Through the Counsel of a Lady: The Irish and English Loathly Lady Tales and the 'Mirrors for Princes' Genre

Author / Editor
Passmore, S. Elizabeth.

Title
Through the Counsel of a Lady: The Irish and English Loathly Lady Tales and the 'Mirrors for Princes' Genre

Published
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 3-41.

Description
Female counsel is a consistent theme in Irish and English versions of the loathly lady story, in which women offer advice or prophesy to aristocrats. This theme reinforces connections among the analogous tales, paralleling the visual motif of female ugliness. WBT counsels true gentility.

Alternative Title
English Loathly Lady Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs.

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