THE MARRYING KIND
The New Yorker|February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)
The afterlives of Chaucer's Wife of Bath.
JOAN ACOCELLA
THE MARRYING KIND

There are a few things in our culture that almost no one dislikes. Dolly Parton, fried rice... I can think of something else, too. For this item the constituency is smaller-you probably have to go to college to want to vote on it-but really, it, or she, should be included: the Wife of Bath, from Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." With "The Canterbury Tales," which Chaucer wrote during the last decade or so of his life he died in 1400, leaving it unfinished he went a long way toward inventing the novel. Actually, scholars don't agree on what the first novel was, but, more than any other work preceding it, "The Canterbury Tales" has a trait, in abundance, that people look for in a novel and miss if it's not there: the noise and bustle of real human life, the market-square color and variety that you find in "Tom Jones" and "Middlemarch" and "War and Peace" indeed, in most of the works that we reflexively think of as great novels. One might even say that "The Canterbury Tales" has too much human life, too many characters: some thirty late-medieval people who are going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral and who decide to pass the time by taking turns telling stories.

Among them is the Wife of Bath, Alison by name, a clothmaker-well off, well travelled, well dressed, riding a nice horse. Alison is a sort of distillation of the work's chief novelistic qualities, its realism and its immediacy. As she speaks, you can almost feel her breath on your neck. And it's not just medieval life she's talking about. Her story is also a summary of much of the important literature available to people of the Middle Ages, the stories that taught them who they were. Alison is a whole syllabus of human wishes and grudges, blessings and curses a Divine Comedy, a Metamorphoses, a Decameron, even. (She alludes to all of these sources.)

Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.

Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.

Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.

Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.

WEITERE ARTIKEL AUS THE NEW YORKERAlle anzeigen
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
The New Yorker

President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.

On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.

time-read
8 Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
The New Yorker

LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES

Go with the flow like a dead fish.

time-read
2 Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The New Yorker

CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS

The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives

time-read
5 Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
The New Yorker

BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS

How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
The New Yorker

THE ARTIFICIAL STATE

A different kind of machine politics.

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
The New Yorker

THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON

Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
The New Yorker

THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE

Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
THE HOME FRONT
The New Yorker

THE HOME FRONT

Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
The New Yorker

SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED

Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
November 11, 2024
TUCKER EVERLASTING
The New Yorker

TUCKER EVERLASTING

Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
November 11, 2024