Sacred and Secular Exegesis in the Wyf of Bath's Tale

Author / Editor
Fleming, John V.

Title
Sacred and Secular Exegesis in the Wyf of Bath's Tale

Published
Thomas Hahn and Alan Lupack, eds. Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 73-90.

Description
The sources for the Wife of Bath's performance as exegete--and the authorities she cites in her "Tale" (in particular Ovid,for the Midas story)--make clear that the underlying theme and conflict in WBPT concern "surface and substance, letter and spirit." Other interpretive starting points, such as realism or misogyny, operate as subsets of this dynamic.

Alternative Title
Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.