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Product Description
Product Description
A well-established and respected series. Texts are in the original Middle English, and each has an introduction, detailed notes and a glossary. Selected titles are also available as CD recordings.
Book Description
A well-established and respected series with titles in the original Middle English.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Chaucer's middle english is at first confusing but the content is worth the trouble. The good detailed notes and glossary at the end of this edition explain the fourteenth century jokes and references, even if they are not so funny after six hundred or so years. The messages of the Prologue and Tale are however very relevant, showing the problems and contradictions of a woman seeking equality in a male dominated society.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm studying 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale' for my A levels and am finding it to be of great help. There's a summary of each section of the prologue and tale, and plenty of sections to do with background and different approaches to the text, as well as information about the themes, characters, and the literary techniques used. I've got two other study guides for 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale' and although this one was a bit more expensive, it was definitely worth it! The only thing it doesn't really have is any critical information written by other people, but this is easily found in other places if your course requires it anyway!
Format:Paperback
The Wife of Bath is valued for her bawdy and irreverant attitude to life and this makes her, perhaps, the best character to introduce one to a study of Chaucer or to deepen one's understanding. This edition gives all that it necessary: the text, notes and glossary but it is vital to note the difference between Chaucer's description of her in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and what is better called her "preamble" where she chats at length to the pilgrims before telling her tale - though this account of her life is, in many ways, her tale. For Chaucer's description you may want to read an edition of the General Prologue to compare it with that of other pilgrims, particularly the other women: the Prioress (detailed) and the Nun (barely mentioned.) Some critics have seen a disparity between her preamble which relates the story of her marriages in direct and ruthless fashion and the fairy-tale which follows it. But the two are united by the theme of what women want and the Wife certainly knows that that is "maistrie" or dominance over men. The preamble is notable for its oral signals of rhetoric; its revelations; some intentional, others accidental; its feminism; its humour; the reactions of the audience who cannot keep quiet and its pervading theme of two types of authority: experience (of which the Wife has an abundance) and books (which she somewhat resents.) She is likeable despite all her cynicism and rough dealings and the reader realises that she truly loved Janekin with his curly gold hair and shapely legs. We may be scandalised at her justification of infidelity, that one can take light from a candle without diminishing its glow and her calculating marriages with old, rich men but we sympathise with her, despite all, becuase of her courage and honesty. Her actual tale is tamer but does reveal another side of her character as she tells it straight while Chaucer points his finger at aspects such as her resemblance to the Loathly Lady of which she appears unaware. Chaucer seem affectionate in his overall protrait whilst showing her garrulousness, contradictions, lack of self-control and complete failure to realise the impression she is creating on her two audiences: the pilgrims and the reader. Chaucer controls all this and leaves an impression that, as she also claims, this woman comes from both Venus and Mars!
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