The Wife of Bath’s Prologue Section 2 - Crossref-it.infocrossref-it.info/files/files/Inv_WoB_prologue_2.pdf · The Wife of Bath’s Prologue Section 2 ... preaches from and search
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Investigate! The Wife of Bath’s Prologue Section 2
The four line rhyming from l.655 which makes fun of the proverb?
Investigating l.666 'Now
wol I seye' - l.710 'That
women kan' Researching a misogynist text:
Choose any one of the ‘wicked wives’ texts that Jankin preaches from and search for it on the internet
Identify the aspects of it that you think would be anathema to the Wife.
Investigating l.711 'But
now to purpos' - l.771
'Somme han kem' In the midst of the Wife’s anger and
Jankin’s complaint, there is still comedy and humour Look for further examples of
incidents, rhyming or situations which create comic effects, for example: Socrates’ dryly humorous
response to receiving the contents of a chamber-pot l.733
The black humour of Arrrius’ comment that he would like a clipping of the tree on
which wives hang themselves, l.763.
Investigating l.772 'He spak moore' - l.828 'Now
wol I seye' Read
The opening of The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
l.45 of the Wife’s Prologue in which she seems to claim that she would welcome a sixth husband
The line near the end of her Prologue in which the Wife
seems to refer to Jankin as now dead
What connections can you make between these passages?
Investigating l.829 'The
frere lough' - l.856 'Yis dame, quod'
When you consider the content and characters involved in much of the Wife’s Prologue, to what
extent do you see Chaucer’s framing device of the pilgrimage as: Religious Subversively secular?
Think back on your reading work on the text as a whole and identify what you see as the major themes of the Wife’s Prologue Try to express these in a chart
or diagram showing where the themes reveal oppositions in the text .e.g. between:
Male and female Experience and authority Power and domination Pleasure and woe Liberty and constraint
Do you think that any of these oppositions are resolved or broken down by the end of the text?
Thinking about the shape and pattern of the Prologue, consider how you might express it diagrammatically on a large sheet of paper:
What will your diagram look like? You could use a time-line
on which you annotate the periods of the Wife’s life (the main movement is chronological)
You might use a large circle and show how the
Investigate! The Wife of Bath’s Prologue Section 2
Or …..? Enjoy experimenting. Annotate what you produce
with quotations, line numbers and drawings
You will find that you have to know the text well to do this
You may have to revise some of your first ideas about the way in which the narrative is structured
When you have done it, you will have a quick revision guide to the text. You can look at it and see immediately what events / ideas / images are in particular sections.