Wife of Bath and the Rhetoric of Enchantment; Or, How to Make a Hero See in the Dark.
- Author / Editor
- Silverstein, Theodore.
Wife of Bath and the Rhetoric of Enchantment; Or, How to Make a Hero See in the Dark.
- Published
- Modern Philology 58 (1961): 153-73.
- Description
- Characterizes the Wife of Bath through a sustained, appreciative summary of and commentary on WBP and, more extensively, WBT, showing that "Comic exaggeration is her forte, but tempered by delicate play and a fatal aim, the more precise for being matchlessly fun." Focuses on the rape motif in WBT, the Wife's rhetorical interruptions to her narrative, relations between WBT and its three English analogues, the pillow lecture, and conventions of the courtly tradition as found in Arthurian romance, Andreas Capellanus, and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations