The Wife of Bath

Author / Editor
Karras, Ruth Mazo.

Title
The Wife of Bath

Published
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 319-33.

Description
Compares the characterization of the Wife of Bath in GP with that found the WBP, claiming that Chaucer "is satirizing both the extremes of antifeminism and feminine self-authority." Focuses on sociohistorical challenges for medieval women, and maintains that the Wife of Bath remains a "negative example in Chaucer's view of marriage."

Alternative Title
Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales."

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale