Auctoritee and Pref

Résumé fourni par la source

The Wife of Bath, is the licensed Fool of the company: she represents that characteristically medieval taste which sees true comedy in strict inversion of truth. Medieval canonists might debate how much correction was due to a wife from her husband. The comic solution is exactly to invert the problem: let the wife beat the husband. The mature work of the Franklin’s Tale raises some problems for modern criticism which are relatively constant in Geoffrey Chaucer’s development—most notably, that mixture of comic and serious effects which sometimes leaves the modern reader uncertain of the preponderant effect in any one instance. Chaucer has cast the Franklin well for the role of genial narrator, one whose susceptibilities to the exalted status of his characters will be fortified by natural optimism. Chaucer himself, as narrator of the ‘double sorwes’ of Troilus, was fluent, versatile in language, knowledgeable in the extreme.

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