The Wife of Bath in Afterlife: Ballads to Blake (Studies in Text & Print Culture)

By focusing on one literary character, as interpreted in both verbal art and visual art at a point midway in time between the author's era and our own, this study applies methodology appropriate for overcoming limitations posed by historical periodization and by isolation among academic specialities. Current trends in Chaucer scholarship call for diachronic afterlife studies like this one, sometimes termed "medievalism." So far, however, nearly all such work by-passes the eighteenth century (here designated 1660-1810). Furthermore, medieval authors' afterlives during any time period have not been analyzed by way of the multiple fields of specialization integrated into this study. The Wife of Bath is regarded through the disciplinary lenses of eighteenth-century literature, visual art, print marketing, education, folklore, music, equitation, and especially theater both in London and on the Continent. "This study investigates interpretation of a late-fourteenth-century fictional character in both verbal and visual art of the period 1660-1810. Audiovisual analysis and diachronic afterlife studies intertwine concerning the Wife of Bath in songs, scholarship, commentary, poetic paraphrases, musical theater in London and on the Continent, paintings, and book illustration"-- Provided by publisher