2014 Theses Doctoral
Wifely Counsel and Civic Leadership in The Canterbury Tales
This dissertation identifies wifely counsel as a major theme in The Canterbury Tales. My analysis of The Tale of Melibee, The Clerk's Tale, The Wife of Bath's Prologue, and The Wife of Bath's Tale reveals a pattern of women instructing, transforming, and collaborating with their husbands to accomplish important work for both the household and the public sphere. Wife-counselors in the Tales do not merely provide advice; in moments that modern critics too often overlook, these women also supersede their husbands in leadership roles to mediate conflicts and dispense justice. By reading the tales in my study as narratives of wifely counsel, I show how greater critical attention to plots and characters illuminates underexplored arguments about gender, marriage, and women as political agents in the Tales.
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Rosebrock_columbia_0054D_12230.pdf application/pdf 928 KB Download File
More About This Work
- Academic Units
- English and Comparative Literature
- Thesis Advisors
- Crane, Susan
- Degree
- Ph.D., Columbia University
- Published Here
- July 7, 2014