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…
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…
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…
Bowden, Betsy.
Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2017.
Analyzes manifestations of the Wife of Bath throughout 1660-1810, in seven chapters on primarily verbal art and seven on primarily visual art. Melds methodologies from the disciplines of literature, art history, musicology, education, folklore, print…
Smith, Warren S.
Chaucer Review 32 (1997): 129-45.
In WBP, the Wife takes not an extremist position on marriage but rather a centralist one, often adhering to the doctrine of Augustine. By burning Jankin's book and by according husbands bliss after she attains "mastery," Alisoun refutes the…
Gedalof, Alan, and Michael Moore.
Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1996.
Gedalof and Moore discuss the Wife of Bath and WBPT in their social and literary contexts, especially as they reflect issues of male-female relations. Illustrations from historical manuscripts and paintings, and from contemporary visual…
Marwitz, Will[ard].
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. 158-75.
Comments on assessments of the Wife of Bath as either a "Scarlet Woman" or a "truly liberated woman," concluding that she is best seen as "complicated." Includes a series of "Student Challenges" as a study guide to WBP.
Hoffman, Richard L.
Notes and Queries 209 (1964): 287-88.
Maintains that the Wife of Bath's knowledge of the "remedies of love" and of the "art" of love's "olde daunce" (GP 1.475-76) refer to, respectively, Ovid's "Remedia Amoris" and "Ars Amatoria," familiar to her, perhaps ("per chaunce") because Jankyn…
Compares carnivalesque elements of WBPT to performance techniques of modern, unruly, "women on top" comediennes such as Roseanne Barr and female impersonators such as Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage).
Stock, Lorraine, and Betty J. Proctor.
Medieval Perspectives 25 (2010): 103-23.
Demonstrates Daniel Defoe's familiarity with CT, and documents the fundamental influence of Chaucer's Wife of Bath on the form and content of "Moll Flanders."
Leicester, H. Marshall,Jr.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 201-210.
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.
