagination) and making us feel, like Diderot, how astonishingly good and just we are” (38). What Landy means is that fiction should not argue for one single viewpoint and use a plot line to demonstrate the virtue and merit of that viewpoint.

According to Landy’s logic, medieval exempla are ineffective and narrow-minded because their defining characteristic is the use of the narrative as proof that a certain behavior or belief is the correct one which should be emulated to the exclusion of all alternatives. The value of fiction emerges from its ability to juxtapose values, beliefs, or behaviors to allow readers to evaluate options and decide for themselves which is the best. The variance in the depiction of female characters in the Decameron mentioned earlier is one example of how Boccaccio fulfills Landy’s second criterion. Most of the stories during the Seventh Day are met with the laughter of the ladies of the brigata and some of them praise the cleverness of the female protagonists. Meanwhile, the Espinosa 37 dramatic story of Elena’s punishment of spending hours naked on top of a tower provoked the ladies’ compassion, though they recognized that Elena had been partially to blame:

Gravi e noiosi erano stati i casi d'Elena a ascoltare alle donne, ma per ciò che in parte

giustamente avvenutigli gli estimavano, con più moderata compassion gli avean trapassati,

quantunque rigido e constante fieramente, anzi crudele, reputassero lo scolare. (Boccaccio,

Branca 738)

[Grievous and painful as the recital of Elena’s woes had been to the ladies, their compassion

was restrained by the knowledge that she had partially brought them upon herself, though

at the same time they considered the scholar to have been excessively severe and relentless,

not to say downright cruel.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 610)

The story provokes debate by putting at least two values into conflict.

Pinpointing Boccaccio’s personal stance amid such starkly contrasting stories—and the stories of the Seventh Day and VIII.7 are only a few examples of many—is impossible.

Boccaccio’s own opinion is deliberately obscured by the inclusion of multiple perspectives within each of the tales, X.10 being the clearest and most challenging example. But Boccaccio’s personal position is not as important as the self-reflection and debate that the stories themselves can initiate.

The same is true of X.10: on the one hand, we can praise and admire, and even resolve to emulate,

Griselda’s patience and endurance in the face of hardship, or we can condemn her as spineless and cowardly. We can agree with the people of Saluzzo and label Gualtieri as wise, or we can censure him as a bully. As Landy warns, “we should remember that those works which try hardest to change us are those which succeed the least” (38). He adds that, as a result, “it is, perhaps, no coincidence that certain segments of the population place a premium on artworks that generate lengthy discussion, rather than those that proceed from incontestably noble moral principles” (38). Espinosa 38

The idea behind X.10 is not so much to glean a moral or ethical lesson from how the characters behave, but to incite debate about Griselda and Gualtieri’s actions.

Millicent Marcus argues a similar point about the overall function of the Decameron in An

Allegory of Form. She points out that “Boccaccio contradicts himself throughout the Decameron, denying the relevance of absolute interpretive systems to his narrations” and that “no sooner is one ideological position articulated than its opposite appears to defy any reduction of the text to strict formulations of theme” (8). The clearest example of the multiplicity of interpretations in the

Decameron is the Griselda story. As Marcus describes it, X.10 can “be read as the most extreme argument for the need to entertain several, possibly contradictory, perspectives at once” (105). She draws attention to Dioneo’s reference to the tale of Gianni and Tessa Lotteringhi. Tessa uses a donkey’s skull to signal to her lover when he can visit her—if the skull points toward Florence, then Tessa is alone and can entertain her lover. One day, someone accidentally swipes the skull, making it point toward Florence, so Tessa’s lover visits her when, in fact, her husband is at home.

Marcus argues that this tale is “about the instability of language and its openness to misinterpretation” (104). Therefore, when Dioneo alludes to this tale before beginning X.10, he lets his audience know that “we must remember that no interpretation is absolute, that the linguistic sign is susceptible to infinite distortion and misunderstanding, and therefore that no version of the tale is final” (105). X.10 not only lends itself to multiple interpretations, it is designed to be relative, to incite and sustain multiplicity. In this way, X.10 fulfills Landy’s criteria for helping readers find our own values by allowing and incentivizing us to survey contradictory ideas. The same is true of the Decameron in its entirety and Boccaccio himself is seemingly aware of this possibility. Espinosa 39

In the Epilogue to the Decameron, Boccaccio recognizes the role that readers play in shaping the meaning of a text. Defending his inclusion of ribald stories in the Decameron,

Boccaccio explains that the interpretation of his stories falls on their reader:

Le quali, chenti che elle si sieno, e nuocere e giovar possono, sì come possono tutte l’altre

cose, avendo riguardo all’ascoltatore. (Boccaccio, Branca 960-1)

[Like all other things in this world, stories, whatever their nature, may be harmful or useful,

depending upon the listener.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 799)

Here, Boccaccio distances himself from his reader, acknowledging that his stories escape his control once they are in the hands of readers, and thus, he cannot be held accountable for his audience’s interpretation of his tales. He elaborates on the ability of readers to construe, or misconstrue, his stories:

Ciascuna cosa in se medesima è buona a alcuna cosa, e male adoperata può essere nociva

di molte; e cosí dico delle mie novelle. Chi vorrà da quelle malvagio consiglio o malvagia

operazion trarre, elle nol vieteranno ad alcuno, se forse in sé l'hanno, e torte e tirate fieno

a averlo: e chi utilità e frutto ne vorrà, elle nol negheranno, né sarà mai che altro che utile

e oneste sien dette o tenute, se a que' tempi o a quelle persone si leggeranno, per cui e pe'

quali state sono raccontate. (Boccaccio, Branca 961)

[All things have their own special purpose, but when they are wrongly used a great deal of

harm may result, and the same applies to my stories. If anyone should want to extract evil

counsel from these tales, or fashion an evil design, there is nothing to prevent him, provided

he twists and distorts them sufficiently to the thing he is seeking. And if anyone should

study them for the usefulness and profit they may bring him, he will not be disappointed.]

(Boccaccio, McWilliam 800) Espinosa 40

Though Boccaccio makes no direct reference to X.10, or indeed, to any particular story, he affirms the ability of readers to interpret his tales and recognizes the possibility of reading them in multiple, even contradictory, ways. I will go one step further than Boccaccio himself in arguing that the best way to read X.10 is to maintain simultaneous contradictory interpretations of the tale. As I will demonstrate by surveying two opposing readings of X.10, no single interpretation can account for all details and aspects of the tale.

X.10 is, most obviously, a story about marriage. Shirley Allen argues for an interpretation of X.10 as a story that employs irony to promote a favorable view of women. Allen points out the

“dramatic impropriety [of] assigning [the Griselda story] to Dioneo, since either a Christian exemplum or a tale of wifely virtue accords ill with his personality” (2). Dioneo’s stories often portray sexually empowered women; indeed, when he is king, the theme of the day is stories about wives who play tricks on their husbands. Allen suggests that, throughout the Decameron, “while

[Dioneo] seems to be echoing the sentiments of medieval misogynists on female lust, he is actually encouraging women’s sexual freedom and their equality with men in its enjoyment” (4). By way of example, she draws attention to V.10, which she describes as “the most obscene of all [of

Dioneo’s] tales,” and notes that Dioneo “justifies the wife’s adultery as the proper course for a woman married to a sodomist” (4). She also brings up II.10, which Dioneo prefaces as proof of women’s promiscuity though he actually portrays “the adulterous wife [as] a totally sympathetic heroine” (4). In II.10, Dioneo pokes fun at the old, feeble Messer Ricciardo, and though he never refutes his earlier claim about women’s promiscuity, he criticizes Messer Ricciardo for ignoring the age gap between him and his wife: Espinosa 41

Messer Riccardo, veggendosi a mal partito e pure allora conoscendo la sua follia d'aver

moglie giovane tolta essendo spossato, dolente e tristo s'uscí della camera e disse parole

assai a Paganino le quali non montavano un frullo. (Boccaccio, Branca 227)

[On seeing that the situation was hopeless, and realizing for the first time how foolish he

had been to take a young wife when he was so impotent, Messer Ricciardo walked out of

the room, feeling all sad and forlorn, and although he had a long talk with Paganino, it

made no difference whatever.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 185)

These two stories take for granted women’s sexual needs and blame their husbands for their inability to satisfy them. The humor in the stories is initially based on the stereotype of women as licentious and faithless, but quickly shifts to the husbands’ inability to please their wives. The provocation is then that men should properly attend to their wives, rather than attempt to change them or delude themselves with expectations of perfect chastity.

