Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath's Prologue,' Lines 193-828, and Geoffrey of Vinsauf's 'Documentum'

Author / Editor
Duncan, Edgar H.

Title
Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath's Prologue,' Lines 193-828, and Geoffrey of Vinsauf's 'Documentum'

Published
Modern Philology 66 (1969): 199-211.

Description
Shows that in the Wife of Bath's account of her three "goode" husbands Chaucer "adopted a means of amplification which he found described and illustrated in the 'Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi' . . . attributed to Geoffrey of Vinsauf"; also evinces the "probability" that Vinsauf's work provided other details and rhetorical models that helped to shape WBP during Chaucer's ongoing composition process.

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