Chaucer's Most Nimble Feat: Reproof of Anti-feminist Theology in The Wife of Bath's Prologue

Abstract

The Wife of Bath and its Prologue is inarguably one of the
most controversial of Geoffrey Chaucer's corpus of literature. Its
timelessness lends the work to the most pressing of contemporary
arguments-woman's place and her agency. While many literary
critics argue that Chaucer is in support of the anti-feminist
theology propagated by many medieval theologians, thi~ literary
analysis refutes those ideas, and instead, asserts that while
Chaucer brings to bear the most prevalent accusations made
against women, he does so in keeping with dialectical
argumentation. This method of voicing oppositional arguments
was widely practiced by St. Thomas Aquinas and others
persuaded by Scholasticism. In other words, Chaucer proposes a
position, and then undermines it with counter-logic.