Povre Griselda and the All-Consuming Archewyves

Abstract

Povre Griselda and the All-Consuming Archewyves Andrea Denny-Brown University of California–Riverside The late medieval fascination with naked Griselda and her changes of clothing is at its heart, according to modern critical discussion , a fascination with translation. Most influential in this respect have been the studies of Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, which have deepened our comprehension of Griselda’s sartorial symbolism through an understanding of her figure in relation to masculine hermeneutics, her role as a text undressed and dressed, or read and ‘‘translated’’ by educated men, often for sociopolitical purposes.1 As these and other studies have shown, each new translation of the Griselda tale—from Boccaccio’s original through Petrarch, Philippe de Mézières and the anonymous French translations, Christine de Pizan, Chaucer, and forward to the early modern renditions—revised not only the interpretative adornment of the challenging tale but also the descriptions My heartfelt thanks to Frank Grady and the anonymous readers of SAC for their helpful comments on this essay. 1 Carolyn Dinshaw’s influential chapter ‘‘Griselda Translated’’ examines the tale through Jerome’s image of the allegorical text as veiled captive women, focusing primarily on the double valence of the Clerk’s translatio to both eliminate and restore the feminine. Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 32–55. David Wallace, in his chapter ‘‘‘Whan She Translated Was’: Humanism , Tyranny, and the Petrarchan Academy,’’ explores the tale from a similar perspective of masculine rhetorical control over the female body, but his greater objective concerns the uses of this rhetoric to further the interests of tyrannical ‘‘Lumbardye.’’ Wallace, Chaucerian Polity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 261–98. Although both of these studies, and especially Dinshaw’s, address The Clerk’s Tale’s emphasis on clothing, their interest lies primarily in the symbolism of the clothing as veiled allegorical woman (esp. Dinshaw, 144–48) and/or as masculine adornment and insight (esp. Wallace, pp. 284–86). PAGE 77 77 ................. 16094$ $CH3 11-01-10 14:03:28 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER of Griselda’s clothes themselves.2 The readings of Griselda’s sartorial ‘‘translations’’ have varied over the years: while earlier studies tended to concentrate on Griselda’s allegorical and spiritual translations,3 more recent readings have focused on ritualized investitures, the social performances involved in marriage, divorce, and (in the early modern period ) guild membership.4 Yet, as I will argue in this essay, Griselda is not merely translated; rather, as Chaucer’s text states, she is translated ‘‘in swich richesse’’ (Clerk’s Tale, 385).5 This often-overlooked adverbial 2 Dinshaw’s statement that ‘‘the Clerk is made to fashion his narrative around Griselda ’s changes of clothes’’ (p. 144), for example, could very easy apply to all the poets who translate Griselda’s tale. See J. Burke Severs, The Literary Relationships of Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1972), pp. 215–50; Roberta L. Kreuger, ‘‘Uncovering Griselda: Christine de Pizan, ‘une seule chemise,’ and the Clerical Tradition : Boccaccio, Petrarch, Philippe de Mézières, and the Ménagier de Paris,’’ in Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Cloth Work, and Other Cultural Imaginings, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 71–88. Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 189–90. On the specific theme of interpretation, see also Kevin Brownlee, ‘‘Commentary and the Rhetoric of Exemplarity: Griseldis in Petrarch, Philippe de Mézières, and the Estoire,’’ SAQ 91:4 (1992): 865–90; and Emma Campbell, ‘‘Sexual Poetics and the Politics of Translation in the Tale of Griselda,’’ CL 55:3 (2003): 191–216. 3 See Dudley David Griffith, The Origin of the Griselda Story (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1931), esp. pp. 92–93; Elizabeth Salter, Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale and the Clerk’s Tale (London: Edward Arnold, 1962), pp. 47–48; John P. McCall, ‘‘The Clerk’s Tale and the Theme of Obedience,’’ MLQ 27 (1966): 260–69; and Dolores Warwick Frese, ‘‘Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: The Monsters and the Critics Reconsidered,’’ ChauR 8 (1973): 133–46...