The Wife of Bath: A Biography

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From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo.

Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucers Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readersfrom Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched her influence or capacity for reinvention in poetry, drama, fiction, and film. In The Wife of Bath, Marion Turner tells the fascinating story of where Chaucers favourite character came from, how she related to real medieval women, and where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century, from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.

A sexually active and funny working woman, the Wife of Bath, also known as Alison, talks explicitly about sexual pleasure. She is also a victim of domestic abuse who tells a story of rape and redemption. Formed from misogynist sources, she plays with stereotypes. Turner sets Alisons fictional story alongside the lives of real medieval womenfrom a maid who travelled around Europe, abandoned her employer, and forged a new career in Rome to a duchess who married her fourth husband, a teenager, when she was sixty-five. Turner also tells the incredible story of Alisons post-medieval life, from seventeenth-century ballads and Polish communist pop art to her reclamation by postcolonial Black British women writers.

'Those who foreground alternative voices must reach for innovative forms and reworkings of genre. Turner does this brilliantly, allowing Alison of Bath to speak for the legions of contemporary women otherwise silenced by history.' Daisy Hay, Financial Times

'A] superb biography.Turner's beautifully written, rewarding and thought-provoking book about this imaginary woman shows how much her literary existence has to say about actual womens lives.' Gillian Kenny, The Spectator

'This is a wonderfully witty, thoughtful and authoritative meditation on one of English literatures most astonishing characters a woman both ahead of her time and yet very much emblematic of the social changes under way in 14th-century England.' Carolyne Larrington, Literary Review

Reviews

"Those who foreground alternative voices must reach for innovative forms and reworkings of genre. Turner does this brilliantly, allowing Alison of Bath to speak for the legions of contemporary women otherwise silenced by history."---Daisy Hay, Financial Times
"[A] superb biography.Turner's beautifully written, rewarding and thought-provoking book about this imaginary woman shows how much her literary existence has to say about actual womens lives."---Gillian Kenny, The Spectator
"

This is a wonderfully witty, thoughtful and authoritative meditation on one of English literatures most astonishing characters a woman both ahead of her time and yet very much emblematic of the social changes under way in 14th-century England.

"---Carolyne Larrington, Literary Review
"The history of women in the Middle Ages is fraught with uncertainties, especially when it comes to source material and authorship; Turner unfurls this complexity in elegant, quietly angry prose, grounded in deep scholarly research. . . . Turners biography of Alison of Bath demonstrates the stunning resonance of medieval prejudice in the present."---Erin Maglaque, New York Times Book Review
"A wonderful biography."---Mary Wellesley, Telegraph
"Marion Turner writes from a feminist perspective, but she is not a presentistthe kind of person who faults the past for failing to live up to the standards, or some peoples standards, of the present. . . . You are grateful for Turners thoroughness. She is especially adept at drawing meaning not only from characters similarities but also from their differences."---Joan Acocella, New Yorker
"Turners immensely entertaining biography will make you fall in love with the Wife of Bath, whom she crowns the first ordinary woman in English literature. . . . Wonderfully accessible and briskly entertaining."---Ron Charles, Washington Post
"[A] passionate literary biography. . . . Turners prose is straightforward, artful, and occasionally biting. . . . Fans of Chaucers work and literature lovers more generally shouldnt miss this." * Publishers Weekly *
"This engrossing academic study helps you appreciate why, nearly eight centuries after Chaucer brought her to life, this funny, sexually confident middle-aged woman remains a titan of literature."---Martin Chilton, The Independent
"[A] lively biography."---Eleanor Parker, History Today
"Turners scholarly yet lively portrait of her [The Wife of Bath] reveals much about the real-life women who were the earliest readers of her tale, and about the cultures that have been captivated by her ever since."---Pippa Bailey, New Statesman
"Written in elegant, accessible prose, The Wife of Bath reinvents literary criticism to tell the extraordinary story of one of English literatures most memorable, norm-busting characters." * Foreword Reviews *
"Erudite."---Susie Goldsbrough, The Times
"A brilliant commentary on Chaucers Alisoun and the posthumous relevance of Alison in our fractious world of gender politics."---Timothy Mowl, Country Life
"[A] superb exploration of the most memorable character in The Canterbury Tales."---Matthew DAncona, Tortoise
"An intriguing combination of the fantastically bawdy and the deadly serious [...] thrilling."---Katy Guest, The Guardian
"As Marion Turners thoroughly engaging book makes clear, Alison has thrived nonetheless; she remains a woman who intimidated and frightened so many male writers and artists across time, but who would not be suppressed'"---Mary C. Flannery, Times Literary Supplement
"Turners enthralling take on Chaucer is so rich, inspiring and relevant."---Lucasta Miller, The Critic
"[The Wife of Bath] finally gets the lively, full-length study shes always deserved in Marion Turners new book The Wife of Bath: A Biography. . . . Its fun, thought-provoking popular scholarship at its best."---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review
"[A] fascinating book." * The Week *
"[Marion Turner] writes in a companionable way that makes this a most engaging book about a fourteenth-century woman."---Sean Sheehan, The Prisma

Author Bio

Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, where she is a Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Her books include the prize-winning biography Chaucer: A European Life.