Caldwell, Ellen M.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 235-56.
Loathly lady tales "reveal the consequences" for women of "ungendered" transgressive behavior: the lady "enjoys more power" when she performs roles counter to her biological gender, and she loses the power when she subsides into feminine roles. When…
Carrillo Linares, María José.
Brian J. Worsfold, ed. Women Ageing Through Literature and Experience (Lleida and Catalunya, Spain: Department of English and Linguistics, University of Lleida, 2005), pp. 21-30.
Depictions of female and male aging in WBT and MerT reflect the reality that human beings wish to remain desirable "in spite of advanced aging."
Carter, Susan.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 83-99.
Because the loathly lady in WBT is not enchanted but is a shape-shifter under her own power, she likely is not virginal. Carter explores the implications of this likelihood, as well as parallel concerns in WBT and several analogues.
Craun, Edwin D.
Edwin D. Craun, ed. The Hands of the Tongue: Essays on Deviant Speech (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 33-60.
Reads the Wife's comments on her constellation (WBP 3.609-23) in light of late medieval pastoral commentary on astral determinism as an excuse for sin. The Wife mocks male-authored confessional speech but embraces male-authored astrological discourse…
Croft, Steven, ed.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
A school-text Middle English edition of WBPT and the GP description of the Wife, with notes and glosses after the text, along with comments on critical approaches and contexts and on Chaucer's language and pronunciation; pedagogical activities and…
Surveys representations of sexual violence as both gender oppression and means to self-awareness between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in England, discussing WBPT and Mel, among other texts.
Fumo, Jamie C.
Alison Keith and Stephen Rupp, eds. Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007), pp. 129-50.
The Wife of Bath's "manipulations of the Argus and Midas myths" reflect her Ovid-like "delight in sensuality and embeddedness of narrative" and her recognition of the power of story to "control and deceive." The myths help unify WBPT; through them,…
Gaffney, Paul.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 146-62.
As an example of popular folk narrative, "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle" is flexibly open to multiple interpretations. Addressed to an elite audience, Gower's "Tale of Florent" and WBT lay claim to authority and function as exempla.
Hall, Kathryn A.
South Atlantic Review 72.4 (2007): 59-71.
Encourages pairing Margery Kempe and WBT in British literature surveys, noting that Kempe was "a good deal more vulnerable than the fictitious Wife of Bath."
Haruta, Setsuko.
Josef Fürnkäs, Masato Izumi, and Ralf Schnell, eds. Zwischenzeiten--Zwischenwelten: Festschrift für Kozo Hirao. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 259-65.
Introduction to WBT and its primary motifs, focusing on the raped maiden, the loathly lady, and Arthur's queen. Suggests that the Wife of Bath's "feminism is essentially phallocentricism [sic] in reverse."
Surveys "some of the many roles played and influences exerted by women in the practice of medieval pilgrimage," considering literary texts and cultural contexts from the fall of Rome until Margery Kempe and the Paston women in the fifteenth century.…
Masi, Michael.
Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., and Philip Edward Phillips, eds. New Directions in Boethian Studies. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 45. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007, pp. 143-54.
Traces the logic of paradox from its roots in Zeno through Boethius's Consolation to its uses in WBPT. Notes examples from Alain de Lille and Jean de Meun and discusses the Wife of Bath's uses of synthesis beyond contradiction and paradox.
Niebrzydowski, Sue.
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 18-26.
Surveys medieval commentary on women's enjoyment of sex, noting that sexual pleasure distinguishes Alisoun's marriage to Jankyn in WBP--a result of Jankyn's ability to read his wife's body like a text. Niebrzydowski contrasts Alisoun's sexual…
O'Neill, Maria.
Brian J. Worsfold, ed. Women Ageing Through Literature and Experience (Lleida and Catalunya, Spain: Department of English and Linguistics, University of Lleida, 2005), pp. 73-81.
O'Neill surveys Chaucer's attitudes toward age and gender in CT, with particular focus on WBPT. In CT, the "medieval, ageing Englishwoman as a sexual being emerges with . . . dignity and vitality."
Passmore, S. Elizabeth, and Susan Carter, eds.
Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007. xix, 272 pp.
Eleven essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors. Each of the essays touches on WBT and its relationship with Irish and/or English analogues, and seven of them consider WBT at length. The volume includes an index. For the articles…
Passmore, S. Elizabeth.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 3-41.
Female counsel is a consistent theme in Irish and English versions of the loathly lady story, in which women offer advice or prophesy to aristocrats. This theme reinforces connections among the analogous tales, paralleling the visual motif of female…
Peck, Russell A.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 100-145.
Gower's "Tale of Florent" was composed before its English analogues, including WBT, and is here anatomized as a series of folktale motifs. Peck also explores how the narrative is "put in a new dress" and made appropriate to its new functions by…
Pugh, Tison.
Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 32 (2007): 83-101.
Alison constructs Jankyn as a liminal figure combining both courtly and clerical ideals so that she can celebrate "her triumph over a representative figure of both arenas" (95).
Saunders, Corinne [J.]
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 38-52.
Through otherworldly female characters, a number of Middle English romances and their French ancestors "interweave" heterosexual, romantic desire with magic and the supernatural. WBT, however, "subverts" this convention by reproving the violence of…
Wollstadt, Lynn M.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 199-212.
Wollstadt explores similarities between WBT and the ballad "The Knight and the Shepherd's Daughter," considering the rape motif, concern with "authority and victimization," the possibility that the ballad was transmitted by female oral singers, and…
Numerous fourteenth-century documents that address the practice of extortion by institutional "middlemen" point to systemic problems rather than to individual turpitude. FrT reflects this contemporary explanation, albeit without exonerating the…
Finlayson, John.
Studies in Philology 104 (2007): 455-70.
SumT is not a hidden allegory, but a narrative that exploits characteristics of the fabliau to explore larger issues of morality and ethics. By focusing almost solely on the distribution of the "gift," critics have ignored most of the story and…
Pitard, Derrick G.
Richard Newhauser, ed. The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 207-27.
Pitard comments on William of St. Amour's "Tractatus brevis" and assesses SumT as a vernacularized adaptation of it--one in which fraternal pretenses are satirized for their Latinate elitism. The satire occurs because "it is hilarious that the friar…
Johnston, Andrew James.
Lilo Moessner and Christa M. Schmidt, eds. Anglistentag 2004 Aachen (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2005), pp. 19-29.
Highlights political aspects of ClT, interpreting the cruelty Walter inflicts on Griselda as a projection of his inner conflict between a hereditary ruler's "body politic" and his "body natural"--a conflict prompted by the pressure to provide an heir…
