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50
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
40/100Critics
60/100Scholars
Author:
Marion Turner
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Date:
January 17, 2023
Marion Turner tells the story of where Chaucer's favorite character came from, how she related to real medieval women, and where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century, from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.
What The Reviewers Say
Turner shows with great care how literature and life come together in Chaucer’s writing.
Turner’s immensely entertaining 'biography' will make you fall in love with the Wife of Bath, whom she crowns 'the first ordinary woman in English literature'.
... this book is an intriguing combination of the fantastically bawdy and the deadly serious. It contains all the academic throat-clearing you might expect from a dissertation... and all the forensic research, too.
Turner’s book is in two halves, first looking at the real possibilities for a woman like Alison—her given name—in the late 14th century, and then showing how she has been picked up and re-imagined through the centuries up to now. Ms. Turner’s first conclusion is that Alison is indeed very plausible.
