Wife of Bath 2.0: Medievalist Appropriations of Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale"

Bachelor Thesis in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: A description of what can be regarded as medievalism or neomedievalism will be the focus of the first chapter of this thesis and will be the foundation for the following analysis. The analysis will then focus on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Prologue and The Wife of Bath's Tale which is part of The Canterbury Tales. After bringing the basic themes, structure, and linguistic aspects to the surface, these will build the foundation of a comparative analysis of three modern products which adapt Chaucer's original prologue and tale and reinterpret them in their own way. The three examples in focus will be two poems, the first being Jean "Binta" Breeze's The Wife of Bath Speaks in Brixton Market, and secondly Patience Agbabi's What Do Women Like Bes?. The third one is a rap song by Baba Brinkman named The Wife of Bath. All three will be analysed and compared to the original in terms of their content, their structure and language. After the close readings and comparisons, the findings will be revisited in an attempt to recognise a pattern in how they all tried to bring something from the Middle Ages into modern times and see what and why they have changed to achieve this. This chapter will also include reflections on the actuality of the original and the need to refer back to it time and again. Before concluding the thesis, a final evaluation of whether the poems and the song can be regarded as neomedievalism or medievalism will follow to take recourse to the introductory thoughts on these concepts. Thus, the question of research will be how each contemporary medievalist appropriation of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale thematises the issues that are implied in Chaucer's work and in what way they update it for a modern audience to bring forward their message and what they regard as important.