Browse Items (16012 total)

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…

Recent proposals that Alisoun and Jankyn may have murdered her fourth husband are analyzed and rejected. Their quarrel arises not from mutual guilt but from Jankyn's suspicions about Alisoun, and from his association of murder and female lust. Such…

Argues that details and attitudes depicted in WBPT and in the description of the Wife in GP influenced various aspects of Shakespeare's "All's Well that Ends Well."

In light of Reason's discussion of direct language in "Roman de la Rose," the Wife of Bath's euphemisms and circumlocution characterize her as unreasonable and a misuser of language.

Compares the characterization of the Wife of Bath in GP with that found the WBP, claiming that Chaucer "is satirizing both the extremes of antifeminism and feminine self-authority." Focuses on sociohistorical challenges for medieval women, and…

Fictional adaptation of WBP set in the frame of the CT.

Studies the portrait of the Wife in GP and the self-portrait she confesses in WBP and explains difficulties of interpretation.

Contains eight articles and a bibliography. In Japanese. For the essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Wife of Bath (Shigeo) under Alternative Title.

Lyric poem in first-person voice, with recurrent allusions to the WBP and GP description of the Wife of Bath, including gapped teeth, five husbands, and a physical battle with husband number four.