The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale is a lively and entertaining late fourteenth century text which engages with ideas about marriage, conflict, wealth, power, gender, sex, romance, desire, and interpretation of the prevailing church teaching.

Explore Chaucer's Wife of Bath and the world it was written in

The aim of this guide is to enable you to enjoy reading, discussing and studying The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. 

The guide will help you to become familiar with Chaucer’s Middle English so that reading and understanding the text becomes easier for you. It will invite you to explore nuance and irony in Chaucer’s use of language. As part of this text guide, find out about the author's narrative devices, the character of the narrator and the significance and themes of the texts. Examine literary allusions, historical references and their implications.

In short - you should find anything you need to know about The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, Chaucer's life and the world he was writing in. See the links below to jump right in and get started!

Unfamiliar words

The guide will not provide a definition of every unfamiliar word in the text. Work smart! Find an edition to work with which gives you a glossary on the same page as the text.

Line references are to the Norton Critical Edition of The Canterbury Tales, selected and edited by V A Kolve and G Olson (2005) Norton, New York and London. Your line references may differ but the guide will help you to find your place in the text.

Variations in spelling - expect them; Middle English spelling was not standardised and editors follow their preferences in producing a text for you.

Geoffrey Chaucer The son of a London wine merchant, Chaucer (c.1340 - 1400) was an important royal official. A prolific and influential medieval poet, he is widely loved - in particular for The Canterbury Tales, of which The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale is a part. Read more . . .

The Wife of Bath: Context The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale were written in the Middle Ages. To understand this text, one needs to understand the world it was written in. Hit the link to explore a world so very different to the one we now live in. Read more . . .

Dive in to the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale text guide

Synopsis and commentary - Read a line by line summary and commentary on The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.

Characterisation - Find out about the Wife of Bath and the main protagonists in her Tale.

Themes and significant ideas; Imagery and symbolism - Research themes, ideas and imagery that feature in the Tale.

Geoffrey Chaucer section - This is not part of this text guide, but a separate section on Crossref-it.info with general information about Geoffrey Chaucer and links to text guides of other Chaucer texts.

The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale e-book - Read the book and research the text, all for free and online.

• Tweet