Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas

The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

"The Wife of Bath's Tale" is a narrative poem in Middle English verse, part of Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales* (late 14th century), belonging to the tradition of Arthurian romance and the "loathly lady" folk motif. A knight in King Arthur's court rapes a maiden and is condemned to death, but the queen grants him a year to discover what women most desire — on pain of execution if he fails. He searches fruitlessly until an ugly old woman promises him the answer (sovereignty over their husbands) in exchange for a pledge to grant her any request; she demands marriage. The tale's distinctive philosophical core comes after the wedding, when the old woman delivers an extended lecture arguing that true nobility (*gentillesse*) derives from virtuous conduct rather than hereditary wealth or lineage, citing Dante in support. The knight is then offered a choice: have her old and ugly but faithful, or young and beautiful but potentially unfaithful — and when he surrenders the choice to her (granting her sovereignty), she transforms into a beautiful, devoted wife. The tale is notably double-voiced: narrated by the Wife of Bath, it simultaneously argues for female authority in marriage and enacts that argument through its plot, while its opening satirizes friars as the real predators who have displaced the old fairy dangers from the English countryside.

The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...

Related pages View as graph →