Queer Skin in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Its Manuscript Glosses.

Author / Editor
Magnani, Roberta.

Title
Queer Skin in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Its Manuscript Glosses.

Published
In Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2918), pp. 195-219.

Description
Demonstrates how the Wife of Bath's resistance to "straight" clerical exegesis is reflected in her skin's rejection of violently enforced "cutaneous legibility" and the forced reading of her "seinte Venus seel" as an innate and legible marker of her corruption. Claims, rather, that Alisoun's skin is like a manuscript palimpsest, in that essentialist gender binary is overwritten with queer possibility.

Alternative Title
Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Manuscripts and Textual Studies