The Wife of Bath is the most vibrant character in "The Canterbury Tales" and arguably the most famous. In creating his brilliant portrayal of the talkative wife, Chaucer weaves a dazzling array of allusions to biblical, classical, patristic, and vernacular sources. These two volumes the most recent contribution to the Variorum Chaucer series integrate six hundred years of scholarship on "The Wife of Bath s Prologue and Tale."

Editors Mark Allen and John H. Fisher present a comprehensive record of the textual traditions of the tale and of the critical commentary from the earliest manuscripts...