In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

hroughout his oeuvre,Chaucer betrays extreme authorial anxiety about being misinterpreted by readers, about his texts being erroneously transmitted, and about misrepresenting other “auctours” himself.1 He curses future readers/critics who for various reasons “mysdeme” his dream report about visiting Fame’s House (House of Fame [HF] 94–100). He curses his scribe, Adam Scriveyn, in the poem of the same name, with a case of scalp disease to ensure that he “wryte . . . true” rather than “wryte newe.”His Troilus-narrator apologizes for “in eche-ing”details beyond his “auctour’s” intent while narrating his text and invites more experienced lovers to “encresse” or “maken dymynucioun” of “myne wordes” (Troilus and Criseyde [TC] 3.1324–37). notoriously, Chaucer’s relation to his sources and literary analogues involves considerable “encresse” and “dymynucioun” of what he found in his ur-texts. This is especially true in The Wife of Bath’s Tale (WBT), his rendering of the “loathly lady” or “Irish Sovereignty” tale type which enjoyed a flowering in other late Middle english texts such as John Gower’s Tale of Florent (Florent),TheWedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell (Ragnell ),and The Marriage of Sir Gawain (Marriage). Compared with these versions, Chaucer makes significant “encresse,” notably precipitating the plot with an Arthurian knight’s rape of a maiden, expiation of which requires his learning what women really want. As in the analogues, the Knight makes a rash promise to an old woman, the loathly lady character. In return for the answer that will save him from decapitation, he must marry her. Chaucer practices “dymynucioun” by eliminating the detailed blazon of the grotesque physical appearance of a female figure who in Florent, Marriage, and especially Ragnell can justifiably be termed a “hag.” Judging by the considerable body of interpretive commentary about WBT, Chaucer had good reason to worry about being “mysdemed” or “wryten newe” Just How Loathly Is the “Wyf”?: Deconstructing Chaucer’s “Hag” in The Wife of Bath’s Tale Lorraine Kochanske Stock t 34 by critics who have taken his narrator’s offer in Troilus as an open invitation not only to “eche in” their own interpretations of what Chaucer does say in WBT but also, as if seeing a textual mirage, to completely fabricate details and language that Chaucer never wrote. Although this tendency holds true about other aspects of WBT, I now focus on what commentators have “eched in” about Chaucer’s loathly lady, especially their relentless designation of the figure as a “hag,”a label that I argue carried pejorative resonance that Chaucer chose not to burden his female character with. “Hag” as a Category of Medieval Female otherness “Hag”is a verbal signifier that attaches to aging females a vast spectrum of benevolent and malevolent presumptions and projections, as exemplified in the scholarly treatment of the female protagonist in WBT, an unnamed old woman whose nominal signifier is the “olde wyf.”2 Importantly, as is duly acknowledged by critics , the usually garrulous Wife’s uncharacteristically, and therefore significantly, reticent presentation of her female subject never physically describes the “wyf.” nevertheless, from early modern “translators” through contemporary scholars, Chaucerians almost universally represent this woman by the culturally loaded designator “the hag.”In over one hundred journal articles and book chapters devoted to WBT published in the past century,3 at least seventy-five of the critics refer to the “wyf” as some variant of “loathly,” “old,” or “ugly” “hag.” only about twenty critics label her “old wife,”“wife,”4 or “old woman,”5 echoing Chaucer’s own term, the “olde wyf.” taking a neutral position,some call her “loathly lady.”6 The “image” of the “wyf”as a hag in WBT originates in the eye of her first beholder, the rapist/ Knight to whom she gives the life-saving answer to the riddle that will determine the outcome of his rape trial. Similarly, the alleged transformation of the “wyf”to a young, beautiful bride at the tale’s conclusion is also a product of the Knight’s gaze. I intend to challenge the accumulated scholarly misreadings of the “wyf” as “hag” and to recuperate Chaucer’s wise old “wyf” in WBT. before we proceed,some operating definitions are in order.Middle english “wyf”denotes: a human biological female or generic woman (of any marital status); the mistress of a household; a married woman; a sexually experienced woman; or a non-virgin (Med, s.v.“wif ”1.a, b; 2. a, b). Modified by “olde,”“wyf”may...

Share