A Medieval Madwoman in the Attic: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales (original) (raw)
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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:
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.
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 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
Geoffrey Chaucer's celebrated poem, The Canterbury Tales, deals with the pilgrimage from London to the Canterbury Cathedral embarked upon by a diverse range of individuals. This assortment of individuals decide that each of them will tell two stories as they travel, with the purpose of entertaining their fellow pilgrims. Throughout the poem we are presented with a multitude of unique narratives, all of which provide us with a degree of insight into the characters themselves. One such narrative will be focussed upon, namely 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue', in which I will explore the gendered nature of relationships, authority, and social stratification. The Wife of Bath gains a degree of autonomy and self-determination in her life through the defiance of stereotypical female behaviour, but when later reprimanded for her perceived indiscretions, she plays on the construction of these stereotypes to avoid blame for her actions. Although her intention is to share the perspective of the Medieval woman, her narrative is problematic in its unintentional and unconscious acceptance of misogynistic discourse and stereotyping.
Laboring in the God of Love’s Garden: Chaucer’s Prologue to The Legend of Good Women
Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 2002
On1 2 October 1385, Chaucer was appointed to the commission of the peace in Kent. He served as a justice of the peace (JP) for the next four years, until being appointed Clerk of the King's Works in 1389. For Chaucer's biographers these years have always posed a problem; they are the middle of his poetic career, seemingly transitional years between his courtly dream vision poetry and the later frame tales. They are some of the best-documented years in terms of official records, yet they have provoked divergent interpretations in terms of their import for Chaucer both as a poet and as a Ricardian servant. For Donald Howard, the late 1380s were ''the worst of times'' when the poet traded a relatively secure urban existence for debt-ridden rustication. For Derek Pearsall, on the other hand, the Kent years provided a well-deserved respite from the poet's ''arduous and thankless'' activities as controller of customs as well as a necessary (and presumably welcome) distance from a court about to be thrown into disarray by the Appellant crisis. 1 Both biographies imply that Chaucer, politically astute as ever, chose to ride out these turbulent years in a Kent backwater rather than brave them in a neighborhood nearer Westminster. Both biographies also describe these years as dominated by Chaucer's single documented return to London in the fall of 1386, when he sat in the so-called ''Wonderful Research for this article was made possible by a stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as by a University of Pittsburgh Faculty of Arts and Sciences Grant. I also with to thank Mike Witmore for this valuable comments on successive drafts of the essay.
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.