...one of the greatest English poets of all time. Many refer to him as the father of the English language. Chaucer wrote one of the best known books titled Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s literary work is one of the most famous books to ever be written. Within his book there are many smaller stories told by different characters told within it. All of the smaller...
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...Part of the reason why The Canterbury Tales as a collection is so memorable is because of its dramatic nature. Some tales create drama through their plots, others create drama through various interjections and responses, and some create drama through their build up. Specifically, in regards to “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, the drama stems from the Wife of Bath as a character, and not as much from the tale itself. As a character, it is obvious that the Wife of Bath is a fierce woman with an I-don’t-give-a-shit type of attitude. She does what she wants and knows how to get her way: “And have this tribulacioun withal upon his flessh, whyl that I am his wyf. I have the power duringe al my lyf upon his proper body, and nought he.” (Chaucer...
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...Role of Marriage in "The Wife of Bath" Canterbury Tales In most modern marriages today, both men and women contribute to the same relationship roles such as being the provider, communicator, negotiator and so on. In the 14th century, most marriages were arranged and the woman had to obey her husband’s commands. During this time, Geoffrey Chaucer's wrote The Canterbury Tales. His stories demonstrate a variety of attitudes toward the perceptions of marriage, with some of these ideas being extremely conservative while others are wildly liberal. While several of these tales are rather comical, Chaucer gives us a representation of his attitudes toward marriage at that time in history. When addressing the question of who has correctly identified the proper roles in marriage, it is The Wife of Bath, a tale that satirically demonstrates the wife's overall desire for mastery within the marriage by her manipulation of the husband's weaknesses of both the flesh and the mind. It is these peculiarities of the Wife of Bath's tale that uniquely answer the question of who deserves the mastery in marriage. The Wife of Bath's prologue introduces the pilgrim who narrates this tale, Alison, a gap toothed, partially deaf seamstress and widower of five husbands, claiming to have great experience in the ways of the heart by remedying whatever might ail it. Alison, unlike the other tales in comparison, describes marriage as a miserable experience. The Wife of Bath's tale sets itself apart by presenting...
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...Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer is a book filled with tales and prologues during the late medieval time period. Chaucer was born in 1342 in Paris. Chaucer lived the majority of his life privileged and on the kings’ (Richard II until 1399 then Henry IV) payroll. Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales in 1387, and worked on it throughout the 90’s. Of the few tales that I read (“The Prologue”, “The Miler’s Prologue”, “The Miller’s Tale”, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale Prologue”, and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”), it seems clear that love and marriage are underlying themes throughout. But, love and marriage are two separate things during this time period. What the characters perceive to be love is actually lust. This will become evident throughout the tales. “The Prologue” is where Chaucer introduces all of the characters that will be prevalent throughout The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer describes the season as being April, and goes into detail about each character. It should be noted that the 29 characters that Chaucer mentioned were brought together by chance and did not plan this meeting. Each character had stopped at Tabard Inn, while waiting to embark on the pilgrimage to Canterbury. The night before the pilgrimage was to begin, the host offered a proposition to the pilgrims. He suggested a simple task: Now listen for your good, And please don’t treat my notion with disdain. This is the point. I’ll make it short and plain. Each one...
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...The Wife of Bath is perhaps the most remarkable figure in The Canterbury Tales. Particularly interesting is the difference between her Prologue, in which she brashly and lustily gives the details of her five marriages, and her Tale, which is both moral and quite charming. Address the difference between the Wife's Prologue and her Tale. How do the two relate and lend meaning to one another? The Wife of Bath ha the longest prologue in The Canterbury Tales. Why does she feel the need to share this personal information with the pilgrims before she begins her tale? The Wife's prologue is unique in that it is longer than the tale itself. The Wife of Bath uses the prologue to explain the basis of her theories about experience versus authority and to introduce the point that she illustrates in her tale: The thing women most desire is complete control ("sovereignty") over their husbands. The Wife speaks on behalf of women everywhere discusses her five marriages and her tactics for gaining power and financial independence through the use of her body. Bawdy, lusty, and strong willed, she refuses to allow men to control her existence and she takes measures to shape her own destiny The Wife’s narrative opens with a defense of her many marriages, all legal, as she points out, i.e. recognized by the Church even though some churchmen frowned on widows re-marrying. The Wife challenges anyone to show her where the Scripture sets a limit to the number of successive legal marriages a...
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...The Canterbury Tales Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. "The Wife of Bath and the Mark of Adam." Women's Studies 15.4 (1988): 399-416. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 26 Oct. 2015. Hansen has two facets of her argument about The Wife of Bath from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The first explains how important the Wife is to the feminist critic, while the second paradoxically argues that she can be looked at as antifeminist based on the fact that she is a speaker that in reality is the voice of a man. Her views are manipulated and characterized by a man, therefore they do not allow a true woman's voice to be heard. In part one of her argument she is in favor of the idea of the Wife of Bath...
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...In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath presents her bold views throughout the course of her narration. Her prologue provides insight into her real-life experience with marriage, which she seems to view more as a game than as a consecrated relationship. Per the Pardoner’s request, the Wife of Bath shares her stance on marriage through a captivating tale, in which she highlights the idea of gentillesse in her vision of an ideal relationship. However, even though the Wife of Bath’s tale seems to go against the patriarchal society of the Middle Ages, further analysis of the text supports the fact that she views marriage as an opportunity for personal profit and not for equality. Thus, her tale and prologue not only support...
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...from the fourteenth century, wrote a framed story called The Canterbury Tales. This work is made up of a General Prologue, which is a description of all the individual pilgrims going on the pilgrimage, followed by several tales told by these pilgrims. He describes several knight’s in this work through a chivalric code of honor. Through his description of the Knight in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, as well as the “Knight’s Tale” and the “Wife of Bath’s Tale,” Chaucer suggests that although chivalry...
