Meaning as Transformation: The Wife of Bath's Tale.

Description: Reads WBT psychoanalytically, exploring its "sexual taboos," its phallic and vaginal significations, and the sexual fantasy that is "at the heart of the story." The tension between authority and submission in the Tale conveys meaning equally well for medieval and modern audiences because it is simultaneously mythic and psychoanalytic and because its theme of transformation engages the relation between the conscious and unconscious.