SOURCE: Ireland, Colin A. “‘A Coverchief or a Calle’: The Ultimate End of the Wife of Bath's Search for Sovereignty.” Neophilologus 75, no. 1 (January 1991): 150-59.

In the following essay, Ireland compares The Wife of Bath's Tale with an Irish story in which the country of Ireland is personified as a woman—sometimes young, beautiful, and fertile, sometimes old and worn—to symbolize the state of the nation.

The Wife of Bath's search for sovereignty in marriage is the central theme in both her Prologue and in the Tale she tells. Modern criticism tends to maintain a clear distinction between the Wife's Prologue and her Tale, noting specifically that the style of the Tale is more formal and less lively than her earthy Prologue. This stylistic difference is highlighted by the evidence that in some earlier arrangements of the Canterbury Tales the Wife of Bath was originally intended to relate...