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...A Conjecture on the Wife of Bath's Prologue Author(s): Richard F. Jones Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1925), pp. 512-547 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27702906 Accessed: 17-08-2015 10:45 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 182.69.107.77 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:45:38 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A CONJECTURE ON THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE of Bath's the Wife When for the first reading Prologue time, I remember my surprise upon reaching line 193 to find continued for several hundred lines, whereas that the Prologue a tale to follow. With I had expected each reading since, I in adjusting my expecta the same difficulty have experienced found. This repeated experience, ...
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...statement, analyse the role that power plays in a text you have studied. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the role of power is widely explored through Alyson, The Wife of Bath. The Wife’s ability to manipulate and gain dominion over her husbands can be a result of her sexual and libidinous nature, as she uses this attraction to gain pecuniary and societal power. Furthermore, marriage is portrayed as a crucial tool in the gaining of power, as it plays an extremely important role in Alyson’s “wynning” of status and money, as without her husbands one would be without these fortunes. However, the Wife’s dominance and power is questioned by the raw youth of her later husbands, as one experiences the endearing aspect of her fifth husband, Jankyn, as he represents the power left in the patriarchal hegemony of the era, withdrawing all the previously gained power the Wife had obtained. Firstly, the gain and control of power in the Wife of Bath can be seen through the role of sex within the tale, as sex not only secures money and land for the Alyson, but also rewards her with great dominance within the patriarchal hegemony: “I wo lde no lenger in the bed abyde, If that I felte his arm over my syde, Til he had maad his raunson unto me; Thanne wolde I suffre hym do his nycetee. And therefore every man this tale I telle, Wynne whoso may, for al is for to selle.” Here, the Wife explains that whenever one of her husbands displayed some sort of misconduct, she would refuse to give him...
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...In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, intertextuality represents specific aspects of the character’s ideals and personalities, and Chaucer uses it to meet his ends by calling attention to the continual misinterpretation of words. In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, biblical excerpts in the “Book of Wikked Wyves” are misrepresented by both the compiler of the text and the clerk, Jenkyn, current husband of the Wife of Bath. The compiler of the book believed that what he wrote was true, based on pieces of text he picked through to find those that comply with the view he already had of women. The Wife of Bath combats the “Book of Wikked Wyves,” as well as every reading therein, with her question of “Who peynted the leoun, tel me who?” arguing that if women...
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...struggles. In The Wife of Bath, this is the total opposite when it comes to women and how they are treated. The wife was very outspoken, controlling, and manipulative getting her way in many situations. The Wife of Bath gives a view into a woman that is dependent on their husbands in the middle Ages. She is always dependent upon her husbands for material things such as money. This reveals that marriage during this time had little to do with love, but a lot to do with...
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...The Wife of Bath: Professional Wife or Something Else? The Wife of Bath is a character described by the narrator, Geoffrey Chaucer, in a way that makes her appear as though she is only after pleasure. In the prologue the Wife of Bath is described as “having a gap in her teeth” and she is said to be wearing “red stockings.” Through the use of these descriptions the Wife of Bath becomes a character that is interested in one thing only which she later confesses in her tale. The narrator also describes her as someone who gets angry at women who get to the altar before her, which could mean she wants people to see how faithful she is, or she wants to make sure she is always the first one people see and remember.Through this description the reader...
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...“The Wife of Bath’s Tale”: The Envy of Youth In “The Prologue of the Wife of Bath’s Tale” experience, power-struggles, and manipulations created knowledge, but eventually after time age had belittled: and the envy of the young arose. The main objective is authority, who is engaged by it, who has acquired it, who is deprived or ruined from it; and how can one acquire it. The wife engages her audience by sharing her experiences. She says, “Experience-and no matter what they say in books-is good enough authority” (219). By her disregarding those books, she attempts to show that her experiences have more value; it also suggests the books may be judgmental about her beliefs, character, or life choices. Yet, “good-enough” can also be perceived as a sign of weakness and therefore cause her to lose credibility in her experience. Nevertheless, she soon reveals the advantages of her experiences and shows a great delight in demonstrating her power to control and dominate her marriages. Regarding an older husband, she said, “For during his life I’ve “power of his body” and not he” (223), she is claiming power over an object is proclaiming that until her husband dies, she will have possession over his body. Also makes sure to point out, she has the control, not him. Which also gives a sense of the power struggles between sexes. Her arrogance is so strong that she admits she didn’t value her husband’s love. Then again, why would she? She is only interested in sharing the techniques...
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...have developed due to different pieces of literature and society in general. Men court women and rescue them from danger. Women learn the necessary skills to become a proper housewife and mother. For a man to successfully complete the requirements of his “part” in the relationship, he must provide for his spouse and assert his dominance as the head of the household. The woman must then complete the dance by deferring to her husband’s wishes and presenting the perfect picture of a cultured, subservient wife. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and Lanval by Marie de France challenge this notion. In both works, the women represent the dominant force in the relationship, reversing gender roles and overturning modern-day gender stereotypes. However, despite the fact that both pieces of literature oppose the standards of the time, the social commentary the two works provide greatly contrast. Although Lanval still incorporates many of the common romantic stereotypes, The Canterbury Tales does not address these stereotypes; not only does the work present a profoundly different picture, illustrating a highly negative image of what occurs when women contain the power in a relationship, but also it also gives this classic piece of literature less relevancy in the eyes of the modern-day reader. Traditionally, women held little to no power in a relationship; however, Lanval challenges this long-standing idea. Lanval, a knight “far from his inheritance,” gains his wealth through the success...
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