The Wife of Bath Versus the Clerk of Oxford: What Their Rivalry Means
- Author / Editor
- Alford, John A.
The Wife of Bath Versus the Clerk of Oxford: What Their Rivalry Means
- Published
- Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 108-32.
- Description
- Both narrators and tales (WBT, ClT) owe much to the traditional portraits of rhetoric and dialectic (logic, philosophy), e.g., in Martianus Capella and Alan of Lille. The pilgrims are composites not of "estates satire" conventions but of details derived from these two branches of learning. Their reconciliation is only apparent: the Wife may feel complimented and mollified, but the Clerk really has the upper hand.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale,
- Clerk and His Tale.