ASMR reading of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales. We've been reading the #100daysofdante challenge and I had this nagging in the back of my mind about Chaucer, a favorite book of mine from college. Lo and behold- I'm skimming through and come across the Wife of Bath tale where she references Dante: "thus the wise poet of the Florentines/Dante by name, has written in these lines/for such is the opinion Dante launches/'seldom arises by the slender branches/prowess of men, for it is God, no less/wills us to claim of Him our gentleness.'  Listen with headphones for the best experience, and i hope you can forgive my attempt at rhyming some of the less obvious rhymes.   

"The Wife of Bath's Tale" (Middle English: The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe) is among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and was probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. He also goes so far as to describe two sets of clothing for her in his General Prologue. She holds her own among the bickering pilgrims, and evidence in the manuscripts suggests that although she was first assigned a different, plainer tale—perhaps the one told by the Shipman—she received her present tale as her significance increased.[citation needed] She calls herself both Alyson and Alys in the prologue, but to confuse matters these are also the names of her 'gossib' (a close friend or gossip), whom she mentions several times, as well as many female characters throughout The Canterbury Tales.  The tale is an example of the "loathly lady" motif, the oldest examples of which are the medieval Irish sovereignty myths such as Niall of the Nine Hostages. In the medieval poem The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, Arthur's nephew Gawain goes on a nearly identical quest to discover what women truly want after he errs in a land dispute, although, in contrast, he never stooped to despoliation or plunder, unlike the unnamed knight who raped the woman. By tradition, any knight or noble found guilty of such a transgression (abuse of power), might be stripped of his name, heraldic title and rights, and possibly even executed.  

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