Poetry Criticism | The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer - James W. Cook (essay date summer 1978)

James W. Cook (essay date summer 1978)

SOURCE: Cook, James W. “‘That She Was Out of Alle Charitee’:¹ Point-Counterpoint in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.” Chaucer Review 13, no. 1 (summer 1978): 51-65.

[In the following essay, Cook uses religious doctrines of sacramental law to analyze the Wife of Bath's failure to comply with the spirit of the sacrament of marriage. Because Alisoun prefers to control her spouse rather than form a true union with him, she is the opposite of the hag she describes in her Tale.]

In a provocative essay on Alice of Bath's narrative posture, Gloria K. Shapiro recently requested a more adequate treatment of the religious dimensions of the Wife of Bath's performance.² In the course of her discussion, Professor Shapiro observed: “The perfection in virtue through … the grace of God is the larger subject of Dame Alice's Tale.…”³ And so I...

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