Bloomfield, Morton W.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 70-82.
Generically and rhetorically NPT is a fable devoted to the teaching of wisdom, undercut by its mock quality, by its characterization, by its scholastic reasoning; but finally leading us back, on a higher level, to its original didactic purpose. NPT…
Kellogg, Michael K.
Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2016.
Defends the "depth of thought and the diversity of expression that characterized the Middle Ages" through an examination of "philosophical treatises, memoirs, letters, tales, romances, and epics that drove the medieval search for wisdom." The chapter…
Rowland, Beryl.
Jan Goosens and Timothy Sodmann, eds. Third International Beast Epic, Fable and Fabliau Colloquium, Munster 1979: Proceedings (Koln and Wien: Bohlau, 1981), pp. 340-55.
Surveys several classical, oriental, and exegetical traditions of the symbolic or exemplary value of the cock, variously an emblem of wisdom, pugnacity, or stupidity. Chauntecleer of NPT is unusual in combining many qualities, for later literary…
Minnis, Alastair.
Helen Cooney, ed. Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 99-114.
In the Wife of Bath, Chaucer radically remakes La Vieille from the Roman de la Rose, granting her true wisdom and authority. The Wife of Bath successfully uses Latin tradition and academic techniques in WBP, and WBT reflects the profound wisdom of…
Chaucer uses "the winds of Fortune" as a metaphor to organize the genre and to define the characters. Troilus' perception of Fortune shifts from the divine to Criseyde, assuring his fall. The narrator opposes Pandarus' attitude in accepting the…
Ferris, Sumner.
Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 8 (1987): 33-66.
The diptych (1398-99), an English work that once belonged to Richard II, shows "God, the Blessed Virgin, and Richard's ancestors" conferring upon him "absolute, unlimited sovereignty." As the king's altarpiece, it "proclaimed the religious mystery…
Explores de Worde's multiple uses of the same woodcut (a depiction of an exchange of rings) in various books he produced. Found twice in de Worde's TC, the woodcut may reflect his reception of TC via the summary of it in John Skelton's "Phyllyp…
Breeze, Andrew.
Housman Society Journal 38 (2012): 89-135.
Explores the sources of several details and attitudes in poems by A. E. Housman, including discussion of the impact of KnT and TC on "A Shropshire Lad," particularly their depictions of love sickness ("amor heroes") and the ennobling effects of…
Finnegan, Robert Emmett.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 92 (1991): 457-62.
Textual evidence suggests that the friar may be the father of the dead child--rendering the squire Jankyn (little John, the diminutive of the friar) the projection of the central character's sinfully fathered child.
Verse-drama adaptation/translation of WBPT and Ret in decasyllabic rhyming couplets and north London dialect, with Jamaican patois, and multiple actors. WBP is set in a contemporary London pub; WBT, in eighteenth-century Maroon Town, Jamaica, under…
Malone, Kemp.
Modern Language Review 57 (1962): 481-91.
Examines WBPT for internal contrasts, attributing them to the Wife's comic inability to see the implications of her own tale. WBT is a "tale of wonder" or "folktale" in which the rape is merely a plot device and the education of the knight…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 105-20.
Explains how the Wife of Bath dominates not only her own material in WBPT, but also CT as a whole. Discusses generic expectations for the Wife and her handling of biblical and classical material, to demonstrate that she represents "an irreducibly…
Hanna, Ralph.
Journal of the Early Book Society 23 (2020): 141-73.
Investigates the "material conditions" that underlie the fictional book of "wikked wyves" described in WBP, 669-73, analyzing extant manuscripts that "most closely resemble Jankyn's volume" and have other Chaucerian and Oxonian associations. Explores…
Normandin argues that a "surplus of urine in the absence of fecal matter affects the tone" of WBP. Chaucer "associates the Wife of Bath with urine because antifeminist traditions often represented females as liquid, dripping creatures and because…
Hoffman, Richard L.
English Language Notes 11 (1974): 165-67.
Suggests that a portion of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.23-24) is a source for the Wife of Bath's comments on precedence at the offertory (GP 1.449-522).
Tinkle, Theresa.
George Bornstein and Theresa Tinkle, eds. The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 55-88.
Despite Chaucer's efforts to create a stable "poetic self-fashioning," WBPT takes different forms in its different redactions in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts and in Thynne's 1532 edition.
Park, Yoon-Hee.
Medieval English Studies 7: 125-47), 1999.
WBT is sometimes felt by critics to betray Chaucer's latent feminism by ending harmoniously. With its representation of the triumphant heroine and the defeated rapist, the Tale should instead be read as a subversion of traditional male discourse.
Hoggart, Carol Ann.
Open access Ph.D. dissertation (Curtin University, 2019), available at https://espace.curtin.edu.au/handle/20.500.11937/76105 (accessed November 10, 2021).
A "creative-production" thesis, comprising the first half of a work of historical fiction titled "The Jerusalem Tales," focusing on the Wife of Bath; analysis of the narrative based on Elizabeth Fowler's theory of "social persons"; and analysis of…
MacDermott, Diane Conard, and David MacDermott, illus.
Coghill, Nevill, trans.
n.p.: Pomegranate Press, 1965.
Item not seen. The WorldCat record offers the following notes: "Issued in a case./ Illustrators' notes (2p.) laid in./ Limited ed. of 20. Made entirely by hand, printed on 'Tovil' hand-made paper, and signed by the illustrators."
The Wife's "long-winded autobiography" in WBP--a "wishful, wistful self-serving fantasy" and "long, stupendous performance" that seems to "thrill to the idea" of rape--reflects her personality through its "touchiness and pugnacity," "garrulous…
Study guide to WBPT that includes commentary on their place in the CT, their sources and backgrounds, and medieval and modern ways of assessing the Wife's character. Includes a summary/commentary of the narratives, arranged in segments, followed by…
Steinberg, Aaron.
College English 26.3 (1964): 187-91.
Compares the knight's decision in the marriage bed of WBT to that of the analogous one in the more mythic "Marriage of Sir Gawain," arguing that in the context of Chaucer's relatively realistic Tale, the decision to return the choice to the loathly…
