The Portrait of the Wife of Bath in the General Prologue

Chaucer: The Wife of Bath's Tale

In this course, Professor Marion Turner (University of Oxford) explores The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, part of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. We begin by thinking about the portrait of the Wife of Bath in the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, focusing in particular on the extent to which the Wife of Bath resembles a real historical woman, as well as on some of the literary tropes that Chaucer has drawn on to flesh out her character. After that, in the second and third modules, we turn to the Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale, and think about whether it should be read as an anti-feminist or pro-feminist text. In the fourth module, we think about the Wife of Bath's Tale itself, and consider the extent to which Chaucer has reworked the traditional genre of Romance. Finally, in the fifth module, we think about the ethical interests of the Wife of Bath's Tale, focusing in particular on the role of women in delivering the ethical message of the Tale, and on the Loathly Lady's famous account of 'gentilesse' as a characteristic that is not inherited but earned.

The Portrait of the Wife of Bath in the General Prologue

In this module, we think about the depiction of the Wife of Bath in the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, focusing in particular on the extent to which the Wife of Bath might represent a realistic portrait of a woman from fourteenth-century England, as well as the various literary sources that Chaucer has drawn on to flesh out her character, including the Romance of the Rose, Eustache Deschamps' Le Miroir de Mariage, and the Book of Proverbs.