The Portrait of the Wife of Bath in the General Prologue

About the lecture

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.

About the lecturer

Marion Turner is Associate Professor of English at Jesus College, University of Oxford. She is the author of a ground-breaking biography of Chaucer: Chaucer: A European Life (Princeton, 2019). This biography focuses on Chaucer as an international figure, exploring his travels, his multicultural influences, his multilingual identity, and the global aspects of medieval London.

Her other books include Chaucerian Conflict (Oxford, 2007) and, as editor, A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), and she has published many articles on Chaucer and other aspects of late medieval literature. Marion has received research funding from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Wellcome Trust. She often speaks in the media, including Radio 4, BBC1, Channel 4, and ITV. She has a particular interest in outreach, taking part in Chaucer Days at the Ashmolean Museum and the Weston Library, aimed at sixth form students of Chaucer, and often speaking at schools and colleges.