The Subversive Discourse of the Wife of Bath: Phallocentric Discourse and the Imprisonment of Criticism

Author / Editor
Straus, Barrie Ruth.

Title
The Subversive Discourse of the Wife of Bath: Phallocentric Discourse and the Imprisonment of Criticism

Published
ELH 55 (1988): 527-54.

Description
WBP and WBT appear within frameworks of CT in which masculine values of truth and authority are already evaporating. In phallocentric discourse, women's talk is assumed to be untrue, and male desire is the central secret. Alison reveals throughout not women's secrets but men's.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.