"The Wife of Bath's Tale" and Mediaeval Exempla.
- Author / Editor
- Miller, Robert P.
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" and Mediaeval Exempla.
- Published
- ELH 32 (1965): 442-56.
- Description
- Describes the "functional similarity" between medieval exempla of obedience and WBT and Gower's Tale of Florent, illustrating the similarity by discussing fair/foul transformation and inversion motifs in various exempla, and arguing that the three-stage pattern of conversion in them is inverted in the Wife's tale of the rapist knight whose "predicament" is a comic version of the "enforced celibacy of a young religious."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations