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Medieval Romance In The Wife Of Bath's Tale

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From the words of the internet, the Wife of Bath’s tale is a chivalric or medieval romance, as some of the stories in the book “Canterbury Tales” were about the Arthurian romance. Some elements of the said romance manifest themselves in the tale, despite the fact that some parts of the story are opposite of what the aspects of medieval romance. Like for example, one of the elements say that the story contains an idealized hero-knight. When we think of a knight, the words “loyal”, “justice”, “manners” and “bravery” follow immediately. In the story though, the knight is introduced when he rapes a young woman, thus breaking the honor code of a hero knight. It first mentions of a wise and just leader, in the story it is King Arthur. The knight of the story committed the crime of rape, in which King Arthur immediately decides the consequence to this terrible deed. Although his wife, Queen Guinevere, is able to intervene on behalf of the knight, it is no doubt that …show more content…

The gods were involved during the battle between Arcite and Palamon. Palamon prays to Venus so that he will win Emily’s love. Arcite prays to Mars so that he will win the tournament. Emily prays to Diana so that she will remain a virgin; yet after saying that she must marry one of the cousins Emily decided to obey. Meanwhile, both men have received positive signs, with Saturn saying that Arcite will win the tournament but Palamon will win Emily’s hand in marriage. When Arcite wins the tournament, Saturn sends a fury from hell, causing Arcite to fall off his horse and become mortally injured. In the Wife of Bath’s tale, perhaps it is fate who sent the knight to the old hag. It was the old hag who taught the knight a lesson about women and their

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Chivalric romances are often centered upon the efforts of gallant knights seeking to achieve a concept known as “true knighthood” which involves embarking on quests or adventures to obtain honor, love, and Christian virtue. The brave knights of these stories are met with many obstacles to overcome, commonly in regards to rescuing or protecting a lady. In other words, the typical role of women in this period is that of the damsel in distress or a helpless, dependent lady in need of a hero. However, the stories of Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain, the Knight of the Lion and Friedrich Heinrich Karl La Motte-Fouqué’s The Magic Ring strays from the typical role of women as the damsel in distress.

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The Wife of Bath’s Tale is a King Arthur romance based on the theme of the frog prince, but, with an unlikely twist. A knight commits a wrongful deed and when he is caught, the king turns his punishment over to the queen. The queen decides that given the crime, the knight will have the challenge of answering the question “what is it that women desire?”. He has exactly one year and a day to find the answer to this question, which proves to be harder than he thought. Alas, when the day arrives, he is tested by marrying an old woman who gave him the answer to the queens question.

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In the second-to-last stanza, it appears that the woman had decided that the knight had fully learned his lesson, and they were able to have a happy relationship. The last stanza seems to be an ideal that the Wife of Bath holds. Instead of wives being, “meek and young and fresh in bed,” the Wife of Bath wishes for men to be held to that same standard. She also prays that any man who, “won’t be governed by their wives” to be killed, meaning that she wants men to hold the same amount of respect for their romantic partner as anyone else, otherwise they should be punished. These stanzas offer a satisfying conclusion, while also adding in the Wife of Bath’s ideas of gender equality and respect.

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This mockery shows stereotypes in a humorous way in order to attempt to change the way human nature is towards women. The first sentence of the Wife of Bath shows the reader that she relays on experience rather than listening and learning.

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With each tale, there are different events that occur in order to reach the main topic of these tales. Within the Knight’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Tale, and the Pardoner's Tale, Chaucer does a phenomenal job in having these tales represent the societal problems of his era. Geoffrey Chaucer uses the Knight’s Tale to explains how love can corrupt the trust between two cousins. The knight is telling the story of Palamon and Arcita, two prisoners of wars that are locked up in a prison in the city of Athens. One day, the two look outside the prison window and see a fair young lady called, Emily.

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Medieval society portrayed what love and generosity should be. Older men married young women. Of course women had no choice in who hey married. The dowry benefits family member, not the women. Older men marrying young women had a suffrage of inequality in the relationship.

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The Wife of Bath and her tale are the most similar out of all the tales because they both share a domineering outlook over others. In the general prologue she is told to have had five husbands and is described as a looker, “Her face was bold and handsome and ruddy,” (Chaucer 39). In her prologue she goes more in depth of her time spent with her five husbands. Wife of Bath talks most about how she gains control over her husbands. For instance, her fifth husband was the controlling force in their marriage until he made the mistake of hitting her and telling her he would do anything to keep her with him and said, “My own true wife, do as you wish for the rest of your life…” (335).

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Her actions do not fit the model visions a husband would have of a wife in the medieval times. In addition to the emotional and sexual abuse, the Wife of Bath sought

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Chaucer uses the “Prologue” knight to provide social commentary on the good in humanity. The Prologue knight “loved chivalry / Truth, honour, freedom and all courtesy / Full worthy was he in his sovereign’s war /  Of mortal battles he had fought fifteen”

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The Knights Tale The Knight’s Tale is a very romantic story as it is presented, of two knights who have fallen in love with a maid without ever physically touching her. This tale is supposedly a true story passed down among the knights of the day. Chaucer presents it with over-stressed traditions of romantic literature. Some of the oddities of the tales are really presented when taken into a whole with the Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale is the first of the Canterbury tales.

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In the book of Wife of Bath’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer shows the role of a woman being weak creatures while men are economically powerful and educated. Women are seen as inheritor of eve and thus causes

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On the other hand, in the tale she tells a story about a Knight who takes the maidenhood of a young girl which almost causes him to lose his life and about women gaining sovereignty. The Wife of Bath fifth husband, King Arthur, the Knight, and the Wife of Bath will be placed in Dante’s hell in the Inferno. The

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The beginning of The Knight’s Tale is a story about two cousins who fell in love with the same woman. Palamon and Arcite were prisoners of Theseus, the king of Athens. On a beautiful spring morning in May Palamon woke up early and saw a beautiful woman named Emily. Emily was Athens’s princess. When Palamon woke his cousin, he also fell in love with Emily.

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Throughout her introduction of the tale, and the story itself, we see the Wife of Bath as an experienced, intellectual woman, who despite living in a world of patriarchal power, provides for herself financially, emotionally, and physically. As a feminist icon, she confronts serious social issues that illustrate the subjugation women faced. During her prologue and her tale, it is very clear that the Wife of Bath is proud and not ashamed of her sexuality. She views sex as a good ideal, and argues it, using references from the Bible, that God’s intentions

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Also in the story the part where the knight commits the crime that propels the rest of the story, “He saw a maiden walking all forlorn ahead of him, alone as she was born. And of that spite maiden, spite of all she said. By force he took her maidenhead” ( 61- 64). In the first quote the knight learns a valuable lesson that when finding a woman to wife and love, you must evaluate her on how she will treat you and love you.

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