The Griselda story is, then, on the surface, the exception to Dioneo’s typical “licentiousness and unruliness” (Allen 3). However, Allen argues that “Dioneo’s tale of Griselda is the ironic culmination of his argument that sexual desire is an important aspect of human (female as well as male) nature and that no institution, neither marriage nor the church, can or should suppress nature”

(5). For Allen, the point of X.10 is that “the absolute submission of the wife to her husband, promised in the marriage vows, preached in the churches, and demanded by men in a feudal society, is carried to its logical extreme” (5). The fact that Dioneo criticizes Gualtieri throughout the tale supports her argument. Let us consider Dioneo’s description of Gualtieri’s decision to test

Griselda:

Un nuovo pensier nell'animo, cioè di volere con lunga esperienzia e con cose intollerabili

provare la pazienzia di lei. (Boccaccio, Branca 946) Espinosa 42

[The strange desire to test Griselda’s patience, by subjecting her to constant provocation

and making her life unbearable.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 787)

Dioneo sets up Gualtieri’s behavior for the majority of the tale as unaccountable, perhaps even unnatural, and recognizes its damaging effects on Griselda. Dioneo later narrates Gualtieri’s continued tests:

Ma non bastandogli quello che fatto avea con maggior puntura trafisse la donna.

(Boccaccio, Branca 948)

[Not being content with the mischief he had done already…abused [Griselda] more

viciously than ever.] (Bocaccio, McWilliam 789)

Dioneo’s comments, like the Clerk’s in Chaucer’s version of the story, underscore Gualtieri’s cruelty and discredit any claim Gualtieri may make to wisdom, righteousness, or good governance.

As the story progresses, Dioneo continues to draw attention to Gualtieri’s cruelty. When

Gualtieri recalls Griselda to the palace to direct the preparations for his false wedding, Dioneo explains the disparity in the spouses’ treatment of each other:

Come che queste parole fossero tutte coltella al cuor di Griselda, come a colei che non

aveva cosí potuto por giú l'amore che ella gli portava come fatto aveva la buona fortuna.

(Boccaccio, Branca 951)

[Since Griselda was unable to lay aside her love for Gualtieri as readily as he had dispensed

with her good fortune, his words pierced her heart like so many knives.] (Boccaccio,

McWilliam 791)

By directly contrasting Griselda’s faithfulness with Gualtieri’s fickle whims, Dioneo once again highlights the cruelty of Gualtieri’s actions. At the end of the tale, when reflecting on the story as a whole, Dioneo points out that Griselda should have taken a well-deserved revenge on Gualtieri: Espinosa 43

Al quale non sarebbe forse stato male investito d'essersi abbattuto a una che quando, fuor

di casa, l'avesse in camiscia cacciata, s'avesse sí a un altro fatto scuotere il pilliccione che

riuscito ne fosse una bella roba. (Boccaccio, Branca 954)

[Perhaps it would have served [Gualtieri] right if he had chanced upon a wife, who, being

driven from the house in her shift, had found some other man to shake her skin-coat for

her, earning herself a fine new dress in the process.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 795)

With this bawdy implication, Dioneo restores his usual suggestive style to a story that notably lacked it. Allen claims that Dioneo here “undermines absolute standards and provides the opening wedge for relative morality” and presents “the shocking suggestion that a woman ought not always to submit to her husband” (6).

I agree with Allen’s interpretation of the Griselda story as an ironic censure of male expectations of absolute female submission as a plausible reading of X.10, but not one that fully encapsulates the tale. Adhering to one single interpretation of X.10 requires ignoring other aspects of the tale that suggest a different reading. As Marcus points out, “the fact that Dioneo vociferously disagrees with his own story is immediate evidence of Boccaccio’s pluralism” (105). As I suggested earlier, the debate among the brigata at the end of the tale reminds readers that X.10 does not have a straightforward resolution. I agree with Marcus when she argues that “when

Boccaccio has his frame story characters quarrel over the meaning of the Griselda tale, he is anticipating the critical controversy which this narrative will spark throughout its long and successful career in European letters” (97). Moreover, “Boccaccio never makes explicit the nature of the brigata’s polemic over the tale…leaving it up to each era of readers to assume its own critical positions in the ongoing debate” (Marcus 97). Boccaccio’s literary genius thus emerges when we read X.10 as organized around multiple readings. Espinosa 44

Unlike Allen, Teodolinda Barolini argues that X.10 is actually centered on Gualtieri rather than Griselda, but that Petrarch’s translation, and subsequent versions working off of Petrarch’s, reinterpreted the story with Griselda’s extraordinary patience at its core. Barolini’s interpretation shifts the meaning of the story from proper wifely behavior to marriage as a political tool.

According to Barolini, the focus of the story is “a man of power forced to marry against his will”

(24). She argues that Gualtieri’s actions are motivated by his desire to reassert his authority after he agrees to his subjects’ plea that he marry. She points out how Boccaccio “sets up his protagonist in the first sentence as a great lord who—precisely because he is not married—is able to dispose of his time as he wants, engaged in the typical sports of the aristocracy, without any constraints or obligations to do otherwise” (29-30). As Barolini mentions, “Dioneo makes explicit the causal link between the Marquis’s freedom and his unmarried status and adds that Gualtieri was wise (savio) for giving no thought to marriage” (30). I would add one important detail to Barolini’s analysis: whereas earlier I discussed examples of Dioneo’s criticism of Gualtieri, this instance is a rare one in which Dioneo agrees with Gualtieri. The fact that Dioneo sympathizes with Gualtieri’s disinterest in marriage supports Barolini’s argument:

Il quale, essendo senza moglie e senza figliuoli, in niuna altra cosa il suo tempo spendeva

che in uccellare e in cacciare, né di prender moglie né d'aver figliuoli alcun pensiero avea;

di che egli era da reputar molto savio. (Boccaccio, Branca 942-3)

[Who having neither wife nor children, spent the whole of his time hunting and hawking,

and never even thought about marrying or raising a family, which says a great deal for his

intelligence.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 784)

Why does Dioneo here speak well of Gualtieri whereas later in the tale he criticizes Gualtieri’s behavior? Moreover, why do I bring up this example of Dioneo’s agreement with Gualtieri when Espinosa 45 earlier I focused on his censure of the Marquis? Dioneo’s nuanced treatment of Gualtieri—at times commending and at other times criticizing his behavior—points to the multiplicity of interpretations built into X.10. Therefore, there is merit to Barolini’s argument—we are introduced to Gualtieri at the beginning of the story and it is through his decision to marry Griselda that she becomes relevant in the story. Just as Dioneo’s criticism of Gualtieri colors our understanding of the story, making us sympathetic to Griselda’s unjust trials, his initial praise of Gualtieri influences our reading of the story as well. Not only does the beginning of X.10 cast Gualtieri’s wishes in opposition to those of his people, Dioneo declares his support for Gualtieri’s reluctance to marry, and as a result, the remainder of the story becomes a record of Gualtieri’s attempt to fix what the narrator has already suggested would be a mistake. In other words, Dioneo sides with Gualtieri on the latter’s reluctance to marry, yet the event that sets in motion the majority of the story is

Gualtieri’s wedding. As Barolini explains, Gualtieri is the head “of a form of rule common in Italy in the fourteenth century, signoria, in which a locality is ruled by one family in hereditary fashion and that dynasty is supported by an aristocracy” (29). Therefore, Gualtieri’s independence is constrained by his dependence on his nobles:

The problem is that of a man of power who does not want to marry, but whose very status

as a man of power and lineage and wealth and position within a courtly and dynastic setting

offers his vassals the leverage with which they can force him to do this one thing—and this

one thing only—against his will…the Marquis’s vassals have the right to pressure him to

marry in order to ensure the lineage and the social order. (Barolini 31)

Gualtieri must marry out of self-preservation, but he has enough power to set the terms of his marriage—power he flexes throughout the remainder of the story. Espinosa 46

Once Gualtieri has reluctantly agreed to his nobles’ request, he “establishes the terms that will maximize his likelihood of success and minimize his likelihood of failure” (Barolini 36). He sternly warns his followers that they must respect his choice of wife:

Affermandovi che, cui che io mi tolga, se da voi non fia come donna onorata, voi proverete

con gran vostro danno quanto grave mi sia l'aver contra mia voglia presa mogliere a' vostri

prieghi. (Boccaccio, Branca 943)

[“And I hereby declare that no matter who she may be, if you fail to honour her as your

lady you will learn to your great cost how serious a matter is it for you to have urged me

to marry against my will.”] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 785)

