Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 18090
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Hagen , Susan K.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: The Wife of Bath: Chaucer’s Inchoate Experiment in Feminist Hermeneutics [Although the Wife of Bath seems to represent the perspective of a real woman, she is in fact a fiction created by a male poet. Through the Wife of Bath, Chaucer tries to imagine how to represent a woman’s personal, secular experience when it does not coincide with what religious authorities claim a woman’s experience should be. In order to justify and relate her worldly experience, the Wife of Bath differentiates between religious and secular types of authority, interprets Scripture in her own way, and adopts a feminine, non-linear narrative style. In spite of these literary experiments, Chaucer ultimately fails to escape misogynist ways of thinking. Title note supplied by Feminae.].
  • Source: Rebels and rivals: the contestive spirit in The Canterbury tales.  Edited by Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. BraegerStudies in medieval culture.  Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1991.  Pages 105 - 124.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Journal Article
  • Subject (See Also): Authority in Literature Bible Exegesis Chaucer, Geoffrey, Poet- Canterbury Tales- Wife of Bath’s Prologue Chaucer, Geoffrey, Poet- Canterbury Tales- Wife of Bath’s Tale Experience Feminist Theory Glosses Literature- Verse Misogyny in Literature Narrative
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 14
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  • Year of Publication: 1991.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 0918720419