Browse Items (15542 total)

The Wife of Bath's performance constitutes a bourgeois, female countercommentary by a literate property owner to the dominant male aristocratic and ecclesiastical conceptions of marriage, sex, learning, and economic power in the later Middle Ages.

Explores how female sovereignty in WBPT results in "the subservience of the class function to the bourgeois ethic which the Wife represents," indicating parallels in FranT and Genesis. Alison controls the merchant class in her first three marriages;…

Disagrees with R. L. Chapman's argument (1956) that the Shipman was the original teller of ShT, offering further evidence that Chaucer first assigned the narrative to the Wife of Bath.

Draws upon theories of Aristotle, Bradwardine, Aquinas, and the scholastics on action ("operatio") to explain the complexities of the Wife's character and the nobility of the hag's lecture--through the Wife's competence in "scholastic give-and-take."

Through her use of the Samaritan woman, the Wife argues for the "exegetical reliability" of her own experience. Longsworth explores several biblical references in WBP and their exegetical backgrounds to show how the Wife, even while more…

When describing her fourth husband, the Wife is silent on topics freely discussed with respect to her other husbands (particularly money, age, and temperment); this suggests the equality of the two in these areas. Their marriage fails because the…

Argues that the Wife of Bath is a "psychologically complex character" and that WBPT reveal that she desires, not mastery per se, but "'that thing which she does not have'" (italics in original), signaling a discrepancy between what she "thinks she…

Alisoun has learned through experience that her marital happiness depends upon practical economic control rather than on surrender to the ideals of feminine subservience espoused by authorities. Her tale parodies these authorities in its…

Hansen reaffirms the importance of the Wife of Bath to feminist criticism but also argues that her character is the creation of a male poet: the reader must not readily take the Wife as an authority, "as a female speaker or subject or as a…

Connects the reference to "bacon" in WBP 3.418 with the explicit reference to the "Dunmow" bacon of WBP 3.217-18.

Analyzes the Wife of Bath's sense of guilt for her life of lust and rapaciousness, reading details of WBP as evidence of this guilt and WBT as a reflection of her "thirst for innocence" which has not been satisfied. The characterization is a rich…

Contrasts the Wife of Bath's uses in WBP of the Pauline image of marital debt with commentaries found in St. Jerome and Thomas Aquinas, showing how she uses it to claim male debt only.

Critiques George Lyman Kittredge's notion of a feud between the Wife of Bath and the Clerk as "aesthetically displeasing," and argues instead that their tension is essentially jocular, a result of the Wife's hope that she can entice the Clerk. The…

Focuses on the presentation of polygamy, virginity, and sexuality in WBT, using St. Paul's teachings as a background.

Treats WBPT as an analogue to Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," observing shared "allusions, rhetorical formulas, [and] character presentations" as well as the theme of the "problems of marriage." The two works share "many common…

Suggests that the liturgy for the Lenten holiday of Refreshment Sunday underlies the Wife of Bath's two references to refreshment (WBP 3.37-38 and 3.143-46) and the juxtaposition of the seconmd one with her reference to the parable of the loaves and…

Compares Molly Bloom's concluding monologue with WBP, assessing the two characters' views on sexuality and euphemism and their relations with their husbands.

Discuses Ovid, "Roman de la Rose," and the theme of Midas in WBT. The Wife alters the story of Midas, ironically exposing both her own shortcomings and those of the knight in her tale.

Shows that key passages in the Wife's monologue can be justifiably located in the context of Lollardy, focusing on her use of the word "expres" (WBP 27, 61, 719) and her insistence on the primacy of scriptural authority.

Manuscript evidence suggests Chaucer's developing conception of the Wife in her GP portrait, the shorter prologue found in some MSS, the tale, and references made in ClT, MerT, and Buk. Some passage were added to WBT at a later date.

Discusses the legal status of homogenous groups of medieval women--the landed class under common law, free townswomen, peasants under manorial custom, townswomen of lowly estate, and the religious--under headings birth, childhood, girlhood, majority,…

Introduction to WBT and its primary motifs, focusing on the raped maiden, the loathly lady, and Arthur's queen. Suggests that the Wife of Bath's "feminism is essentially phallocentricism [sic] in reverse."

Argues that Gautier Le Leu's "La Veuve" is a source--perhaps an oral source--of the WBP as a dramatic monologue; considers garrulousness, imagery, details of character and background, and marital violence

In WBP and FranT, the uses of Jerome's antifeminist treatise "Adversus Jovinianum" as source material are ironic. WBP presents a more centrist Augustinian tradition than does her acerbic predecessor, and Dorigen's lament prefigures the gentle…

Considers medieval depictions of old age as part of the tradition of "contemptus mundi," focusing on female old age. Treats Chaucer's Wife of Bath as the most individual and entertaining of the comic randy old women of medieval narrative, here…