Barolini suggests that Gualtieri “uses the license he receives from his men to choose someone so low in station that he will have complete dominion over her” (36). I would add that Gualtieri chooses the peasant-born Griselda because of her low social station, which has the added benefit for him of defying the expectations of his nobles. Following Barolini’s logic that Gualtieri manipulates his marriage to reassert his authority over his subjects after agreeing to their request, marrying a woman of low social standing when his subjects revealed their concern for the bride’s noble parentage serves to emphasize Gualtieri’s power. Gualtieri has agreed to marry only because his nobles wish it—he has made his disinterest in marriage clear. But he will manipulate the marriage to ensure that it is carried out solely in his terms and that includes defying his nobles’ expectations of a wife who comes from a noble family. In choosing a wife whose father “che poverissimo era” [was very poor indeed,] Gualtieri attempts to reassert his authority over his followers (Boccaccio, Branca 944, McWilliam 785). He challenges them to keep their promise to honor his wife—a promise made prior to knowing who the bride would be—when they are faced with the reality of a peasant-born woman as their Marquess. Espinosa 47

Gualtieri’s decision to test Griselda allows him to assert his authority “over his wife [as] a way of signifying his power over his men” (Barolini 36). He mistreats the wife he chose for himself, whom his people adore, and as a result, he incurs their ill will:

I subditi suoi, credendo che egli uccidere avesse fatti i figliuoli, il biasimavan forte e

reputavanlo crudele uomo e alla donna avevan grandissima compassione. (Boccaccio,

Branca 948)

[His subjects, thinking he had caused the children to be murdered, roundly condemned him

and judged him a cruel tyrant, whilst his wife became the object of their deepest

compassion.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 789)

He also distorts his people’s desire for an heir by “representing the births first of a daughter and then of a son as negative events due to [Griselda’s] lack of noble pedigree” (Barolini 39). Similarly,

“the birth of a male heir—the event most desired by his men—is precisely the reason that he will now have to divorce Griselda and take another wife” (Barolini 39). Despite the love the people feel for Griselda and their disagreement with the way Gualtieri treats her, when the Marquis’s new false bride arrives, “ciascun diceva che Gualtieri aveva fatto buon cambio” [everyone said that

Gualtieri had made a good exchange] (Boccaccio, Branca 952, McWilliam 793). The implication is that the younger, beautiful, and noble-born bride is more likely than Griselda to provide the

Marquis with heirs. Not only has Gualtieri been able to mistreat Griselda with the only consequence being incurring the ill will of his subjects, when he sends her away and pretends to take a new wife, his people are happy with his decision. In this way, he fulfills “his goal…to feel free of the noxious constraint that forced him to marry against his will in the first place” and

“show[s] himself and everyone else that he and none but he is master of his life and destiny”

(Barolini 40). Espinosa 48

The greatest strength of Barolini’s reading of X.10 is that it accounts for Gualtieri’s behavior toward Griselda. As I have already pointed out, Dioneo describes Gualtieri’s decision to subject Griselda to various trials as “un nuovo pensier nell'animo... di volere... provare la pazienza di lei” [a strange desire to test Griselda’s patience] (Boccaccio, Branca 946, McWilliam 787). The underlying and recurring question throughout most of the tale is why Gualtieri feels the need to not only begin, but to continuously escalate the severity of the tests he imposes on his wife.

Gualtieri begins with a verbal abuse—“la punse con parole, mostrandosi turbato” [at first he lashed her with his tongue, feigning to be angry]—then transitions to making Griselda believe that he has killed their children, and finally, orchestrates a divorce and second marriage, placing Griselda in charge of organizing the wedding feast (Boccaccio, Branca 946, McWilliam 788). Barolini’s claim that Gualtieri’s behavior toward Griselda is a way of asserting, or reasserting, power over his men seems in line with Gualtieri’s own justification of his actions. Gualtieri presents himself as wiser than his subjects and his wife because he designed an elaborate scheme designed to teach them all a lesson. To extend Barolini’s argument, not only has Gualtieri subverted his subjects’ request to marry by refusing their offer of finding him a wife and instead marrying the peasant Griselda, he has transformed his abuse of his wife into a lesson on marriage for all his subjects. As a result, the people of Saluzzo praise Gualteri’s wisdom, though they do not absolve him entirely:

Savissimo reputaron Gualtieri, come che troppo reputassero agre e intollerabili l'esperienze

prese della sua donna. (Boccaccio, Branca 954)

[Gualtieri was acknowledged to be very wise though the trials to which he had subjected

his lady were regarded as harsh and intolerable.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 794)

This qualification to Gualtieri’s vindication recalls those moments earlier in the tale in which

Dioneo calls attention to the cruelty of Gualtieri’s behavior, which I listed in my earlier discussion Espinosa 49 of Allen’s argument. Barolini’s argument cannot exonerate Gualtieri, nor does it account for

Griselda’s unwavering obedience, just as Allen’s claims cannot account for the moments in the tale in which Dioneo supports Gualtieri.

Dioneo’s closing comments for the tale further complicate a straightforward resolution of the tale because, in an interesting literary construction, Dioneo as the narrator disagrees with his own story: his personal opinion of Gualtieri and Griselda is entirely different from the judgment of the people of Saluzzo. As I have already mentioned, Gualtieri’s subjects regard him as wise after reuniting his children with Griselda and reinstating her as his wife. Dioneo, on the other hand, challenges Gualtieri’s merit as a ruler when, immediately after ending his narration, he rhetorically asks,

Che si potrà dir qui? se non che anche nelle povere case piovono dal cielo de' divini spiriti,

come nelle reali di quegli che sarien piú degni di guardar porci che d'avere sopra uomini

signoria. (Boccaccio, Branca 954)

[What more needs to be said, except that celestial spirits may sometimes descend even into

the houses of the poor, whilst there are those in royal palaces who would be better

employed as swineherds than as rulers of men?] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 795)

Additionally, he suggests that Griselda should have taken a lover when Gualteri cast her out. In addition to the significance of this comment to Allen’s claim that the story is an ironic encouragement of women’s sexual freedom, it demonstrates Dioneo’s criticism of Gualtieri and

Griselda. He disagrees with Griselda’s meekness and submissiveness as she bears Gualtieri no ill will when he sends her back to her father’s house. While Dioneo has already made his disapproval of Gualtieri known, he reiterates his objection to Gualtieri’s behavior, suggesting that Griselda should have taken revenge on Gualtieri for banishing her by finding a lover. Unlike the people of Espinosa 50

Saluzzo, who consider Gualtieri a wise ruler and Griselda “sopra tutti savissima” [the wisest of all,] Dioneo disapproves of their conduct, calling into question Gualtieri’s merit as a ruler and

Griselda’s obedience and meekness (Boccaccio, Branca 954, McWilliam 794). The tale, prior to

Dioneo’s closing comments, ends in the typical happily-ever-after of fairy tales: Gualtieri and

Griselda remain happily married, Gualtieri provides for Griselda’s father, and marries his daughter to a wealthy spouse. To what extent this turn of events justifies or atones for Gualtieri’s treatment of Griselda is questionable. Dioneo’s final reflection addresses this question, challenging the seemingly straightforward conclusion of his own story by bringing to the forefront once again the issues of Griselda’s submissiveness and Gualtieri’s cruelty. As Marcus suggests, “what Dioneo has done, then, is to deny closure on several levels, leaving open-ended his tale, the tenth day, and hence the text as a whole” (102).

I have surveyed Allen’s and Barolini’s arguments as case studies to demonstrate that X.10 is a story that resists a straightforward resolution precisely because it is designed to do so. As if

Dioneo’s closing comments were not indication enough that the story is meant to thrive on its inherent multiplicity, Boccaccio’s narrative voice tells us that, once Dioneo finishes his tale, the brigata debates the story:

Le donne, chi d’una parte e chi d’altra tirando, chi biasimando una cosa, un’altra intorno a

essa lodandone, n’avevan favellato. (Boccaccio, Branca 955)

[The ladies, some taking one side and some another, some finding fault with one of [the

story’s] details and some commending another, had talked about it at length] (Boccaccio,

McWilliam 795)

X.10 is the last tale in an ambitious story collection, and what better way to conclude such a literary undertaking than by leaving readers with a provocative and perplexing tale? This point is Espinosa 51 particularly compelling if we consider that the Decameron is a work of fiction designed to incite reflection and discussion on the values of those who read it.

Here I return to my discussion of Landy’s argument about the clarifying ability of fiction.

The Decameron is a work of fiction grounded in the reality of the society in which it was produced.

