Abstract:
t is a commonplace when teaching the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale to stress the anachronism of calling Chaucer a feminist. Yet it is also common to find Chaucer attractive for his play with gender in the gap between the book and the body, 1 nowhere better demonstrated than in the reconstitution of various misogynist diatribes into the charismatic Wife of Bath, who talks back defiantly to "auctoritee." If Chaucer is not actually endorsing the strident voice he gives to the Wife, he is certainly making play with textuality, with subjectivity, and with the construction of ideas about sexuality. 2....
