*Marion Turner - author of The Wife of Bath*

It is difficult to hear the stories of medieval women, but one voice rings down the ages, clear as a bell. Alison, the Wife of Bath, is Geoffrey Chaucer’s most famous creation, irrepressible, hilarious, insightful, she is the star of The Canterbury Tales with her outrageous stories and touching honesty.

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It’s clear that Chaucer could not resist her, he gave her many more lines than her fellow pilgrims and mentions her several times in his other books. This was just the beginning of Alison’s many afterlives as a ‘bookrunner’, a character who escapes into other stories.

Marion Turner, Professor of English at the University of Oxford and acclaimed expert on Chaucer, reveals of these escapades in her new book The Wife of Bath. The first ‘normal’ woman in English literature, Alison is extraordinary in her ordinariness. Middle aged, middle class, a working woman who has been married five times, she isn’t afraid to admit her faults and tackle the big issues of the day, above all, misogyny.

Using her as a lens, Turner brings the stories of real medieval women to light, revealing a period of relative female empowerment in England, especially when compared with southern European countries.

In the following centuries, many people tried to silence the Wife of Bath, but she has survived and fascinated a huge range of writers from William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope to Margaret Atwood and Zadie Smith – her escapades in other people’s stories up to the present day are the subject of the second half of Turner’s book.

In this episode, Turner takes us back to 1397, to Chaucer’s world in London and Oxfordshire, as he attends on King Richard II and visits his son, Thomas.

We hear the extraordinary story of John of Gaunt and his beloved mistress Katherine Swynford, Geoffrey Chaucer’s sister-in-law, who he had married the year before. Their children were brought up in a large, loving family unit alongside Gaunt’s legitimate offspring and the young Chaucers. Along the way we meet some real-life Alisons, women who ran businesses, travelled extensively, and lived independently, including one who was mayoress of London, not once, but twice.

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Marion Turner’s The Wife of Bath is out now from Princeton University Press.

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Show Notes

Scene One: January 1397. The English Parliament and the legitimatisation of John of Gaunt's children with Katherine Swynford.

Scene Two: End of 1397. Chaucer has been gifted a new grant of a yearly ton of wine from the King.

Scene Three: Summer. Margaret Stodeye heads off to St Paul's Cathedral to declare a vow of chastity.

Memento: Chaucer's handwritten draft of the Canterbury Tales.

People/Social

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Marion Turner

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

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About Marion Turner

Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, where she is a Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Her books include the prize-winning biography Chaucer: A European Life.