The Devil in Disguise: Perverse Female Origins of the Nation

Author / Editor
Evans, Ruth.

Title
The Devil in Disguise: Perverse Female Origins of the Nation

Published
Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters, eds. Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), pp. 182-95.

Description
Surveys originary myths in which human females have sex with supernatural beings, focusing on versions of the story of Albina and her sisters, who have sex with demons-incubi and give birth to the giants of Albion. Evans reads the Wife of Bath's comments on incubi (WBT 3.873-82) as a displacement of clerical myths.

Alternative Title
Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.