The Clerk as Secular Cleric and Griselda as Ecclesiological Type

Abstract

Abstract:This article proposes an ecclesiological reading of Griselda in order to challenge the entrenched view that The Clerk’s Tale “fails” as allegory or “blocks” exegetical signification. Accounting for the most commonly alleged obstacles to the tale’s allegorical effectiveness, this reading incorporates both Walter’s secularity and Griselda’s needless suffering into a historically situated interpretation of Griselda as the late medieval English Church wedded to a secular power that would radically dominate and divest her in the name of reform. The purpose of this reading is not to restore exegetical coherence, but rather to demonstrate that recognition of medieval exegesis as a versatile and institutionally contextualized genre, and experimentation with literary and feminist biblical-analytical methods, can uproot the assumptions that inhibit productive readings of literary and biblical texts in comparable ways. Far from an exercise in neopatristic exegesis, this reading is specific to the medieval intellectual history of a particular exegetical tradition, to the institutional context of the Clerk as an unprosperous secular cleric, and to the agendas of contemporary literary and feminist biblical hermeneuts who resist domineering exegetical acts.