{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect11_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect11_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect11_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/eng/mect/mect11.htm","summary":"The Wife of Bath's Prologue is a dramatic monologue in Middle English verse, part of Chaucer's 14th-century frame narrative *The Canterbury Tales*, in which a fictional pilgrim delivers an extended self-defense of her life and marital philosophy before telling her tale. The Wife \u2014 a five-times-married woman from Bath \u2014 argues that scripture neither commands virginity nor limits how many times one may marry, marshaling Biblical examples (Solomon's many wives, the Samaritan woman at the well, Paul's epistles) to dismantle clerical arguments for chastity. Her central claim is that sexual experience and personal authority trump written \"auctoritee\": the body's members were made for pleasure and procreation, not merely function, and she intends to exercise sovereignty over both her husbands and her own sexuality. She then offers a frankly tactical account of her marriages \u2014 how she dominated her three elderly, wealthy husbands through pre-emptive accusation and manufactured jealousy, extracting land and treasure while making them miserable. Distinctively, Chaucer gives the Wife a voice that simultaneously parodies misogynist clerical literature (she knows the anti-woman texts well enough to rebut them) and embodies a bracingly worldly, unapologetic female subjectivity rare in medieval literature. Readers interested in gender politics, medieval theology's intersection with everyday life, or unreliable narrators arguing in their own defense will find this among the most vivid and provocative passages in English literary history.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":6950}