hello so in this first video I'm going to take you through a discussion of the Canterbury Tales we're going to start with kind of just looking at the Canterbury Tales in general as a work and then we're going to work up to looking at the Wife of Bath specifically all right so let's see moving to the next slide here so this is where we'll start which is looking at what the story is actually about so a common practice of medieval times was the religious pilgrimage and that's what you see in this illustration and in this story in particular is about a group of pilgrims uh who are on this annual pilgrimage to see the archbishop of Canterbury this was a yearly ritual uh that the people of Canterbury would undertake so what would often happen is that um you would have a small group of followers let's say um people from a certain village and they would set out to take this this pilgrimage to Canterbury which was you know again they they were mostly on foot a few of them would have had horses uh or maybe some sort of conveyance but most of them would have been on foot and the reason that they were going on this arduous journey was for some sort of favor um something that the archbishop could grant them you know a person might be in failing health they might want prayers for their for their health so that they can be made well again uh their crops might be failing something like that so again the the idea was to take this journey in hopes that the archbishop of Canterbury would be able to grant them some favor and then as these pilgrimages as they would go through these various communities and villages they would grow in number they would get larger and larger because people would come out they'd be curious where are you going oh uh haven't you heard we're going to see the Archbishop of Canterbury he can grant you any desire if you're ailing he can make you well if your crops are failing he can make your crops grow he can bring you riches you know whatever your prayer is the the archbishop can can answer that prayer so of course everybody says "Well that sounds like a really good deal let me in on it so the pilgrimages would grow and grow and grow right um until sometimes they amassed into just humongous numbers and Schulzer had actually witnessed this um this pilgrimage uh for for several years and he was very fascinated by it and he was fascinated by the people who went on them and the various aspects of humanity that were represented on these journeys so that's really the the impetus for the story is that we've got these 24 pilgrims uh who are gathered to to embark on this journey and I said here uh that this is a trope we've seen in many famous works but probably the most famous of all and one I'm sure you're all familiar with the Wizard of Oz right because what was what was the premise of that story you know Dorothy ends up in Oz and she meets up with some friends the Tin Man the Scarecrow and all of them have something that they're lacking so they're all making this journey to see the wizard in hopes that the wizard can give them whatever they want right whatever it is they're lacking so Dorothy is trying to find her way home the scarecrow needs a brain the tin man needs a heart the lion he's not pictured here but he needs courage they all need something that the wizard can give them so they set off on the journey to Oz to find it again I think if you look at it from that perspective I think that's a really good analogy for thinking about the Canterbury tails all right so we're not going to be concerned with all of the pilgrims on this journey uh we're we're mainly just looking at the wife of Bath uh but these were some of the well-known and popular pilgrims who emerged from this collection of stories but the the wife of Bath was you know she was the most colorful and memorable of these characters a lot of them were very religious in nature uh we had a frier for example who would have been a type of priest uh we had a nun we had a a parishioner you know that so most of these were sun very religious folks the wife of bath is kind of a I should say she's she's an anam an anomaly among these pilgrims she claims to be very religious but her views are often in in conflict with the with her fellow pilgrims all right this is what we call a framework story and that that is a term that I want you to remember for this so it it's a framework story in the sense that it's about these 24 pilgrims and each character has their own story to tell and then each one in turn tells a story within a story so just like with the wife of bath we start off with her prologue and the prologue if if you think about when we went back to the epic stories right what was the purpose of a prologue it establishes the beginning right but it's also the justification it's it's the purpose of the story why does the story need to be told and it's the background so the way that Schulzer sets up the Canterbury Tales is every pilgrim gets a prologue where we are introduced to their backstory in that backstory we learn who they are we learn something about their life we learn why they're on this journey why is this journey important to them and each one of them has their own reason for being on it and then within that story all right just like a picture frame we get another story and that is some story that they draw from classical mythology that relates in some way to their own story so it's always like it it's like a huge box with Schulzer the these bigger stories and then these little stories contained within them so each story is structured by a prologue followed by their actual tale okay so most of this is is repeating what I've already told you here but you know again we're going to get the prologue with their background um that's going to give some indication of their personality but again more importantly why they're on the journey what do they hope to gain from it and then the tale is that mythical story that some in some way echoes the theme of their own lives or their own reason for being on the journey here's the wife of bath um not surprisingly the very liberated strong opinionated and lusty wife of Bath's tale evokes deeprooted issues of gender and a woman's place in medieval society she is again the most colorful and many people argue the most memorable character of all the pilgrims and her description is very much like the illustration here she's described as dressing mainly in red quite scandalous all right because the color red was not worn by respectable women during the Middle Ages if you were a well brought up respectable woman you were dull grays lilacs pastel colors those were acceptable if you were a widow in mourning you would wear black but you did not wear bright colors like red you do not wear colors that draw attention to you in fact dressing in red would brand you a harlot well Shelzer tells us that the wife of Bath loves her red and she loves to adorn herself in her red clothing she loves the attention she loves to draw attention to herself she's not a great beauty according to the description that we get of her uh first of all she's not a young woman uh she's already well into middle age she's already put away five husbands again quite the scandal she's already been married and and has you know been widowed I think four times and then her uh one of her husbands left her uh but anyway you know just multiple marriages multiple husbands and again very very scandalous there there are not a lot of women in this particular journey and the few women that are are women like the nun the priestess so very religious women so you can imagine what they're making out of the wife of Bath she is a pariah uh among this group of pilgrims she is not very wellliked or wellreceived at all and she's aware of this and for the most part she's she seems to be okay with it because she doesn't um she doesn't alter her views to fit with the rest of society she thinks that most people are hypocritical in their views and a lot of what she spends her prologue kind of venting about is the the hypocrisy of how male and female roles are perceived she talks about for example um why is it that men can get away with infidelity and women can't uh men can have you know she speaks of in the Bible how men can have multiple wives but if a woman has multiple husbands that is scandalous uh men can have affairs and women can't uh men can have you know as much sex as they want and women can't or if they do they're branded a harlot so she you know again much of her prologue is her just kind of venting and railing about this double standard men can do this and women can't yeah and she a big part of what she preaches is what's good for the goose is good for the gander or what's good for the gander is good for the goose may have it backwards but you know what I mean if men can do it women should be able to do it also uh the story tells us that she has been a victim of domestic abuse she's partially deaf in one ear and the reason for for her having lost her hearing was because her her last husband Jenin had actually beat the holy crap out of her he actually punched her in the head so hard that she lost her hearing so she's a prime candidate to be you know ranting and railing about the the rights of women in this society all right so that's a little introduction to the wife of bath and I'm going to pause the video right here so I don't get cut off and I'm going to go ahead and upload this one and then I will record part two shortly