Crocodilian Humor: A Discussion of Chaucer's Wife of Bath
- Author / Editor
- Reid, David S.
Crocodilian Humor: A Discussion of Chaucer's Wife of Bath
- Published
- Chaucer Review 4.2 (1969): 73-89.
- Description
- Associates the Wife of Bath with the antic "rogue figure of wife" from conventional "low comedy" or "pantomime," more lively and vivid than realistic. Derived from the "topsy-turvy" world of conventional comedy, the Wife gains readers' sympathy because they recognize her "stock incongruity." In the "comic displacement" of GP, the "sermon joyeux" of WBP, and the "mock romance" of WBT, exaggeration and distortion create a figure who "receives a comic absolution in her listeners' entertainment."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations