Hodges, Laura (F.)
Chaucer Review 27 (1993): 359-76.
Analyses the Wife's Sunday costume and her traveling outfit from realistic and symbolic perspectives. Her dress reveals her economic and social class as well as her "allegoric nature"--fair outside and foul inside.
Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, confesses certain details that parallel incidents in the Miller's story about young Alisoun. If the two Alisouns are one, then Old John is the Reeve, the Wife's fourth husband; and he suffers in embarrassed silence while…
Pearsall, Derek.
Cristina Maria Cervone and D. Vance Smith, eds. Readings in Medieval Textuality: Essays in Honour of A. C. Spearing (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), pp. 3-14.
Examines the lexicographical meaning of the word "experience" to gain an understanding of Chaucer's meaning and intent in WBP.
Bjork, Robert E.
Chaucer Review 53.3 (2018): 336-49.
Surveys Chaucer's uses of terms for private parts, and argues that his use of "bele chos" (beautiful thing) instead of pudendum (shameful thing) suggests his celebration of the Wife's sexuality.
Dor, Juliette.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), 139-55.
The Wife of Bath's "wanderings" reflect the multivalent meanings of the word. She contravenes the codes governing female behavior, including the standards for governing noble women and the values involved in "What the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter."…
Identifies analogues to the Wife of Bath's contrast between wheat and barley breads (WBP 3.143-44), arguing that she has herself baked "Priapic" barley loaves and that the description in its context exemplifies the combination of "exegetical and…
Two Anglo-Latin "celibacy poems" use "quoniam" to mean the same thing that it means in WBP, prompting the question, might a "joke have been circulating among thirteenth and fourteenth century clerics, that every "quare" has its 'quoniam'?"
The Wife's remedies are sometimes equated with cures or seen as a reference to Ovid's "Remedia amoris." The allusions in WBP to erotic magic indicate, however, that they are erotic stimulants.
Levy, Bernard S.
Chaucer Review 4.2 (1969): 106-22.
Argues that the discussion of gentility by the Loathly Lady in WBP effects a change in the knight's moral vision, with no physical change in the Lady. Imagery and allusions to Baptism reinforce the point and run parallel to similar concerns in WBP,…
Contends that the Wife's defense against the charges of adultery (i.e., sex is a lantern that may be shared by many without depriving the owner) is a combination of a simile in the Roman de la Rose and a more exact parallel in Decameron 6.7, where…
Ashcroft, Dame Peggy, reader.
New York: Caedmon, 1961
Dramatic reading of WBPT, in the translation of J. U. Nicholson, directed by Howard Sackler. Liner notes quotes portions of GP description of the Wife in Middle English. Also issued on cassette tape and on CD-ROM.
Hagen, Susan K.
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 105-24.
WBP is Chaucer's attempt to formulate a "gynocentric hermeneutic" that challenges "standard patriarchal hierarchies." Yet, WBT demonstrates the inevitable failure of the attempt since Chaucer was a product of his time, "a fourteenth-century male…
Turner, Marion.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.
Combines personal appreciation and critical analysis of the Wife of Bath as a character; Chaucer's art in creating her and WBPT; and the voluminous historical reception and impact of the Wife from early scribal glosses to international modern…
Hagen, Susan K.
Constance H. Berman, Charles W. Connell, and Judith Rice Rothschild, eds. The Worlds of Medieval Women. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1985), pp. 130-38.
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.
Wimsatt, James I.
Juliette Dor, ed. A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck (Liege: University of Liege, 1992), pp. 275-81.
The Wife of Bath's argument against Jerome's stance on virginity resembles Jerome's argument against Jovinian; Dorigen in FranT contemplates suicide, recommended by Jerome over the loss of chastity. Chaucer's use of Jerome illustrates Bakhtinian…
Wilson, Anna P.
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy & Profession 4 (2023): 9-20.
Describes the theory and practice of a course on "Medieval Fanfiction," focusing on an adaptation of WBPT—"The Seconde Tale of the Wyf of Bath" by Beth H [sic]. Includes a sample syllabus and sample handouts. The course readings include Chaucer's…
Using ironic techniques deplored by Christine, Chaucer is often misunderstood by modern audiences. Rigby contrasts Christine's "comprehensive defence of women" with Chaucer's satire in WBP, where Alisoun is the target.
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…
Shippey, Thomas A.
In Heroes and Legends: The Most Influential Characters of Literature. Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses, 2014. Video recording. Disc 1 of 4, Lecture 5.
Video recording of lecture (ca. 30 min.), with illustrations, accompanied by an edited text of the lecture in the Course Guidebook (pp. 31-36). Comments on details of the Wife's character in GP, WBP as an autobiography, the Wife's challenges to…
Both narrators and tales (WBT, ClT) owe much to the traditional portraits of rhetoric and dialectic (logic, philosophy), e.g., in Martianus Capella and Alan of Lille. The pilgrims are composites not of "estates satire" conventions but of details…
Higl, Andrew.
Nancy A. Barta-Smith and Danette DiMarco, eds. Inhabited by Stories: Critical Essays on Tales Retold (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), pp. 294-313.
Reads various adaptations of WBPT in light of the time in which each of the individual "iterations" of the Wife was produced, from scribal adjustments in manuscripts, to ballad versions, to John Gay's dramatic adaptation and William Blake's…
Close reading of Jerome's "Against Jovinian" indicates that in WBP the Wife of Bath agrees with Jerome, even though she shifts the emphasis from the superiority of virginity to the acceptability of marriage. At Jankyn's death, she becomes, like her…
Fletcher, Clare.
Gregory Hulsman and Caoimhe Whelan, eds. Occupying Space in Medieval and Early Modern Britain and Ireland (New York: Lang, 2016), pp. 3-22.
Revisits the implications of the horse-and rider imagery that underlies the description of the Wife of Bath at GP 1.469, focusing on her riding an "amblere," exploring relations with the thirteenth-century French "Lai du Trot," and suggesting that,…