As we saw earlier, one of the common themes across the various tales is the frequent use of the names of historical figures for characters in the tales. Boccaccio does not use these names haphazardly, but rather, the historical figures share common traits with the characters that bear their names—wealth, social status, or profession. Furthermore, the vast majority of the tales are set in Italy, especially in Florence and its surroundings, and Boccaccio demonstrates an intimate knowledge of the geography of the area in his descriptions. Finally, the fact that the Decameron was written in the vernacular, an experimental tactic at the time of its publication, serves to destigmatize popular literature and utilize a realistic sort of fiction to, echoing Landy’s language,

“spur us to serious reflection on our attitudes” (38). Thus, the Decameron mirrors, and sometimes caricatures, the values, traditions, and rituals of the society it depicts, and, as a seminal work of world literature, those of all its readers. The multiplicity of interpretations in X.10 is essential for the Decameron’s ability to incite reflection both on the tale itself and the work as a whole. It is for this reason that Boccaccio, like Chaucer after him, highlights the complexity of the Griselda story through his narrator’s comments.

Espinosa 52

Chapter 3: Tales, Tellers, and Frames

So far in this study, I have surveyed the changes that Chaucer makes to Petrarch’s Latin version of the Griselda story in “The Clerk’s Tale,” suggesting that Chaucer enhances the story’s emotional complexity by lengthening the characters’ speeches and incorporating narrative comments in the Clerk’s voice. I have also argued that Boccaccio purposely leaves X.10 open- ended to demonstrate that the tale can, and should, be read through multiple, even contradictory, interpretations as part of his broader interest in inciting reflection on social values with the

Decameron as a whole. It remains, then, to survey the similarities between “The Clerk’s Tale” and

X.10, which illustrate broader parallels between the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron. Before proceeding with this comparison, there are two aspects of “The Clerk’s Tale” that need to be discussed; thus, this chapter will proceed in three parts. First, I will examine how the Clerk’s portrayal as a scholar influences the interpretation of his tale and reflects on Chaucer’s strategy as an author in “The Clerk’s Tale.” Next, I will analyze the Envoy in light of the tale that precedes it and the reference to the Wife of Bath. Based on this analysis, I argue that “The Clerk’s Tale” achieves a very similar result to X.10 in its deliberate evasion of a single interpretation. This, and other similarities between “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10, will be the subject of the final section.

Overall, “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 emerge as clear examples of Chaucer’s and Boccaccio’s uses of a vernacular framed story collection to reflect and comment on social values. The

Canterbury Tales and the Decameron thus serve to destigmatize popular literature and to showcase the capacity of fiction for holding up a mirror to society and encouraging discussion of the beliefs, rituals, traditions, and behaviors of their readers.

Espinosa 53

The Clerk As a Teller and Chaucer As an Author in “The Clerk’s Tale”

Pinpointing the end of “The Clerk’s Tale” is difficult because the tale as a section of the

Canterbury Tales extends beyond the end of the narration. When account concerning Walter and

Grisildis ends at line 1138, the tale does not seem to have a straightforward conclusion. The Clerk describes how Grisildis and Walter lived happily for the rest of their lives, their daughter was married “unto a lord, oon of the worthieste / of al Ytaille,” and their son became Marquis after his father and “fortunat was eek in mariage, / Al putte he nat his wyf in greet assay” (l. 1131-2, 1137-

8). But what are we to make of Walter’s behavior toward Grisildis? The questions surrounding their conduct—Walter’s cruelty and Grisildis’s obedience—persist despite the happy reality of the story’s ending. By way of explanation, the Clerk introduces Petrarch’s interpretation of the tale, describing the story as an allegory for how Christians should respond to the trials that God imposes.

This allegorical reading does not entirely account for the inner lives of the characters, though it does rationalize the conclusion of the story. However, “The Clerk’s Tale” as a section of the

Canterbury Tales actually concludes with the puzzling and controversial Envoy. Thus, “The

Clerk’s Tale” in its entirety, as Laura Ashe describes it, leaves “the reader in a state of unhappy— or, as some critics have argued, happy—confusion” (935). In short, Ashe suggests—and I agree— that “The Clerk’s Tale” functions as a lesson or exercise in reading and interpretation. In this section, I will focus primarily on lines 1139-1176, the stanzas beginning after the end of the narration of the story of Walter and Grisildis and before the start of the Envoy, as denoted by the heading “Lenvoy de Chaucer.” These lines of “The Clerk’s Tale” show the Clerk, as a storyteller, interpreting and reinterpreting his own story, thus demonstrating by example the versatility of literature and the ability of his tale to sustain multiple readings. Espinosa 54

To begin, Ashe points out that “the Clerk is presented as the supreme reader, not only as part of his stock persona, both self-adopted and imposed upon him by the pilgrims and the reader, but also in the interpretative trickery with which he follows his tale, offering rapid changes of tone and meaning” (935). The description of the Clerk in both the General Prologue and his own supports Allen’s observation. In the General Prologue, we learn that

For hym was levere have at his beddes heed

Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,

Of Aristotle and his philosophie

Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie. (“General Prologue” l. 293-6)

Later, in “The Clerk’s Prologue,” the Host scolds the Clerk for studying during the pilgrimage, exclaiming “For Goddes sake, as beth of better cheere! / It is no tyme for to studien heere” (“The

Clerk’s Prologue” l. 7-8). The Clerk thus emerges as a figure preoccupied with his studies and devoted to his books, which helps explain why he so often cites Petrarch as his source: the Clerk is well-read and he can demonstrate that fact by telling a story he “Learned at Padowe of a worthy clerk” (l. 27). Furthermore, as Ashe points out, the Clerk’s portrayal as an avid reader aligns with his choice to tell “such an ambiguous and difficult tale” (936). The Griselda story is well-suited to the Clerk because the story defies a simple resolution. Though “Ful many a yeer in heigh prosperitee / Lyven thise two [Walter and Grisildis] in concord and in reste,” readers cannot help but wonder whether this subsequent marital happiness can atone for Walter’s treatment of his wife.

In addition to the story’s inherent difficulties, the Clerk intensifies these complexities through his interjections. “The Clerk’s Tale” then becomes an example of the versatility of literature and the influence that a reader’s interpretation can have on a story. Espinosa 55

Ashe draws attention to the Clerk’s closing comments on his tale as an example of how the

Clerk manipulates his own story to show that “a tale may not stand alone. A tale is opaque and incomplete without its being actively deciphered; that is to say, it must be given meaning by the active participation of its interpreter” (936). While the end of “The Clerk’s Tale” is the most obvious example of this strategy, the Clerk actively participates—to borrow Ashe’s language—in his own tale as he is telling it. The Clerk’s comments function as a verbal annotation of the tale, as they anticipate, or echo, what one would expect readers to feel: confusion and frustration at

Walter’s long-standing torment of Grisildis, and disbelief and suspicion at Grisildis’s unwavering constancy. Though the story ends happily, it remains unclear whether the moral of the story is to emulate Grisildis’s wifely submissiveness or Walter’s behavior as a husband, or, indeed, whether there is a moral at all. The Clerk seems to explain the meaning of the tale by reiterating Petrarch’s allegorical interpretation but then quickly subverts that reading by invoking the Wife of Bath. The tale thus continues to defy a straightforward conclusion.

The Clerk introduces the tale’s Christian allegory by telling his audience “And herkneth what this auctour seith therfoore” (l. 1141). He then explains that

This storie is seyd nat for that wyves sholde

Folwen Grisilde as in humylitee,

For it were inportable, though they wolde,

But for that every wight, in his degree,

Sholde be constant in adversitee

As was Grisilde; therfore Petrak writeth

This storie, which with heigh stile he enditeth. (l. 1142-8) Espinosa 56

The frequent reference to Petrarch as the original author of the Griselda story can be read in two ways. Firstly, the Clerk named Petrarch as his source in his Prologue, calling him “a worthy clerk,” and now recalls his influence at the end of the tale, demonstrating the Clerk’s own admiration of

Petrarch as a fellow man of letters. Alternatively, and more importantly in relation to my current argument, the Clerk clearly attributes the allegorical interpretation of the story to Petrarch, thus distancing himself from this reading. It is Petrarch who intends the story to be read as a behavioral model for Christians. The Clerk, as the devoted student he is, retells Petrarch’s story, moral included, but at the same time clarifies that this allegorical interpretation is not his own. But it is not certain that what follows is the Clerk’s own reading. I am referring here only to lines 1163-76, the two stanzas after the Clerk concludes his discussion of Petrarch’s allegorical reading but prior to the beginning of the Envoy. The Clerk does not explicitly contradict the Christian moral, but his words in lines 1163-9 complicate Petrarch’s interpretation. The Clerk warns “But o word, lordynges, herkneth er I go: / It were ful hard to fynde now-a-dayes / In al a toun Grisildis thre or two” (l. 1163-5). Through a clever metaphor, the Clerk blames women’s moral deficiency for the scarcity of Grisildis in real life:

