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A collection of eighteen articles on aspects of intertextuality in the tradition of the Griselda story in Europe. Morabito reviews the sources and body of material (essay in It.); Donnchadh o Corrain, "Textuality and Intertextuality: The Early…

Fifteenth-century readers of Chaucer shaped the Chaucerian canon and cult of authorship by appropriating both the language and the rhetorical strategy of ClT, wherein the Clerk simultaneously recognizes the authority of Petrarch and appropriates to…

Although it is common to separate the religious message of ClT from the tale's portrayal of women and marriage, the two are "linked," with the juxtaposition of Griselda and Alison of Bath representing "opposite solutions to the problem of women's…

Rather than belonging to Chaucer, the Envoy belongs entirely and appropriately to the Clerk.

Walter and Griselda are an "Oedipal couple whose sadomasochistic rituals of dominance and submission enact gender roles prescribed by patriarchal social structures which Freud recognized and propogated through his Oedipal models for mental health."

Both ClT and Marie de France's "Fresne" examine the themes of patience and obedience. Although the descriptions of Griselda and Fresne are strikingly similar, the style and perspective of the tales differ. In Chaucer's "lavish and masterful" style,…

Fragment III of CT reflects ironically on a mechanistic view of life, a scientific method that could be applied even to purely logical problems, and the movement away from authoritative (or public) to experimental (or private) solutions.

The "hostes man" who follows the begging friars of SumT can be identified as the servant of their innkeeper, who follows after them to carry their ill-gotten gains.

SumT represents a genre most expressive of medieval popular concerns, the grotesque or carnivalesque. Andreas applies theories of Bakhtin.

In the carter's episode, the ethical center of FrT, balanced curses and blessings invoke medieval images of humanity, "in the middle" between heaven and hell, and so preoccupied with daily life that it forgets spiritual concerns. Carters are so…

Suggests that saints' lives, "in which demons converse with saints," provide a context and structural pattern that informs the dialogue between the Summoner and the devil. The tale inverts the usual threefold pattern of the saint's victory over the…

Traces the history of misogamy: (1) classical antecedents in Imperial Rome, especially misogamy and mirth in Juvenal; (2) ascetic misogamy in the patristic period, particularly in Saint Jerome;

Examines the imagery of beautiful feet in Deschamps, Homer, the Old Irish tale of Derdriu, and Nordic myth. Using the motif of Jankin's attractive legs and feet, Taylor draws correspondences between the Wife of Bath's choice of the fifth husband and…

Alison shares features with that "popular exemplar of medieval comic shrewishness," Noah's wife of the mystery plays, and especially the Uxor Noe of the Towneley cycle: old husbands, outspokenness, direct address to the audience, fondness of…

Reports on research in progress using computer collation for the textual tradition of WBP.

Argues that writers or works or periods can offer alternatives to modern critical theory. O'Brien's view that Chaucer presents union (in particular, love and marriage) as an overarching theme of CT encourages us to see that views other than…

Treats WBP, hermeneutics, and Chaucer and Wycliffism. Investigating whether and why Chaucer might have given Wycliffite traits to the Wife of Bath, Martin argues that he did in order to explore both faults and virtues of literal-minded…

The Wife's astrological sign of Taurus suggests a tendency to prostitution.

Considers WBP as a compilation, "pieced together of verbatim translation" from a fuller text by Jerome. WBP represents "Englished" Latin, cut free from "control and indoctrination" of a closed Latin tradition and thus "seditious and dangerous,"…

The Wife of Bath (the female counterpart of the "senex amans") stands in opposition to the Husband-Merchant in MerT. They are "mercantile figures of similar status and class," the Wife involved in production, the Merchant in export. Each sees sex…

Neither WBT nor "Gawain" presents straightforward satire on late-fourteenth-century English romance. At once ironic and idealistic, the two works provide a human redefinition of the genre as exemplified in contemporary chivalric writing.

Explores ideas of selfhood evident in medieval literature and sixteenth-century printed versions of select romances. Includes discussion of how Chaucer in WBT "utilises the methods and vocabulary at his disposal to generate debate on the 'self'."

Also published in Sheila Delany, Medieval Literary Politics: Shapes of Ideology (University of Manchester Press, 1990), pp. 112-29.

The Wife of Bath is interpreted variously: She is a shrew; she is the voice of feminism; she represents Eve; she stands for joy and vitality. The Wife demands female sovereignty in marriage, but this sovereignty is put into doubt by the end of both…

Chaucer explores the "citation and corruption of media" in MLT by having the lawyer tell a tale of "pseudo-circulation" in which Custance remains constant despite her apparent circulation and use. The tale enacts the Man of Law's anxieties about…