Chaucer's Wife of Midas Reconsidered: Oppositions and Poetic Judgment in the 'Wife of Bath's Tale'

Author / Editor
Pelen, Marc M.

Title
Chaucer's Wife of Midas Reconsidered: Oppositions and Poetic Judgment in the 'Wife of Bath's Tale'

Published
Florilegium 13 (1994): 141-60.

Description
The interpolated story of Midas's wife evokes Ovidian concern with poetic judgment and suggests Chaucer's perspective on the differing attitudes of the hag and the knight toward love and marriage. Complex Ovidian echoes imply the failure of Midas's wife to understand the significance of his preference for Pan's music over Apollo's, and, by extension, the Wife's failure to acknowledge a more cosmic view of love and poetry than the purely experiential one she espouses.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.