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Interesting Points in Chaucers Wifes Wandrng In Her Prologue

Uploaded by spootyhead on Mar 20, 2007

Interesting Points in Chaucers Wifes Wandrng In Her Prologue

In The General Prologue To The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Tells Us That The Wife Of Bath ‘Koulde muchel of wandering by the weye’
What Do You Find Interesting About The Ways He Presents The Wife’s Wandering In Her Prologue. Use Lines 543-599 As A Starting Point. (Summer 2001)

In the Wife of Baths prologue we find out about her characteristics. One aspect, which is shown throughout the prologue, is that is that the Wife of Bath likes to wander. Chaucer in three ways presents this to the reader. The first way in which Chaucer does this is by using digressions. The Wife of Bath often appears to lose her thread, returning to a chosen subject with the phrase "I seye" which translates to mean as I was saying and on one occasion she thinks she has lost the thread of her story completely, when, by her own loose standards, she certainly has not done: ‘What I shal seyn? A Ha! By God, I have my tale ageyn.’

The second way in which Chaucer presents us with a wandering character is that the Wife of Bath is unfaithful to her husbands. Her first three husband were very old and at the end of the life possibly. They were less likely to fulfil the wife’s sexual needs and so consequently the wife was unfaithful to them with younger more versatile gentleman.

The final way in which Chaucer presents us with a wandering woman is by the way in which the Wife likes to go out about. The Wife of Bath likes to go gossiping between the houses in her area. The Wife also liked to go to church, whether it was for religious reasons or simply to show off in her vibrant scarlet red outfits.

Many times in the Wife prologue does she forget where she is with her tale, this is often due to an interesting memory she has from mentioning one thing in the tale. Many times the pilgrims hear the Wife of Bath say ‘what I shal seyn?’ Chaucer presents us with the Wife as a character who is easily distracted and can easily lose the thread of her tale. This could be used to explain her prologue. The length of her prologue shows us that she can wander from the main plot into a...

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Uploaded by:   spootyhead

Date:   03/20/2007

Category:   Literature

Length:   3 pages (749 words)

Views:   2710

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