Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Wife Of Bath’S
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Wife of Bath’s
Prologue and Tale,
Genre: The prologue might be called a fictional autobiography, a confession, a mock sermon (Patterson) or an apologia (L., defense). Persuasive as Chaucer?s Wife?s voice may be, however, do not mistake it for true autobiography. Chaucer?s immediate source for many of the opinions and strategies described in the prologue are two characters from the Roman de la Rose (by Guillaume de Lorris, 1237, and Jean de Meun, 1275): La Vieille (the Old Woman) and Le Jealoux (the Jealous One). He also draws upon the vast literature of anti-feminist theologians to characterize the views of her husbands, especially Jankyn.
The tale, itself, is an Arthurian romance, typified by its knight errant protagonist, its quest to answer a question, and its plot movement between court and forest. It's immediate source is a set of romances and ballads about Arthur's chief knight, Gawain, who usually is a paragon of social and ethical virtue. Clearly, Chaucer (or the Wife--who is the author of this tale?) has a different sort of knight in mind. It also resembles Breton lais, the short romances originating in Brittany which often featured supernatural characters and characters whose criminal behavior was corrected by unusual justice ("Eliduc," "Sir Gowther," "Bisclavret," "Launfal," etc.). Chaucer probably knew of several analogues of this tale of the knight whose mistress gives him a difficult choice, and others which involved rapist knights. But in none of the analogues is the choice between a wife foul and faithful or fair and faithless. (In the sources, she must either be fair by day and ugly by night or ugly by day and fair at night.) Also, in none of the rapist-knight tales is the rapist punished, or even judged.
The closest analogues of the tale can be found in the "Gawain-Cycle" romances, in two of which Arthur's nephew takes up a challenge which involves the test of discovering "what women most...
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