Is Ugliness Only Skin Deep? Middle English Gawain Romances and the "Wife of Bath's Tale."
- Author / Editor
- Steinberg, Glenn A.
Is Ugliness Only Skin Deep? Middle English Gawain Romances and the "Wife of Bath's Tale."
- Published
- Arthuriana 31 (2021): 3-28.
- Description
- Explores "the socioeconomic significance of the ugly, monstrous figures in the Gawain romances" and in WBT, arguing that Chaucer "bifurcates" the "ugly antagonist" of the romances into the "crude, social-climbing Wife . . . and the loathly lady of her tale" while amplifying criticism of the "old aristocracy" and highlighting "tensions and ugliness" among the parvenu Canterbury pilgrims.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations