The Wife of Bath’s Tale: An Analysis of the Speech on Gentillesse D 1109-76 (original) (raw)

The Matriarch of Bath – Chaucer’s Feminist Insights

This paper critically analyzes Geoffrey Chaucer’s character Allison of his tale “The Wife of Bath” within the Canterbury Tales. The argument is made that Chaucer intentionally used this character to present his personal feminist ideals to his audience, thereby acting as an advocate for women under the guise of literary author. Evidence will be presented both from the text by analyzing her characterization, imagery, and dialog while the weight of this thesis will rest upon The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer evidence presented by scholars, particularly from the “Chaucer Review” scholarly journal, as well as research conducted on the life and times of women during the medieval era.

Quest and Question in 'The Wife of Bath's Tale

Sydney Studies in English, 2008

As one indication, The Canterbury Tales Project from Cambridge University Press, putting on CD-Rom all pre-1500 texts of The Canterbury Tales, has begun with the text of The Wife of Bath's Prologue. The edition of The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale referred to here is that in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn, gen. ed. Larry D.

International Journal of Literature and Arts The matriarch of Bath – Chaucer's feminist insights

This paper critically analyzes Geoffrey Chaucer's character Allison of his tale "The Wife of Bath" within the Canterbury Tales. The argument is made that Chaucer intentionally used this character to present his personal feminist ideals to his audience, thereby acting as an advocate for women under the guise of literary author. Evidence will be presented both from the text by analyzing her characterization, imagery, and dialog while the weight of this thesis will rest upon The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer evidence presented by scholars, particularly from the "Chaucer Review" scholarly journal, as well as research conducted on the life and times of women during the medieval era.

The Clerk, the Wife of Bath and the Merchant: perspectives on women in the "Canterbury Tales

2020

1.1. Chaucer's life and works 1.2. The Canterbury Tales p.7 2. The Clerk's Tale………………………………………………………… 2.1. The Marriage Group 2.2. The Clerk's Tale: an analysis 2.2.1. Griselda and Walter 2.3. Petrarch, Boccaccio and Chaucer 2.3.1. The historical background: did Chaucer meet Petrarch and Boccaccio? 2.3.2. The Story of Griselda between Chaucer, Petrarch and Boccaccio p.23 3. The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale……………………………….. 3.1. An analysis of Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale 3.2. The Wife of Bath, the Old Woman and the Knight 3.3. Sources and analogues of the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale 3.3.1. La Vieille's speech: a source of the Wife of Bath's Prologue 3.3.2. Analogues to the Wife of Bath's Tale 3.4. The Women in Dunbar's Treatis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo p.53 4. The Merchant's Prologue and Tale…………………………………... 4.1. An analysis of the Merchant's Prologue and Tale 4.2. Three analogues of the Merchant's Tale 4.2.1. The Tenth Novella of the Second Day of the Decameron 4.2.2. The Ninth Novella of the Seventh Day of the Decameron 4.2.3. The Story of the Woman and the Pear-Tree of Il Novellino p.83

Chaucer’s Volumes: Toward a New Model of Literary History in the Canterbury Tales

Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 2007

Th e battle between the Wife of Bath and her fifth husband, Jankyn, in which she ''rente out of his book a leef, / For which he smoot me so that I was deef,'' 1 enacts the spectacular failure in transmission that results when a coercive literary tradition collides with an audience whose resistance finally wells over into violence. In addition to its commentary on the effects of antifeminist writings in the Wife's autobiographical prologue-the focus of most recent criticism on the Wife of Bath-the battle also figures the very structure of literary tradition, whose motive force is the dynamic interaction of repetition (emulation, imitation) and rupture, 2 as an overt rivalry. As she tells it, the Wife It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge those whose responses to this essay (or to the papers it draws on) have shaped my thinking:

Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and the re-invention of women in the late 14th Century

Geoffrey Chaucer and the Politics of English as a minority language Fall 2013 English Studies University of Copenhagen Chaucer and the Politics of English as a minority language 16/12/2013 David Gomes zrp475 2 Chaucer's Wife of Bath and the re-invention of women in the late 14 th Century 'Who peyntede the leon, tel me who? By God, if wommen hadde writen stories, As clerkes han withinne hire oratories, They wolde han writen of men moore wikkednesse Than al the mark of Adam may redresse. … The clerk, when he is oold, and may noght do Of Venus werkes worth his olde sho, Thanne sit he doun, and writ in his dotage That wommen kan nat kepe hir marriage!' (III, 693-96, 707-10) Understanding how women lived and their role in society in the late fourteenth century is an ongoing task that raises many questions to which answers can never be definite. Historical evidence and the surviving literature from that time can give us the best guidance in such endeavour, even though one should be cautious when analysing a body of literature which is mostly constituted by male authorship. One particularly relevant example is the book Le Ménagie de Paris (c. 1393), a French medieval guidebook written by a sixtyyear-old man for his fifteen-year-old wife. In it he includes references to some of Chaucer's tales and female characters, Griselda being one of them, as he cites her as a reference to Chaucer and the Politics of English as a minority language 16/12/2013 David Gomes zrp475 3

The Wife of Bath ’ s Prologue Love and Marriage in the Wife of Bath ’ s Prologue

2018

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue provides an introduction to medieval ideas about marriage and love. The Prologue begins like a sermon and then takes on the terms of misogyny and misogamy as the Wife describes her first three marriages, demonstrating her success in manipulating the marriage system to her own advantage as a means to consolidate money and power. When the Wife speaks of her fourth and fifth husbands, however, the Prologue becomes more personal, like a modern autobiography, exploring the role of love in marriage and its relationship to gender hierarchy and domestic violence. In her prologue, Chaucer’s Wife defends marriage against religious teachings that claim that it is inferior to celibacy, maintaining the association of marriage with sex but embracing a more modern perspective that sexual pleasure is a virtue and rejecting the idea that wives should always obey their husbands. The Prologue presents both the challenges to women’s agency posed by medieval marriage and, con...