The Wife of Bath's Marginal Authority

To read The Wife of Bath's Prologue in glossed manuscripts is to become keenly aware of how much scripture Chaucer translates and comments on through this unlikely woman preacher. Throughout the fifteenth century, scribes regularly call attention to Alison's many biblical sources, usually by copying into the margin some part of the original Latin, creating a mise-en-page that highlights her (Chaucer's) acts of vernacular translation. The simplest glossing programs scatter several Latin notes through the work, while the most extensive crowd glosses into barely adequate margins.¹ Each glossed manuscript selectively emphasizes the scriptural borrowings (as well as other features), and a number reveal how closely the English follows the biblical Latin. When Alison argues that "god bad vs wexe and multiple," for instance, the scribe of Oxford, New College 314 (Ne), links her words to Latin scripture: "Crescite et multiplicamini" (Increase and multiply, Gen. 1:28).² Scribes continue to draw attention to scriptural translations in the Prologue long after Thomas Arundel's 1407/9 Constitutiones declare the possession of vernacular scripture potentially heretical. Despite the prohibitions, Alison's vernacular project was apparently not censored, and biblical glosses survive in nineteen of the fifty-eight extant manuscripts and incunabula. ³ Some scribes also identify Alison's biblical sources (not always correctly), further highlighting her translations of the Word.⁴

At the time of Chaucer's composition, and throughout the work's early reception, this treatment of scripture is unusual. Vernacular literature typically develops narratives drawn from scripture, usually with considerable elaboration of noncanonical detail, as famously occurs in the Corpus Christi plays.⁵ Such "popular Bibles" are not considered threatening to orthodoxy. In fact, verse translations and adaptations of the Word are exempt from ecclesiastical strictures on vernacular theology, even at the height of Lollard persecutions.⁶ By contrast, The Wife of Bath's Prologue recites few biblical stories, and even those are condensed versions, notably lacking in colorful narrative detail: "Crist ne wente neuere but ones / To weddyng in the Cane of Galilee" (10-11). Nor does Alison draw on a psalter or Book of Hours, detail the Ten Commandments, recite the Creed, or list the seven deadly sins, all of which would be entirely acceptable for the laity of her class.⁷ Instead, she focuses on vernacular translation and literal interpretation of canonical scripture, detached from conventional Latin glosses.

Although vernacular translation is controversial at the time, most ecclesiastics would theoretically consider Alison's literal hermeneutics suitable to her class and gender, and appropriate for a lay audience.⁸ Literal interpretation finds contemporary support among lowly preachers, influential exegetes, and controversial theologians alike, all of whom favor what they call literal interpretation, though what they mean by "literal" varies from exegete to exegete, and sometimes even within the work of one exegete.⁹ Although the "letter of the text" is a fluid concept, Alcuin Blamires and Lawrence Besserman astutely propose that the nuances of Alison's literal hermeneutic align her with Lollardy, an alignment strengthened by her acts of vernacular scriptural translation. ¹⁰ She is also orthodox, as evidenced by her role in the Canterbury pilgrimage. In other words, Chaucer's Alison ambiguously references both Lollardy and orthodoxy, enacting a hybrid religion increasingly common in late medieval England.¹¹ Chaucer clearly designs his feminine persona to engage unsettled contemporary debates about vernacular scripture and lay hermeneutics. The persona allows Chaucer to enter the debates behind a mask, safely distanced from "Alison's" vernacular theology and hermeneutic positions.

The feminine persona is hardly a neutral choice in this cultural context. Speaking through the Wife of Bath, Chaucer reaccentuates scripture in the most controversial possible voice, that of a laywoman from the artisan class.¹² Alison's class and gender mark her as one of the unlearned people ("Lollards") whose exegesis, officials fear, could dangerously unsettle society. With her feisty rejection of apostolic, patristic, and spousal authority, Alison appears unlikely to calm those fears. Chaucer's Wife of Bath is indeed a provocative exegete in an age filled with controversies over lay access to vernacular scripture...