Verified Document

Stream-Of-Consciousness In Chaucer Essay

Wife of Bath's Tale And Modern Stream-of-consciousness Writing Dear Chaucer:

The Wife of Bath is one of the most memorable of all of your characters in the Canterbury Tales. The Wife is likeable not only because of her boisterous, honest, and sexually frank persona but also because of the way in which she tells her tale. The Wife's storytelling anticipates modern stream-of-consciousness style. The Wife's style underlines the fact that it is not only how a story is told but who tells it that is important.

The Wife begins her tale by relating her experience of marriage before setting up the plot of her story: "I have had five husbands at the church-door (for I have been wedded so often); and all were worthy men in their ranks." She defends her ability to hold forth on the subject of marriage because of her obvious experience and also makes a humorous aside about how she considers her much-married history to be godly because did not King Solomon have many wives? Her attitude...

This reveals her free and easy attitude to religion that is in stark contrast to some of the other pilgrims.
The Wife admits she is fallible -- she is not cut out for chastity. She argues that Paul did say it was better to marry than to burn, even though chastity was considered a more perfect state. In her religious musings, the Wife lets us know that she is one of us, with many of the same excuses that people make for their own foibles.

The Wife's speech is conveyed in long, run-on sentences that frequently shift from past to present. This style enables the reader to understand her clever but wandering mind and how she rationalizes her colorful although somewhat improvident life. Of course, some people might protest that the Wife is actually speaking aloud, in contrast to the fact that a stream-of-consciousness is usually viewed as an interior monologue. But the subject matter she…

Sources used in this document:
Work Cited

Chaucer. "The Wife of Bath." The Canterbury Tales. 2007 [28 Mar 2014]

http://machias.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer/translation/ct/07wbt.html
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Knight's Tale
Words: 994 Length: 2 Document Type: Essay

Chaucer's The Knight's Tale Jonathan Zaun The societies which flourished throughout Europe during the medieval period were built upon a foundation of institutionalized honor known as chivalry. Orders of knighthood were established throughout the region which sought to produce exemplary soldiers and leaders of men. Medieval knights earned membership to this warrior class by defending their nation from external threats while always striving to uphold a personal code of conduct. The concept

Wife of Prioress
Words: 929 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales There are a bevy of similarities that exist between the tales of the wife of bath and the prioress in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The similarities largely pertain to the circumstances in which these individuals tell their tales. They are both women, and each are telling a tale to other pilgrims in which there presumably is both entertainment as well as ecclesiastical value in the subjects. However,

Dante Is Characterized As a
Words: 1057 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

For some people, beating on drums and meditation is a spiritual way to experience their religion on a higher level, which releases a different understanding. The Decameron includes a frame story about the plague in Florence in 1348, which can be explained from the following. AN EPOCH-MAKING EVENT in the development of early Italian narrative is the canonization, thanks to the astounding success of Boccaccio Decameron, of the cornice, the framing

Knight's Tale: How Does It Illustrate the
Words: 598 Length: 2 Document Type: Essay

Knight's Tale:" How does it illustrate the principles of chivalry? "The Knight's Tale" is meant to illustrate the medieval ideals of chivalry to the knight's listening audience of fellow pilgrims. In this story of courtly love, two men named Palamon and Arcite are in love with the same woman, Emelye. The two men are great warriors, both imprisoned in a tower after being on the losing side of the conflict between

Videos Presented Week. Identify a Piece Art,
Words: 633 Length: 2 Document Type: Essay

videos presented week. Identify a piece art, music, architecture, philosophy, The work of literature from the high and late Middle Ages that was analyzed in this week's readings and videos and which resonated the most was Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. This piece of literature is fascinating partly because it is so emblematic of this particular timeframe in a number of different ways. Specifically, the preoccupation with the theme of

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Words: 4565 Length: 11 Document Type: Term Paper

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight The Unattainable Chivalric Code Some Thoughts on Chivalry The chivalric code is a paradigm that is both poorly understood and was even more poorly applied, not because the code was not clearly written down and able to be transferred among the people who it applied to but because of its very confusing historical development and even more confusing codification. The Chivalric code grew out of the desire

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now