The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue Literature and Writing Quotes

"Auctoritees" were the texts of scholarly tradition in the medieval period. By proposing to speak from her own experience, however, the Wife bucks a tradition of expounding upon a subject mainly by collecting what lots of "auctoritees" had to say about it. The arrangement of ideas, through which one might give a new perspective on these ideas, was the major creative activity of the medieval scholar.

Here the Wife dismisses texts that require extensive interpretation to understand in favor of a text that's very straightforward. In effect she's democratizing the debate process, implying that such elaborate interpretive procedures shouldn't be necessary to it.

By asking where God forbade marriage "By expres word," the Wife is in effect asking "Where is it written?" At this moment she seems proto-Protestant, since a huge divide between later Protestants and Catholics was whether or not one should rely on the Bible alone for one's precepts and commandments, or whether it was OK to allow "tradition," or the wisdom of holy men collected through the centuries. By demanding God's express word as proof, the Wife seems to be in favor of the former, at least at this point in her Prologue.

Glossing was the activity of explaining a text. By referring to it here in relation to the purpose of the genitals, the Wife implies that she's drawing her information about this from scholarly texts. But in line 130, she deploys life experience in opposition to these texts' conclusions, continuing her method of pitting "auctoritee" against experience.

Here the Wife demonstrates selective amnesia in her recitation of Biblical texts: the words of Paul actually give husbands and wives power over one another's bodies. The Wife, however, desires absolute power over both her husband and herself, so conveniently forgets to mention the other part of Paul's text.

The idea that one ought to take others' lives of an example was one that was heavily connected to literature and writing, because the examples contained in literature were supposed to be directions for one's own life.

In yet another haphazard use of texts, the Wife here cites a proverb that is nowhere to be found in Ptolemy's works. Her interpretation of this proverb is even more creative; she holds it to mean that a husband shouldn't care if his wife is having sex with other men as long as he's getting some, too.

A 'good' reader of a medieval text was supposed to apply its wisdom to her own life. The Wife of Bath is not exactly a 'bad' reader, for she at least appears to know that this is what she is supposed to do, and at other points, she recommends the practice to others. It's just that in this case, she chooses not to "wirche" after the given text, as it conflicts with her values.

The book in which Jankyn takes so much pleasure is a collection of lots of antifeminist writings, particularly ones about wives. Jerome's Against Jovinian, for example, was a book St. Jerome wrote in response to a man named Jovinian who argued that married life was just as valuable as virginity. For some of the works the Wife cites here, however, it's less clear why they might have been in a collection of antifeminist writings. The Trotula, for example, was a medical text about women's health issues; its presence here is somewhat puzzling.

Jankyn seems really despicable in this description. Why does he take such pleasure in his collection of tales of wicked wives? If one believed the stories, wouldn't its reading be an occasion for sorrow, and not enjoyment?

The saints' lives the Wife refers to here were tales about women who almost always lived a life of perfect chastity, and often suffered a violent death for their Christianity. Implicit in this statement is a critique of the limited options available to women if they are to be considered 'good.'

Here the Wife recognizes the power of the pen to dictate the way we interpret the world. The Wife's point is that the only reason such horrible antifeminist stories exist is because men have always been the only ones given the opportunity to write.

One can read the Wife's attack on Jankyn's Book of Wicked Wives as her expression of frustration and anger at the entire antifeminist tradition, much of which is contained in texts just like this. Later, the Wife makes Jankyn burn his book, destroying it completely.