Espie, Jeff.
In Jamie C. Fumo, ed. Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess": Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 97-117.
Highlights the thematic centrality of memorialization, tombs, and inscription in the Ceyx and Alcyone story from Ovid to Chaucer to Spenser. The intertextual relations among these versions is predicated not on the principle of genealogical succession…
Item not seen; the WorldCat records indicate that this is an interview of Huxley with John Chandos, recorded July 7, 1961, and includes discussion of Chaucer and psychology. First published in 1964.
Hunter, Michael.
The Warden's Meeting: A Tribute to John Sparrow. (Oxford: Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles, 1977), 9-32.
Hunter describes a copy of the 1602 edition of Chaucer in his possession signed "A. Pope." The volume is defective, lacking the first gathering. The signature comes at the beginning of gathering B. There are no marginalia. Presumably this was a…
Hodapp, Marion F.
M. Criado de Val, ed. El Arcipreste de Hita: El Libro, El Autor, La Tierra, La Epoca (Barclona: S.E.R.E.S.A., 1973), pp. 285-308.
Tallies various similarities between Chaucer's works and that of Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, comparing techniques and concerns of Ruiz's "Libro de Buen Amor" with CT, TC, and other Chaucerian works.
Hernández Pérez, M. Beatriz.
Atlantis 24: 117-32, 2002.
Feminist narratological analysis of WBPT reveals that the Wife's arguments, based in traditional misogyny, overwhelm this misogyny through dynamic engagement of it.
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
Journal of Popular Culture 24:2 (1990): 75-80.
Examines the imagery of beautiful feet in Deschamps, Homer, the Old Irish tale of Derdriu, and Nordic myth. Using the motif of Jankin's attractive legs and feet, Taylor draws correspondences between the Wife of Bath's choice of the fifth husband and…
Accepts that the first eighty-eight lines of WBP are a late addition, and argues that they reflect comic awareness of the unorthodox movement, the Brotherhood of the Free Spirit, echoing its valorization of sexual activity and multiple marriages,…
Mruk, Karen.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 244-56.
Mruk mines details and perspectives in the Wife of Bath materials to imagine the Wife as a real patient undergoing therapy.
Andrew, Malcolm.
Archiv fur das studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 224 (1987): 355-57.
The comparison of Alison to a swallow in MilT 3257-58 may refer to the story of Procne. The tale (from Ovid) is mentioned both in Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and in Chaucer's TC; it suggests the very sort of material woe found in MiltT.
Rowland, Beryl.
American Notes and Queries 03 (1964)
Explores anatomical and associative parallels between Alison of MilT and the weasel, an animal to which she is likened via simile (1.3234); maintains that the connections lend symbolic depth to the characterization.
Crane, Susan.
English Language Notes 25:3 (1988): 10-15.
No case can be made that the Wife of Bath murdered her fourth husband. Such claims are made only by readers who invent for her an extratextual history and psychology or who believe that she "merely fulfills antifeminist expectations rather than…
Arboleda Guirao, Immaculada de Jesús, and M. Esther Mediero Durán.
Cartaphilus: Revista de Investigación y Crítica Estética 11 (2013): 8-15.
Spanish version of Arboleda Guirao's essay "Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath's Prologue' in 'The Canterbury Tales.' The Wife's Personality, Language and Life: Revisiting Feminism," published in 2011.
Galled by clerical antifeminism (woman is weak and hence evil), the power-obsessed Alison turns for her tale to courtly romance (woman is weak and hence good). Thus, ultimately she subverts the conventions of estates, gender, and genre, proving…
D. W. Robertson has already demonstrated the relationship between the Samaritan Woman (Matt. 4:4) and the Wife of Bath. But the similarities are even deeper, extending to an ironic typology of the harlot saved, including Mary Magdalene.
In WBP and WBT, Chaucer dramatizes a powerful reorientation of tradition. In the endings of both, Alison images a reconciliation that awards women justification and a degree of self-definition, without injuring men. The comic genre of CT does not…
An extended prose-poem (with portions lineated), presented as a dialogue between "Caroline" and "Alisoun," the latter an adaptation of the Wife of Bath. Transgresses temporal, linguistic, modal, and thematic categories, and includes references to…
WBT supplies the feminine gloss to the masculinist texts underlying WBP. It provides a marriage pedagogy in which the partners discover their own desires by attempting to learn each other's desires.
Houser, Richard McCormick.
Chaucer Review 48.1 (2013): 66-90.
Argues that the Wife of Bath "employs the courtroom pleading techniques of 'excepcion' and 'confession' and 'avoidance' to challenge the misogynist teachings of clerical authority." Demonstrates how Alisoun's discourse in WBP reveals her familiarity…
Allen, Judson Boyce, and Patrick Gallacher.
Chaucer Review 4.2 (1969): 99-105.
Excavates the multi-layered ironies of WBT, focusing on the motifs of transformation and bad judgment and on the Wife of Bath's manipulations of her narrative materials, particularly the Ovidian Midas exemplum.
Knapp, Peggy A.
Philological Quarterly 65 (1986): 387-401.
Discusses four readings of WBP: (1) Alison as a shrewd, aggressive entrepreneur, (2) Alison as a feminist in a society that constantly maligns her, (3) Alison as an archteypical Eve guilty of the sin of pride, and (4) Alison as a sociopath. These…
Storm, Melvin.
Modern Language Quarterly 42 (1981): 219-26.
The deafness of the Wife of Bath is viewed as an iconographic reflection of her unbalanced intellectual and spiritual position. Hearing as she does with only one ear, the Wife's views are skewed to improper attention to the present--to the things of…
Donaldson, Kara Virginia.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 139-53.
Absolon appropriates the language of courtly love, thereby rendering himself deaf to Alisoun's realistic language and setting himself up as a glossator of Alisoun's body/text. When Alisoun disrupts his gloss by exposing "hir hole" (i.e., her…
