Discussion: The Wife of Bath as a Feminist Icon

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Author Marion Turner is joined by Emily McLemore to discuss "The Wife of Bath: A Biography" and examine how the character is a literary and feminist icon who still captures readers' imaginations.
March is Women's History Month, and in this virtual program Marion Turner, the award-winning biographer of "Chaucer: A European Life", and Emily McLemore will explore his most popular and scandalous character looking at her role throughout history from the Middle Ages up to #MeToo movement.
From the publisher:
Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer’s "Canterbury Tales", the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers - from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched her influence or capacity for reinvention in poetry, drama, fiction, and film. In "The Wife of Bath: A Biography," Marion Turner tells the fascinating story of where Chaucer’s favourite character came from, how she related to real medieval women, and where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century, from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.
About the panelists:
Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford. "Chaucer: A European Life" won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.
Emily McLemore is a postdoctoral teaching fellow at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in Medieval English Literature and Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her research focuses on representations of women and the perpetual entanglement of gender, sex and violence that extends from the Medieval period to the modern one.
This event was recorded on March 5, 2023.