The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale Resources

Larry Benson collects basic information and links in one handy webpage. Most interesting are the relations of this tale to those of a few of Chaucer's contemporaries, and the connection of the tale to the courtly theme of the transforming power of love.

This page collects links to bibliographies, study guides, and audio and images.

Here's some interesting, well-sourced information about the loathly lady in Celtic and Germanic folklore.

This modern adaptation of the Wife of Bath's Prologue has the Wife of Bath as a 53-year old television actress and multiple divorcée who starts up a relationship with a much younger man when her husband leaves her. Pay attention to the television episode the Wife character is developing with her producers, which is how episodes from the Wife's tale make an appearance.

This is an image of the first page of "The Wife of Bath's Tale" from the Ellesmere manuscript, widely considered to be the most beautiful of the Chaucer manuscripts.

This is an image of the Wife of Bath from Cambridge Manuscript GG 4.27.

The BBC's modern adaptation.

Alan Baragona reads aloud the scene in which the Wife apologizes for failing to describe the joy at the knight's wedding (because there was none).

This page, provided by Harvard, offers ten lessons that start with a general explanation of the principles of Middle English pronunciation and move on to actual practice with the tales themselves.

This is a helpful glossary of Middle English terms often used in Chaucer. The 100 most common words are denoted by an asterisk.