The Wife of Bath's Urinary Imagination

Author / Editor
Normandin, Shawn.

Title
The Wife of Bath's Urinary Imagination

Published
Exemplaria 20 (2008): 244-63.

Description
Normandin argues that a "surplus of urine in the absence of fecal matter affects the tone" of WBP. Chaucer "associates the Wife of Bath with urine because antifeminist traditions often represented females as liquid, dripping creatures and because urine functioned as a deceptive medical signifier"; however, "fecal matter is better suited to aggressive satire" than is urine. Also surveys scatology in Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum,"Chrétien de Troyes's "Cligès," and The Towneley Plays.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale