The Wife of Bath’s Prologue

Summary

I. Walter Map, Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum 357 (ed. R. Hanna and T. Lawler)

II. Theophrastus, Liber de Nuptiis 357 (ed. R. Hanna and T. Lawler)

III. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum 361 (ed. J.-P. Migne)

IV. Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose 367 (ed. Félix Lecoy) SOME MINOR SOURCES

V. Valerius Maximus, Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 379 (ed. John Briscoe)

VI. Gerard of Cremona, Preface to Ptolemy’s Almagest 381 (ed. Karl Young)

VII. Aesop’s Fables in the Latin Version of “Romulus” 383 (ed. Johannes F. Nilant)

VIII. “Almansor” (Al-Isrà‘ìlì), Judicia Seu Propositiones 385 (Venice, 1493)

IX. “Hermes,” Liber Aphorismorum Centum 387 (Venice, 1493)

TWO ANALOGUES

X. Matheolus, Lamentationes 387 (ed. A.-G. van Hamel)

XI. Eustache Deschamps, Le Miroir de Mariage 395 (ed. Gaston Raynaud)

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue is surely among the most original and vital of Chaucer’s poems, and yet it is also the one most deeply involved in literary tradition. That tradition, even at its most serious (as with Jerome), was always allied with satire, and it certainly had its comic manifestations, most notably in the Roman de la Rose. But nothing in the tradition approaches the rich comedy of the Wife of Bath. Part of that comedy lies in the witty use Chaucer made of texts, and we present here both passages he surely used (from Jerome, Theophrastus, Walter Map, Jean de Meun, and a few lesser authors), and some that may or may not be sources but at least illustrate the tradition and cast some light on many of his lines (Matheolus and Eustache Deschamps).

The tradition of identifying the sources of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue is virtually contemporary with Chaucer. The Ellesmere manuscript, whose “aura of authority” is especially evident in the Wife’s prologue, gives forty-one quotations of sources in its margins; the Egerton manuscript gives fifty-five, almost all from the bible, though many are illustrative parallels (or implied attacks on the wife) rather than sources. We have tried to honor the Ellesmere glossator in what we print. More than half of his glosses are to lines 1–183 and are taken from Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum; most are biblical verses, but they are cited because Jerome cites them.