Notes on Experience, Authority, and Desire in the Wife of Bath's Recital

Author / Editor
Delany, Sheila.

Title
Notes on Experience, Authority, and Desire in the Wife of Bath's Recital

Published
Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 15 (1987): 27-35.

Description
By omitting details about the Wife's experiences of work and travel, Chaucer deliberately reduces her complexity. His failure to express her social or psychological reality results from his own experience and desires mediated by gender, social position, religious tendency, and choice of authorities. The tale itself may be the fantasy of the Wife, or of the courtier poet personally familiar with rape and betrayal.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.