Further Reading
- Amsler, Mark, "The Wife of Bath and Women's Power," Assays 4 (1987): 67-83. (Examines the issues of class standing, wealth, and self-sufficiency for women in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, using the Wife of Bath as an example.)
- Beidler, Peter G., "Transformations in Gower's Tale of Florent and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale," in Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange, edited by R. F. Yeager, pp. 100-14. Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria, 1991. (Studies the differences and similarities between John Gower's Tale of Florent and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale.)
- Blanch, Robert J., "‘Al was this land fulfild of fayerye’: The Thematic Employment of Force, Willfulness, and Legal Conventions in Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale," Studia Neophilologica 57, no. 1 (1985): 41-51. (Focuses on the legal consequences of rape in Chaucer's era and examines Chaucer's many references to laws and contracts in The Wife of Bath's Tale.)
- Cooper, Helen, "The Shape Shiftings of the Wife of Bath," in Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer, edited by Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, pp. 168-84. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990. (Explores the various facets of the Wife of Bath's personality and examines certain interpretations of her words and actions.)
- Delany, Sheila, "Strategies of Silence in the Wife of Bath's Recital," Exemplaria 2, no. 1 (spring 1990): 49-69. (Probes the silences and the omissions of The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale and how these gaps relay information about Chaucer the man and the poet.)
- Dickson, Lynne, "Deflection in the Mirror: Feminine Discourse in The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 61-90. (Defines the Wife of Bath's attempts to claim language and self-definition as temporary and not fully developed, yet recognizes Chaucer's nontraditional attempt to explore feminine discourse.)
- Hagen, Susan K., "The Wife of Bath: Chaucer's Inchoate Experiment in Feminist Hermeneutics," in Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales, edited by Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, pp. 105-24. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991. (Asserts that Chaucer's attempts to establish feminine discourse in The Wife of Bath's Prologue are unsuccessful owing to Chaucer's masculine-centered viewpoint.)
- Knapp, Peggy A., "Alisoun Weaves a Text," Philological Quarterly 65, no. 3 (summer 1986): 387-401. (Uses the analogy of weaving to characterize the Wife of Bath's multi-layered viewpoints, ideologies, and willfulness in an era of female submissiveness.)
- Lee, Brian S., "Exploitation and Excommunication in The Wife of Bath's Tale," Philological Quarterly 74, no. 1 (winter 1995): 17-35. (Questions the lack of moral outrage over the rape of the maiden in The Wife of Bath's Tale and investigates the steps taken to bring about justice.)
- Leicester, H. Marshall, Jr., "Retrospective Revision and the Emergence of the Subject in The Wife of Bath's Prologue," in The Disenchanted Self: Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales, pp. 82-113. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. (Provides an in-depth overview of The Wife of Bath's Prologue and focuses on Alisoun's sense of self during her lengthy discourse.)
- Longsworth, Robert, "The Wife of Bath and the Samaritan Woman," Chaucer Review 34, no. 4 (2000): 372-87. (Evaluates the Wife of Bath's wariness of trusting authoritative biblical interpretations of God's will over common sense, experience, and the actual text of the Bible.)
- Puhvel, Martin, "The Wife of Bath's Tale: Mirror of Her Mind," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100, no. 3 (1999): 291-300. (Establishes that “the Wife's Tale largely mirrors and in some ways amplifies the portrait she paints of herself through the lengthy self-revelation in her Prologue.”)
- Richman, Gerald, "Rape and Desire in The Wife of Bath's Tale," Studia Neophilologica 61, no. 2 (1989): 161-65. (Recounts the ironies in the Knight's crime and penance in The Wife of Bath's Tale and traces the underlying theme of freely given love, observing: “We all desire not the sterile domination of rape and the marriage debt but true love.”)
- Rigby, S. H., "The Wife of Bath, Christine De Pizan, and the Medieval Case for Women," Chaucer Review 35, no. 2 (2000): 133-65. (Uses The Wife of Bath's Prologue and works by medieval writer Christine de Pizan to illustrate a woman's life in medieval England, and investigates early literary instances of women's self-definition, self-determination, and discourse.)
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