Premium Content A Taming By a Shrew?: Levels of Satire in Chaucer's Wife of Bath
By Alex Hoffer - May 10, 2001
The Wife of Bath, a pilgrim in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, holds strong views on many topics, such as sex, marriage, men, and the Bible. She speaks her mind clearly and at length, but she is also a manipulative, subtle, and untrustworthy narrator, who strives to control her audience just as she has controlled her husbands. She is both an agent…
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