The "Thyng Wommen Loven Moost": The Wife of Bath's Fabliau Answer.

Author / Editor
Fein, Susanna.

Title
The "Thyng Wommen Loven Moost": The Wife of Bath's Fabliau Answer.

Published
Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds. Medieval Women and Their Objects (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 15-38.

Description
Argues that the power of WBT, though it is commonly regarded as a lai," comes from an underlying subversion by the use of fabliau, which makes the tale a "hybrid story." The "question of what women most want" has surprising affinities with the extravagantly obscene fabliaux "Les quatre souhaiz de saint Martin" and "Les trois dames qui troverent un vit"--not only in Alisoun's fabliau-like asides about friars and Midas's wife, but even in its narrative core.

Alternative Title
Medieval Women and Their Objects

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