Is Ugliness Only Skin Deep? Middle English Gawain Romances and the "Wife of Bath's Tale."

Author / Editor
Steinberg, Glenn A.

Title
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