For if that they were put to swiche assayes,

The gold of hem hath now so badde alayes

With bras, that thogh the coyne be fair at ye,

It wolde rather breste a-two than plye. (l. 1166-9)

It is unclear whether the Clerk is implying that women cannot be obedient wives like Grisildis or that they cannot emulate her patience in the allegorical sense. In either case, the Clerk is criticizing women and scaling back the unambiguous moral that Petrarch establishes, thus leaving open the meaning of his own tale. Espinosa 57

Immediately after expressing this anti-feminist sentiment, the Clerk invokes the Wife of

Bath, dedicating to her a song, which is denoted as the Envoy:

For which heere, for the Wyves love of Bathe—

Whos lyf and al hire secte God mayntene

In heigh maistrie, and ells were it scathe—

I wol with lusty herte, fressh and grene,

Seyn yow a song to glade yow, I wene. (l. 1170-4)

The mention of the Wife of Bath is important for two reasons. Firstly, it sets up the Envoy as a response to the Wife of Bath’s arguments. Additionally, it seems to, once again, change the Clerk’s position on the tale. At first glance, the Clerk appears to support the Wife of Bath: he voices his hopes for women like the Wife of Bath to retain control over their husbands. It is not difficult, however, to discern the irony in the Clerk’s statement. He has just told a story whose central character is an extremely patient wife, unlike the Wife of Bath, who confesses to manipulating, and even striking, her husbands with little, if any, remorse. Thus, the Clerk’s wish regarding the

Wife of Bath and her “secte” is not sincere and, in turn, the song that follows is likely insincere as well.

At line 1176, just before the Envoy begins, the question of the meaning of “The Clerk’s

Tale” remains unresolved. The Clerk tells us twice that the story is not a model for women to follow, first because “it were inportable, though they wolde,” and, later—and far less kindly— because women are essentially morally debased (l. 1144). If the latter is the case, then what are readers, particularly female readers, to make of the allegorical interpretation of the tale? In the previous chapter, I referenced Millicent Marcus’s argument that Decameron X.10 can “be read as the most extreme argument for the need to entertain several, possibly contradictory, perspectives Espinosa 58 at once” and I now suggest that this sentiment is also applicable to “The Clerk’s Tale” (105). To return to Ashe’s argument, I want to draw attention to her description of “The Clerk’s Tale” as

“the supreme demonstration of the moral power and importance of interpretation itself” (944). The

Clerk refuses to offer a straightforward reading of the tale, or at least, does not allow such a reading to rest. He echoes Petrarch’s allegorical interpretation, only to warn his audience that real-life

Grisildis are difficult to find. As a clerk—and I use a lowercase c to denote the character’s position—he is understandably interested in complex literature. Chaucer the Pilgrim in the General

Prologue notes the Clerk’s admiration for Aristotle; thus, we can sympathize with the Clerk’s attraction to a story as ambiguous and nuanced as that of Griselda. Add to this consideration the fact that the Clerk learns the story from Petrarch, and the result is a tale perfectly suited, at least on the literary or academic level, to a student as devoted as the Clerk. But how does the tale’s ability to withstand multiple interpretations at once reflect on Chaucer as the author? To answer that question, I return to the discussion of translatio that I began in the Introduction.

In a medieval context, translatio refers to the act of reinterpreting a work, whether in a new language and/or in a new context. As Douglas Kelly defines it, “translatio is a term ranging in meaning from translation through adaptation to metaphorical transfer and allegory” (55). “The

Clerk’s Tale” is a supreme example of translatio at work. In the most narrow sense of the word— and the one we typically use today—“The Clerk’s Tale” is a rewriting in Middle English of

Petrarch’s Latin version of the Griselda story. Beyond that, Chaucer transforms the prose of his model into verse and expands the story with longer speeches and the Clerk’s interjections. In doing so, Chaucer exercises his authorial agency in reworking a text that is not originally his own—it is not Petrarch’s original either. This agency is typical of medieval translators because they have “the power to give new life to old texts (by rendering them legible to new kinds of readers) and, still Espinosa 59 more pointedly, to reconstitute texts by transplanting them into the soil of a new culture”

(Wisnovsky et al., 14). Chaucer achieves both of these capabilities with “The Clerk’s Tale,” which is “the first English rendering of the Griselda story,” making it accessible to readers of Middle

English (Farrell and Goodwin, 101).

Chaucer’s transformation of the Griselda story goes beyond the linguistic translation, shift from prose to verse, and enhanced emotional complexity of his version. As Rita Copeland claims,

“translation is always, in one way or another, an act of appropriation” (186). Chaucer does not translate Petrarch’s version of the Griselda story in an isolated context; instead, he inserts it into a larger work built on contemporary social stereotypes. The estates satire frame of the Canterbury

Tales influences the reading of “The Clerk’s Tale” because the figure of the Clerk as a storyteller is an important consideration when analyzing the tale. His characterization as a reader and an academic suggests that his tale is an exercise in interpretation. After finishing his narration, the

Clerk begins to play with various readings of the story he has just told, culminating in the ironic and complex Envoy.

Lenvoy de Chaucer and “The Clerk’s Tale” Within the Canterbury Tales

The Envoy of “The Clerk’s Tale” is perhaps the most challenging part of the entire piece, not only because of the difficulty in pinpointing its meaning in relation to what has preceded it, but because the denotation of an Envoy does not appear in all manuscripts, thus making it uncertain whether the Envoy should be considered a separate section within the Clerk’s performance.

Thomas Farrell catalogues the appearance and variance in nomenclature of the Envoy in manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, concluding that “about two-thirds of all manuscripts give the

‘Envoy’ a distinctive heading, and almost half attribute it to Chaucer” (“Envoy” 331). Based on this evidence, Farrell asserts that the Envoy “is consistently designated as a distinct textual unit, Espinosa 60 as something which is not the same as what went before” and that, in fact, “it is his [Chaucer’s] own work, unlike the ‘tale which that I / Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk’ (E 26-27)” (“Envoy”

331-2). Howell Chickering makes the same claim, specifying that the Envoy “is a composition independent of anything Petrarch ever wrote” (356). I agree with Farrell and Chickering’s argument that the Envoy fundamentally signifies a break from what has preceded it and it is upon this view that I base my analysis. However, I briefly want to point out and defend against a potential criticism of this claim. Chaucer’s translation of Petrarch’s version does not end with the

Envoy, but rather, two stanzas earlier. At line 1162, the Clerk urges his audience “lat us thanne lyve in vertuous suffraunce,” after explaining the allegorical interpretation of the story. He then warns “But o word, lordynges, herkneth I go,” and cautions against attempting to find Grisildis in real life (l. 1163). In this light, the Envoy does not truly signify a difference from what Petrarch wrote because Chaucer has already begun contributing an alternate interpretation two stanzas prior.

That said, Farrell points out that “the verse form changes in the ‘Envoy’ as it does not elsewhere within a pilgrim’s performance (not counting Sir Thopas)…the essential point is to make the distinction, which the shift in verse only confirms” (331-2). Thus, the Envoy, even without the titular distinction, points to a moment of differentiation in “The Clerk’s Tale.”

The Envoy functions in two ways: first, within the frame of the Canterbury Tales, it allows the Clerk to respond to the Wife of Bath, and secondly, it continues the experiment of multiple interpretations begun at the end of the tale. Though the speaker of the Envoy is unequivocally the

Clerk, Chaucer’s authorial voice emerges as the Clerk subverts various interpretations of his tale and prevents any particular one from prevailing. Espinosa 61

The Envoy as the Clerk’s response to the Wife of Bath is entirely immersed in the world of the pilgrimage. The Wife of Bath does not have a pleasant history with clerks. In her Prologue, she relates a violent episode with her husband Jankin, a clerk:

Al sodeynly thre leves have I plyght

Out of his book, right as he radde, and eke

I with my fest so took hym on the cheke

That in oure fyr he fil backward adoun.

And he up stirte as dooth a wood leoun,

And with his fest he smoot me on the heed

That in the floor I lay as I were deed. (l. 790-6)

The Wife of Bath shows herself in her Prologue to be a formidable woman: outspoken, fearless, and manipulative. For the Clerk, who “ryde as coy and stille as dooth a mayde,” a direct confrontation with the Wife of Bath is unlikely to end in his favor (l. 2). Thus, he cloaks his criticism of the Wife in irony, which she has already demonstrated she cannot grasp. In particular, she rails against anti-feminist authorities in her Prologue but ends up embodying many of the very same qualities these scholars use to criticize women. Her account of her confrontation with her husband Jankyn over his “book of wikked wyves” is a perfect example. (“The Wife of Bath’s

Prologue” l. 685) Among the authors whose writings Jankyn’s book contains, the Wife mentions

“Theofraste” (l. 671) and “Seint Jerome” (l. 674), whose writings infuriate her, though she behaves in the same manner that these antifeminist authors condemn. The anti-matrimonial Golden Book of Theophrastus on Marriage survives only in Jerome’s writings, in which he quotes Theophrastus as writing: “Matrons want many things, costly dresses, gold, jewels, great outlay, maid-servants, all kinds of furniture, litters and gilded coaches. Then come curtain-lectures the livelong night: she Espinosa 62 complains that one lady goes out better dressed than she” (Benson, “St. Jerome”). The Wife, earlier in her Prologue, describes how she manipulated her husbands by comparing herself to her neighbor:

“Sire olde kaynard, is this thyn array?

Why is my neighebores wyf so gay?

She is honoured overal ther she gooth;

I sitte at hoom; I have no thrifty clooth.” (l. 235-8)

The Wife takes pride in her conduct and advises women to emulate her tricks when dealing with their own husbands, but she remains oblivious to the irony that this behavior is exactly the one that

Theophrastus describes when he argues against marriage, though she knows of his writings from

Jankyn’s nightly readings. Because the nuances of her own Prologue escape the Wife, the Clerk can, on the surface of the Envoy, advocate for the same behavior that the she touts in her Prologue when, in reality, he is ridiculing the Wife’s position.

The irony in the Envoy is inescapable. The Clerk begins with the rather shocking and direct assertion, “Grisilde is deed, and eek hire pacience” (l. 1177). The Clerk has already invoked the

Wife of Bath just before the start of the Envoy, whom we know to be the antithesis of Grisildis.

This rhetorical strategy on the part of the Clerk warns against taking his subsequent words too seriously. At the beginning of the Envoy, the Clerk reminds us that Grisildis is irrelevant because she as well as her patience are dead “And bothe atones buryed in Ytaille” (l. 1178). Thus, the Clerk signals a move away from the ideals of patience and obedience that Grisildis represents. For the next three lines, the Clerk warns husbands against subjecting their wives to the same trials that

Grisildis was forced to endure: “For which I crie in open audience / No wedded man so hardy be t’assaille / His wyves pacience in trust to fynde” (l. 1179-81). These lines suggest a condemnation Espinosa 63 of husbands like Walter, as the Clerk seems to defend wives against the kind of treatment that

Grisildis suffered. However, the last line is incomplete in the quote above—it does not specify what husbands may hope to find by testing the patience of their wives. The stanza ends with the line: “Grisildis, for in certein he shal faille” (l. 1182). This last verse completes the statement begun in the previous line, stating that husbands should not test their wives’ patience in hopes of eliciting a reaction like that of Grisildis. The end of the verse, and with it the stanza, rationalizes this warning as a futile endeavor on the part of husbands, rather than a cruel treatment. The caesura heightens the subversion of what the Clerk appeared to have been suggesting. There is a slim possibility of reading this verse as suggesting that the expectation that women exhibit such patience and obedience as Grisildis does is an unrealistic one. However, that possibility is quickly undermined by the remainder of the Envoy. In lines 1183-1212, the Clerk passionately, even extravagantly, advises women to “Lat noon humylitee youre tonge naille” and “sharply taak on yow the governaille” (l. 1184, 1192). He encourages women’s “crabbed eloquence” and recommends “In jalousie I rede eek thou hym bynde” (l. 1205). Though he seems to call for women’s empowerment, the Clerk is actually echoing antifeminist stereotypes, which undermines what initially seems to be a defense of women.

The height of the Clerk’s irony in the Envoy is his call for women to “Ne lat no clerk have cause or diligence / To write of yow a storie of swich mervaille / As of Grisildis pacient and kynde”

(l. 1185-7). Here he is undermining his own tale and its validity, speaking out against those scholars like himself who may write stories about women like Grisildis. In the Envoy, the Clerk plays on the possibility of reading Grisildis as a model of wifely behavior. On the literal level, he counsels women to act entirely unlike Grisildis, espousing instead the kind of behavior that the

Wife of Bath promotes in her Prologue. This apparent agreement with the Wife of Bath is actually Espinosa 64 an ironic critique of her claims, thus, the Clerk effectively hides his antifeminist comments in what, on the surface, seems to be an endorsement of the Wife of Bath’s argument.

In using this rhetorical strategy throughout the Envoy, the Clerk resembles Grisildis, who, the more she presents herself as obedient to Walter, so all the more does she subtly point out his cruelty. In Chapter 1, I argued that Grisildis’s responses to Walter are, at first glance, entirely submissive and self-deprecating. A closer reading reveals, however, that Grisildis subtly calls attention to Walter’s cruelty as she affirms her own lowliness and accepts his decisions, regardless of the pain they ostensibly inflict. Grisildis never confronts or criticizes Walter for his actions; instead, as she proclaims that her inferiority justifies Walter’s behavior, she summarizes her sufferings, thus highlighting the cruel and capricious nature of his tests. The Clerk achieves a similar effect in the Envoy, never directly denouncing the Wife of Bath, but rather, cloaking his criticism with an ironic endorsement of the behavior she championed in her Prologue. In this way, the Clerk achieves a dual purpose in the Envoy, proposing a complete reversal of Grisildis as the moral of the tale at the same time that his ironic tone undermines the validity of the Wife of Bath’s advice.

The tone and message of the Envoy collide with the Clerk’s reiteration of Petrarch’s allegorical interpretation. The only thing they have in common is that the figure of Grisildis is not meant to be taken literally. Yet, at the end of the Envoy, the Host interjects, praising the tale: “Oure

Hooste seyde, and swoor, ‘By Goddes bones, / Me were levere than a barel ale / My wyf at hoom had herd this legende ones!” (l. 1212b-d) The Host’s comment shows that he has misunderstood everything the Clerk has said. He ignores the allegorical interpretation that Grisildis is a model for

Christians and the Envoy’s call for women to subvert all the values that Grisildis exemplifies, viewing Grisildis instead as a literal model for wifely behavior. The Host’s interjection is a Espinosa 65 moment of comic relief, in which the Host shows himself to be unaware of the literary nuances of the entirety of the Clerk’s tale, particularly the closing section. His comments constitute a private joke between the Clerk, who has juggled various conflicting interpretations of his tale, and readers, who can appreciate his literary skill and comprehend the Host’s narrow-mindedness. Additionally, the Host’s interjection demonstrates yet another possible interpretation of “The Clerk’s Tale,” though one that Chaucer portrays as misguided, painting the Host as dim-witted and unaware.

Chaucer’s authorial voice is particularly present at the end of “The Clerk’s Tale,” more so than at other points in the Canterbury Tales. The end of “The Clerk’s Tale,” as I have suggested, is grounded in the world of the frame narrative, but on a larger scale, it cements Chaucer’s exploration of multiple interpretations. Given the Clerk’s portrayal as a reader and scholar, and his emphasis on Petrarch as his source, the allegorical interpretation seems to be the most appropriate reading of the tale. Returning to my discussion of translatio, Chaucer could have ended “The

Clerk’s Tale” with the Clerk’s discussion of the Christian allegory and remained faithful to his source, both on the level of the Canterbury Tales as the Clerk explains in his Prologue that he will tell a story he learned from Petrarch and on the authorial level as Chaucer translates Petrarch’s

Latin version of the Griselda story. Had Chaucer ended “The Clerk’s Tale” at line 1162, portraying it as an allegory of how Christians should respond to God-sent trials, he, through the Clerk, would have followed his source faithfully, having changed only those elements of the narrative that I discussed in Chapter 1. However, this seems too narrow a scope of translatio, which encompasses reinterpretation, allowing translators to use their source material as a springboard for their own adaptation of the piece, rather than a model to copy. This broader translation is precisely what

Chaucer does as he subverts the allegory that Petrarch establishes with the prelude to the Envoy and the Envoy itself, urging women to eschew all that Grisildis represents and subscribe to the Espinosa 66

Wife of Bath’s arguments. At the end of the Clerk’s performance, Chaucer introduces yet another interpretation of “The Clerk’s Tale” through the Host’s interjection. The tale ends with the Host’s comment and there is no further discussion of the Griselda story in “The Merchant’s Prologue” which follows “The Clerk’s Tale.” Thus, no particular interpretation out of the three that Chaucer presents seems to prevail. This interpretative playfulness is entirely Chaucer’s creation, allowing his own version of the Griselda story to register in a much different manner than that of his source.

The overall effect of “The Clerk’s Tale” is one of confusion and ambiguity because the tale raises more questions than it resolves. This literary complexity is appropriate to a devoted scholar like the Clerk. Chaucer, for his part, despite following faithfully Petrarch’s language in the narrative aspect of “The Clerk’s Tale,” renders the story in a manner more similar to Boccaccio. Unlike

Petrarch, who seeks to resolve the story through allegory, Chaucer, like Boccaccio before him, revels in the nuances and complexities of the Griselda story.

“The Clerk’s Tale” and Decameron X.10

The rendition of the Griselda story in a way that emphasizes and prioritizes literary multiplicity is not the only commonality between “The Clerk’s Tale” and Decameron X.10.

Boccaccio and Chaucer exhibit similar literary sensitivities and rhetorical strategies in their renditions of the Griselda story. In this final section, I will survey moments in “The Clerk’s Tale” in which Chaucer departs from Petrarch and echoes (intentionally or not) Boccaccio’s own version of the Griselda story.

Chaucer and Boccaccio incorporate comments from their narrators in the midst of their stories. This rhetorical strategy is unique to Chaucer and Boccaccio—Petrarch’s narrative voice does not intervene in his version of the Griselda story. Both Dioneo and the Clerk intersperse brief asides in which they reflect on the characters and action in their tales. Though the tone of their Espinosa 67 respective comments is starkly different, their observations achieve a similar effect, as they draw attention to the story’s complexities. The Clerk is formal and dramatic, while Dioneo is pithy and flippant, but, through their comments, they both highlight Griselda’s obedience and submissiveness and Walter’s capriciousness and cruelty.

The most striking similarity in these narrative interjections is the end of Boccaccio’s and

Chaucer’s versions of the Griselda story. Dioneo’s closing comments and the Envoy of “The

Clerk’s Tale” share a disregard for the model of patience that Griselda establishes in the story. The behavior that Dioneo encourages in his concluding reflection, namely that Griselda should have taken a lover when Gualtieri cast her out, is in line with how the Clerk, in the Envoy, suggests that wives should act. A wife who follows the Clerk’s advice to “Beth nat bidaffed for youre innocence,

/ But sharply taak on yow the governaille” would likely not remain loyal to a husband who cast her out in her shift (l. 1191-2). Indeed, such a wife would hardly stand for the kind of treatment that Griselda suffers at Walter’s hands. Dioneo’s conclusion and the Envoy share an ironic tone that undermines the patience and obedience that Griselda exhibits in the story.

The Clerk’s and Dioneo’s influence in their tales extends beyond their interjections. As tellers in a framed story collection, they have distinct characterizations which relate to the other characters and the larger frame narrative. Thus, any analysis of “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 must take into account each tale’s relation to its frame narrative. The use of a frame narrative in the

Canterbury Tales and the Decameron is a notable similarity between both works in itself. Helen

Cooper surveys frame narratives in medieval literature that may have influenced the Canterbury

Tales or, at least, resemble the narrative organization of Chaucer’s work. She concludes that “very few works offer any detailed resemblance; and of those that do, the Decameron is by far the closest” (8). Cooper notes a number of similarities in both frame narratives, beginning with her Espinosa 68 suggestion that the Decameron “is the only story-collection prior to the Canterbury Tales where the stories are told by a series of narrators who agree to tell tales to each other as a pastime, and where these stories…are the raison d’etre of the work” (9). She also points out that five of the tales in the Canterbury Tales have analogues in the Decameron: “The Reeve’s Tale,” “The Clerk’s

Tale,” “The Merchant’s Tale,” “The Franklin’s Tale,” and “The Shipman’s Tale” (9). Additionally, both works deal with a variety of genres and “to counter the risks created by this diversity of the collections flying apart, both Boccaccio and Chaucer develop connections of theme and motif between tales” (12). Finally, Cooper observes that “in both works, the author remains as a first- person presence alongside the storytellers” (10).

Compared to the internal context of the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron, Petrarch’s version of the Griselda story exists in a vacuum. The context for Petrarch’s Latin Griselda story is the letter to Boccaccio in which he comments on the Decameron. There is no character-narrator like the Clerk or Dioneo and there is no fictional purpose to the story. Petrarch translates the story because he finds it fascinating and suggests, not very subtly, that such an engaging story should be recorded in Latin, not in the vernacular. Conversely, the frame narratives in the Canterbury

Tales and the Decameron, with fictional character-narrators, are inextricably tied to the meaning of the Griselda story. As we have seen, Dioneo’s and the Clerk’s portrayals influence the reading of their tales, and the same is true of the larger context of the brigata and the pilgrimage. Turning first to the Decameron, the Griselda story’s position as the last tale of the entire work points to its significance. Petrarch recognizes the importance of the story’s placement in his letter to Boccaccio:

Sermonis ignaros tam dulcis historia delectaret, cum et michi semper ante multos annos

audita placuisset, et tibi usque adeo placuisse perpenderem ut vulgari eam stilo tuo Espinosa 69

censueris non indignam et fine operis, ubi Rethorum disciplina validiora quelibet collocari

iubet.

[After all, it [X.10] had consistently pleased me for many years after I first heard it and you

liked it, I felt, well enough to give it the final position in your Italian book, where the art

of rhetoric teaches us to place whatever is more important.] (“Sources and Analogues” 110-

1)

A story like X.10 that is designed to be ambiguous and to invite reflection is an appropriate ending for a work as ambitious and comprehensive as the Decameron. Boccaccio’s stated purpose is:

Adunque, acciò che in parte per me s’amendi il pecato della fortuna, la quale dove meno

era di forza, si come noi nelle dilicate donne veggiamo, quivi più avara fu di sostegno, in

soccorso e rifugio di quelle che amano, per ciò che all'altre è assai l'ago e 'l fuso e l'arcolaio.

(Boccaccio, Branca 5)

[So in order that I may to some extent repair the omissions of Fortune, which (as we may

see in the case of the more delicate sex) was a always more sparing of support wherever

natural strength was more deficient, I intend to provide succour and diversion for the ladies,

but only for those who are in love, since the others can make do with their needles, their

reels and their spindles.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 3)

It is not clear whether this dedication is sincere—the ironic qualification that only ladies in love need his stories because others can divert themselves with domestic tasks undermines the candor of Boccaccio’s dedication. But if he truly does intend his book to divert lovesick ladies, then a story that lends itself easily to debate and discussion will keep the ladies engaged beyond its end and the end of the Decameron. There is a larger issue, however, at stake here and that is

Boccaccio’s experiment with the Decameron as a whole. His choice to write in the vernacular is Espinosa 70 indication of the innovative nature of the Decameron. In the Introduction to the Fourth Day,

Boccaccio acknowledges this strategy, in a show of false modesty, refers to his work as:

Novellette riguarda, le quali non solamente in fiorentin volgare e in prosa scritte per me

sono e senza titolo, ma ancora in istilo umilissimo e rimesso quanto il piú si possono.

(Boccaccio, Branca 345).

[These little stories of mine, which bear no title and which I have written, not only in the

Florentine vernacular and in prose, but in the most homely and unassuming style it is

possible to imagine.] (Boccaccio, McWilliam 284)

He spends much of this Introduction defending the Decameron from potential criticism, a strategy he resumes in the Author’s Epilogue. For a work meant only as a diversion for lovesick ladies,

Boccaccio devotes significant energies to preemptively refuting claims against its literary merits.

As we saw Chapter 2, the Decameron serves to elevate popular fiction, grounded as it is in the reality of fourteenth-century Italy and written in the vernacular. By concluding with the Griselda story, Boccaccio demonstrates that vernacular fiction is capable of sustaining literary discussion and debate.

The Griselda story in the Canterbury Tales does not occupy such a conspicuous position within the frame narrative as X.10, but, nevertheless, the frame of the pilgrimage is essential to the interpretation of “The Clerk’s Tale.” The Clerk tells his tale because he is participating in the storytelling competition of the pilgrimage. In order to win the contest, he must tell a tale “of best sentence and moost solaas” (“The General Prologue” l. 798). A story as fascinatingly strange and playfully ambiguous as the Griselda story, rendered more so by the Clerk’s closing comments and the Envoy, seems an appropriate entry for the storytelling competition. Furthermore, the Clerk’s portrayal as an academic and the Envoy’s relation to the Wife of Bath’s arguments relate to the Espinosa 71 frame narrative’s function as estates satire. The Clerk’s portrayal as overly studious corresponds to his role as a student “of Oxenford,” which, as we have seen, influences the interpretation of his tale (“The General Prologue” l. 285). His response to the Wife of Bath in the Envoy draws on the stereotypical tensions between clerks and wives. Thus, the frame narrative is significant to “The

Clerk’s Tale” not only because of the context of the storytelling competition, but because the function of the work as estates satire influences the Clerk’s portrayal and his relation, through his tale, to other tellers and their tales.

