The Canterbury Tales is a work written
by Geoffrey Chaucer. During 1380-1392, he wrote the "General Prologue"
and some of Canterbury Tales. By the year 1400, he had completed
the Canterbury Tales, perhaps the most famous poem in medieval
English! In the "General Prologue," Chaucer describes most
of the twenty-nine pilgrims whom he encounters at the inn, who are on their
way to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.
On this pilgrimage, Chaucer will travel with a diverse set of people, the
Knight, the Squire, the Yeoman, the Prioress, the Monk, the Merchant, the
Clerk, the Wife of Bath, the Parson, and the Miller among others.
One of Chaucer's companions that I find striking is the Wife of Bath.
Chaucer describes her as being somewhat deaf with a gap tooth. She
wears scarlet red stockings and ten pounds of kerchiefs on her head.
She has been married five times and is now looking for her sixth husband.
Maybe the pilgrimage to Canterbury is her way of meeting her sixth husband?
He also tells us what an excellent weaver she is. It seems to me that
the Wife of Bath needs a lot of attention because she thinks that she is
God's gift to men. She says that she has a special talent, which
is her knowledge of all the remedies of love. I picked the Wife of
Bath to write about because as a woman of the 90’s it seems weird to me
to read about a woman in the fourteenth century who traveled, married many times and
spoke her thoughts in public.
To learn more about the Wife of Bath, click on one of the
links.
CHARACTER
ANALYSIS
HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
MONOLOGUE
WORKS CITED
Here are some interesting links:
1998 created by Stacy
Nikolopoulos
