Courtly Love In The Wife Of Bath's Tale

Geoffrey Chaucer was a driving force in the Middle Ages and is known to be the “Father of the English Language” as he popularized the English language in literature and introduced bawdy, vernacular speech in his books and poems. One of his most celebrated works is The Canterbury Tales, a frame story representing people from different social classes, ages, genders, and occupations of the medieval period. Love is a persisting theme throughout the entire story and many of the tales express extreme attitudes about love and a woman’s role in marriage. The Wife of Bath’s Tale and the Clerk’s Tale contradict and vilify each other’s perspective of “courtly love” and a proper marriage. A knight that had grievously reviled a woman’s dignity was demanded to identify what women most desired in the Wife of Bath’s Tale. He discovered that women most desire to rule over their husbands. In

He showed Dorigen actually having a strong will of her own and not just blindly following the words of others in contrast to the character Constance who was the protagonist in the Man of Law’s Tale. Dorigen not only proves herself to be of strong character and morale but she also chooses what is right and what is honorable. Her husband, Arviragus, also displayed chivalry in how he chose to protect his wife’s dignity. The squire Aurelius did not disillusion himself into thinking that he was Dorigen’s love and because of that, he decided to do what was good and to what was right. The Franklin presents several themes throughout the tale such as good prevailing over evil and the power of love but he stresses the moral of keeping true to one’s self and being truthful. Many people in today’s society live in a subjective world of fantasy where lies and fallacies only further and cultivate their reverie and attitude of complacency and