'Vanysshed Was This Daunce, He Nyste Where': Alisoun's Absence in 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale'

Author / Editor
Lindley, Arthur.

Title
'Vanysshed Was This Daunce, He Nyste Where': Alisoun's Absence in 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale'

Published
ELH 59 (1992): 1-21.

Description
Alisoun presents a puzzle without a key because she is unreal,created out of an imaginary book derived from real male clerical authorities but eventually destroyed. Alisoun and her self-projection--the hag-bride--represent not women who can answer questions but impalpable projections of masculine anxieties, essentially evil nonbeings.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.