So far, I have discussed similarities in Chaucer’s and Boccaccio’s treatment of the Griselda story. “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 utilize the narrator’s interjections to draw attention to Walter’s cruelty and Griselda’s submissiveness. Chaucer and Boccaccio leave their stories open-ended because they seek to maintain various, even conflicting, interpretations. More broadly, Chaucer and Boccaccio contextualize “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 within a frame narrative that links the story, not only to its teller, but to the stories that have preceded it and their tellers. Chaucer and

Boccaccio, as well as Petrarch, also share the influence of translatio in their versions of the

Griselda story.

Chaucer demonstrates his authorial agency in rewriting Petrarch’s Latin version of the

Griselda story in Middle English verse, expanding the story to enhance its emotional complexity, and concluding with the Clerk’s comments and Envoy. Through the Clerk’s interpretative playfulness, “The Clerk’s Tale” emerges as an incredibly self-aware and self-reflective work of fiction that recognizes, engages with, and expands on its history of interpretation. Chaucer is not unique in engaging in translatio with regard to the Griselda story because his source did the same in translating and altering Boccaccio’s own version. Petrarch’s rendering of the Griselda story not only translates Boccaccio’s Italian into Latin, it imbues the story with a Christian tone and Espinosa 72 introduces the allegorical interpretation that Chaucer, at least initially, echoes. Even before

Petrarch, Boccaccio records in written form the Griselda story for the first time, adapting it from an oral tradition of folk tales, as critics, including Severs, Bronfman, Farrell, and Kirkpatrick, have suggested. Thus, the Griselda story is inextricably tied to translatio, as it was adapted from one language and culture to another.

Espinosa 73

Conclusion

The similarities between “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 reflect broader parallels in the

Canterbury Tales and the Decameron. It is beyond the scope of this study to determine whether this commonality between the works can serve as proof that the Decameron was in fact a source for the Canterbury Tales. Rather, I have approached my analysis of the Griselda story from a perspective of literary history and intertextuality. To reiterate my definition of “source” and

“analogue,” I use “source” to refer to a text that Chaucer knew and used, while an “analogue” is a text that Chaucer may have known but did not use and that is clearly and mostly similar to

Chaucer’s tale. Decameron X.10 is certainly an analogue of “The Clerk’s Tale,” though it could be a source. Unlike formal source studies, I have not delved into a linguistic comparison of

Chaucer’s and Boccaccio’s versions of the Griselda story. This has allowed me to instead focus on thematic and technical similarities in both X.10 and “The Clerk’s Tale” and the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales. In doing so, I conclude that Chaucer, though he translates quite closely from Petrarch, ends up retelling the Griselda story in a playful and ambiguous Boccaccian manner.

As Severs demonstrated, a comparison of the diction of “The Clerk’s Tale” and Petrarch’s Griselda story reveals the close similarities in word choice, which suggests that Chaucer had a copy of

Petrarch’s version readily accessible as he composed “The Clerk’s Tale.” A closer reading, focusing especially on the thematic and stylistic elements of “The Clerk’s Tale” as I have done, uncovers the similarities in Chaucer’s and Boccaccio’s treatments of the Griselda story. I recognize that this argument is paradoxical, but, as I have demonstrated, Petrarch uses the allegorical interpretation of the Griselda story to resolve the plot and explain Walter’s and Griselda’s actions,

Boccaccio and Chaucer are careful to not favor any particular interpretation of the story. In fact, they introduce various readings and deliberately leave the resolutions of X.10 and “The Clerk’s Espinosa 74

Tale” open-ended. On a broader scale, both Chaucer and Boccaccio use the Griselda story as part of a vernacular framed story collection that is grounded in the reality of their societies and cultures and which, as a result, serves as a mirror for their social values. Thus, both Chaucer and Boccaccio establish the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron as works of fiction that invite reflection and allow readers to articulate their own values, traditions, rituals, and behaviors.

This study can be expanded in two directions. First, critics can build on the literary history approach and compare “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 to other renderings of the Griselda story. The most obvious version is the anonymous French translation of Petrarch’s version, given that, according to Severs, it served as Chaucer’s second source for “The Clerk’s Tale.” Additionally,

Le Ménagier de Paris includes a version of the Griselda story, making this work another viable candidate for such a continuation of the present study.3 Alternatively, scholars can build on the parallels between “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 that I have demonstrated to expand source studies of the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron. Cooper, in surveying the similarities in the use of a frame narrative between the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron, concludes that because the

Decameron clearly bears the closest resemblance to the Canterbury Tales, “deliberate imitation, not coincidence, becomes the only plausible explanation” for their similarity (8). Referring specifically to “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10, John Finlayson argues that “since it is clear that

Chaucer had access to Petrarch’s Latin, rather than simply a French translation, it is most probable that Chaucer’s Latin text also had this preface [Petrarch’s explanation to Boccaccio of his translation of X.10] and, therefore, that he must have known that Boccaccio had written an earlier version in his Decameron” (258). Finlayson, like Cooper, believes that Chaucer did know the

3 This is by no means a comprehensive list of the various medieval and early modern versions of the Griselda story that exist. Judith Bronfman surveys several medieval and early modern accounts of the story in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: The Griselda Story Received, Rewritten, Illustrated. Espinosa 75

Decameron, but his aim is not to “disestablish Petrarch as principal source, or Chaucer as creative rewriter or re-interpreter of the story, but to give both Petrarch and Boccaccio their proper due in

Chaucer’s reconstruction of the Griselda story” (257). Finlayson’s emphasis on Chaucer’s reworking of the Griselda story points to a promising strategy for studying the relation between the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron.

Severs quite definitively concluded, due to the minute similarities in language he demonstrated in his study, that “Chaucer, while he was composing the Clerkes Tale, had lying before him on his writing-table a manuscript of Petrarch’s Latin Griseldis” (125). An emphasis on such lexical parallels in comparative studies of “The Clerk’s Tale” and Petrarch’s and/or

Boccaccio’s versions, or as Finlayson suggests, “a tendency to oversimplify Boccaccio and

Petrarch to fit a thesis of Chaucerian originality,” have obscured echoes of Boccaccio in “The

Clerk’s Tale”—echoes that I have pointed out—which may suggest Chaucer’s knowledge of the

Decameron. Thus, framing a comparison of “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 in terms of translatio, as I have done, facilitates the analysis of parallels not only between “The Clerk’s Tale” and X.10 in and of themselves, but also broader resemblances between the Canterbury Tales and the

Decameron. It is increasingly likely that Chaucer did know the Decameron, but this study was not designed to answer that question and, therefore, the evidence it presents is not sufficient to argue conclusively for Chaucer’s knowledge of the Decameron, though it can be used to support future studies that seek to make such a determination.

It is clear to me that Chaucer is not merely a translator in the linguistic sense of the word and that recognizing the place of “The Clerk’s Tale” in the literary history of the Griselda story does not diminish his literary achievement. Chaucer’s agency over the Griselda story extends beyond his transformation of Petrarch’s Latin prose into Middle English verse. He imbues the tale Espinosa 76 with new meaning by assigning it to the Clerk and thereby embedding it into the fictional context of the pilgrimage, just as X.10 cannot be entirely dissociated from the frame narrative of the brigata. Analyzing the relation of “The Clerk’s Tale” to its literary antecedents through a lens of translatio engages “The Clerk’s Tale” in dialogue with Petrarch’s Latin translation and X.10, tracing the literary history of the Griselda story through three of the greatest medieval writers.

Despite the intersection of Petrarch in the evolution of the Griselda story from Boccaccio to

Chaucer, Decameron X.10 and “The Clerk’s Tale” display their authors’ similar literary sensitivities, not only in the tales’ roles within each framed story collection, but in their deliberative interpretative multiplicity and the reflection of social values that they spur. This comparative analysis of “The Clerk’s Tale” and Decameron X.10 has demonstrated how Chaucer and

Boccaccio adhere to an open-ended and participatory framework, unlike Petrarch who followed a didactic model of literature in his allegorical rendition of the Griselda story. The Canterbury Tales and the Decameron thus emerge as experimental and revolutionary works that not only draw on the realities of their authors’ contemporary contexts, but that seek to engage with the audiences on whose beliefs, traditions, and rituals they rely.

Espinosa 77

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