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…
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…
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…
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…
Dane, Joseph A.
Modern Language Review 99 (2004): 287-300
During the nineteenth-century construction of the fabliau as a distinct genre, scholars grouped ShT with other "coarse" tales and theorized that Chaucer had reassigned it from the Wife of Bath to the Shipman, assuming that the fabliau form was not…
Robinson, Peter, ed., with contributions from N. F. Blake, Daniel W. Mosser, Stephen Partridge, and Elizabeth Solopova.
Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1996.
Contains original-spelling transcripts of all fifty-four manuscripts and four pre-1500 printed editions of WBP, with digitized images of every page of text contained in these sources (1,200 images in all). The transcripts are linked with two…
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…
Allen, Valerie, and David Kirkham,eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1998.
Middle English text of WBPT and the GP description of the Wife of Bath, with notes, glossary, and discussion questions on facing pages. Includes commentary on Chaucer's life, contemporary social issues (including pilgrimage), and the rest of CT.…
Winny, James, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.
Middle English edition of WBPT, with end-of-text notes and glossary. The Introduction (pp. 1-28) discusses sources, the relation of WBP to WBT, themes, etc., with additional comments on the text and Chaucer's usage. Includes Chaucer's Gent and a…
Winny, James, ed. Rev. ed. Sean Kane and Beverly Winny, eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Middle English edition of WBPT and GP description of the Wife of Bath, with end-of-text notes and glossary. The Introduction (pp. 1-32) discusses sources, the relation of WBP to WBT, themes, etc. Includes Chaucer's Gent and a selection from…
Piehler, Paul.
Hudson, Québec: Golden Clarion Literary Services, 1980.
Item not seen; the WorldCat records indicate that this is a reading by Piehler of WBPT in Middle English and that WBP and WBT were re-issued separately in 1986 and 2010.
Allen, Mark, and John H. Fisher, eds., with the assistance of Joseph Trahern.
Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 2012.
Part 5a includes a new text and set of collations for WBPT, based on the Hengwrt MS, with variants from landmark manuscripts and scholarly editions; also includes a Critical Commentary (pp. 3-148) that surveys critical tradition topically, a Textual…
