A merveillous desir: Authorship, Ethics, and Knowing Others in the Clerk’s Tale

ABSTRACT This article examines Walter’s uncertainty and suspicion about Griselda’s true feelings as a way of thinking through the relationship between authors and characters in the Clerk’s Tale. Drawing on the tradition of the translated Griselda, it approaches Walter as an author who cultivates his wife as a character in his marriage plot, but then, even after she promises to conform to his thoughts and desires, still finds that he fails to understand her. His confusion is read alongside current conversations about authors who create characters unlike themselves, especially characters that represent those in positions comparatively marginal in terms of social and political authority. The article proposes that the Clerk’s Tale queries the ethics of the author/character relationship when it takes form across other imbalances of power.