The Wife of Bath
The medieval woman from the middling ranks who answers back has fascinated writers from Shakespeare to Voltaire, James Joyce and Zadie Smith, whose version is at the Kiln Theatre.
Chaucer's widow and clothmaker is one of three characters given a longer confessional voice than other pilgrims in his Canterbury Tales and she uses her narrative to ask who has had the advantage in setting out the stories of women - "Who peyntede the leon, tel me who?" Shahidha Bari explores both the roots and the influence of Chaucer's creation and the different modern versions created by writers including Zadie Smith and Caroline Bergvall. Her guests are Marion Turner, author of The Wife of Bath: A Biography, Patience Agbabi who reimagines this timeless character as a Nigerian businesswoman in her poem The Wife of Bafa, and New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes.
You can hear Marion Turner discussing Chaucer's own life in a past episode of Free Thinking hearing from nominees for the 2020 Wolfson History Prize /programmes/m000j2qw
You can find a discussion about Chaucer's court case in an Arts and Ideas podcast episode called A Feminist Take on Medieval History /programmes/p06n28wv
And Free Thinking has a whole collection of programmes exploring Women in the World all available on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sounds and as Arts & Ideas podcasts /programmes/p084ttwp
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Podcast
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Arts & Ideas
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives.
