Browse Items (16471 total)

Making the improbable seem momentarily probable, Chaucer risks offending his audience by telling a bawdy story, but he excuses himself and blames the Miller for any breach of good taste. Chaucer catches the reader off guard with the abrupt…

Tudd, the third shepherd of the Chester play, may be a priest's bastard (son of Tibb); his hauteur recalls the Miller's wife in RvT.

Only one analogue, Jean Bodel's "Gombert et les deus clers," includes after the cradle story a "moralitas" against the danger of harboring strangers (in Bodel, friars). The moral of RvT, spoken by the Cook (CkP 4331), recalls the passage.

MLT reflects the occupation of its teller both in its concern for "legal particularities" and in its vision of the beauty and order of the law, in such terms as "prudence" and forms of "govern." Constance's own name suggests "justitia."

"Thy wo and any wo man may sustene" is always printed thus, perhaps because the Ellesmere MS has a virgule between "wo" and "man." Hengwrt does not include a virgule, and a persuasive case can be made for printing "Thy wo, and any woman may…

The slandered Trotula as Dame Trote, or as a "trot," serves as a "type" of the Wife of Bath, personification of medieval misogyny, both medical and clerical.

The Wife's portrayal of the rape, the judgment, and punishment of the knight reflect wish fulfillment, legal anachronism, and the inversion of the natural order of legitimate authority, though the tale ends in "true freedom and order."

"At hom" referred to "one's native dwelling," while "bord" signified "meals." "Gossib" referred to the baptismal sponsor and suggests that the Wife may well have had children. Jankyn's being "At hom to bord / With my gossib" implies that he lived…

The two tales have a common ancestor, but the very different motives of the Confessor and of the Wife are reflected in the language texture. Gower's style complements his vision of order and harmony; WBT is more vivid, dramatic, and suspensful.

The energy of WBP derives from the Wife's "awareness of the tension between her centrality as speaker, and her experiential understanding of her marginality as female," since she voices her woman's feelings toward an overwhelming male audience with…

From the perspective of feminist criticism Hagen opposes the Kittredge "Marriage Group," insisting that what the Wife implies in "who peyntede the leon" applies to critics' versions as well as to the clerks' versions of the Wife's behavior.

Examines irony of WBP based both on antifeminism and on antimaritalism of medieval European literature and shows that Alison is a comic, dramatic character.

Recognizes the progress from "conflict" to "harmony" of authority and experience seen in both WBP and WBT within the framework of CT.

The astrological passages provide "alternative explanations of the same behavior"--both freedom and determinism--and explain antifeminism partly as male impotence. The Wife as "subject" exists in unresolvable tensions and indeterminancies.

Critical views of the Wife, though based on the same Chaucerian texts, vary widely--roughly between realistic approaches and those that ignore or deny realism.

The Wife wishes to be released from the orthodoxy of marriage and obedience to her husband.

From the viewpoint of a history of social economics, Miyoshi explains why the poet chooses Bath as the Wife's place and shows that it was not unusual to to marry five times.

Explicating WBP 418, Rex rejects Skeats's interpretation ("the common food of rustics") and Hoffman's ("harmony in marriage") and decides, on the basis of Old and Middle French slang meanings attested to in riddles and fabliaux, that the obscene…

Comparing the Wife of Bath's discussion of marriage with Dunbar's women's views, suggests that Alison is more human and lively.

Discusses the legal status of homogenous groups of medieval women--the landed class under common law, free townswomen, peasants under manorial custom, townswomen of lowly estate, and the religious--under headings birth, childhood, girlhood, majority,…

Contains eight articles and a bibliography. In Japanese. For the essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Wife of Bath (Shigeo) under Alternative Title.

Studies the portrait of the Wife in GP and the self-portrait she confesses in WBP and explains difficulties of interpretation.

Considering the life of Margery Kempe, Takamiya tries to confirm the possibility of existence of such a woman as the Wife of Bath. In Japanese.

Discusses the themes of WBP and WBT. The main theme is old age related with marriage. In Japanese.

Rather than the usually accepted "Adversus Jovinianum," Saint Jerome's letter to Pammachius is the probable source of the Wife's reference to barley (WBP 145). At best the result is an ambiguous vindication of--and at worst an attack on--the martial…