The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale is one of the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, and has consistently been among the best-known and most popular of all the Tales. As Chaucer's most fully-realized character, her autobiographical Prologue is several times longer than any of the others, provoking the Friar to remark, in both jest and admiration, "This is a long preable of a tale!" Her prologue, in which she criticizes male texts and readers who "glosen up and down" to make texts mean what they want, has led many to regard the Wife of Bath as an early feminist, athough substantial portions of her prologue are drawn from the so-called "antifeminist" tradition. In addition to her appearance in Chaucer's work, the Wife of Bath has enjoyed a substantial literary afterlife, being re-invoked as a character by Chaucer's followers such as Thomas Hoccleve, and spoken of admiringly by writers from John Dryden to Susan Swan.

The Prologue

"Experience, thogh noon auctoritee," the Wife commences in the first person, "ys in this world is ryght enogh for me" (Experience, though not regarded as authoritative in this world, is good enough for me." In fact, while this is the most common version of her first line, in several early manuscripts, the first word is not "Experience" but rather "Experiment," emphasizing the role of the Wife as a person who, by trial and sometimes error, is producing a distinctive kind of science in her own right.

References

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