A Book Suggestion for Anyone That's Tackling Melibee

In Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy, Wallace covers a lot of ground (it's a huge book). I requested this book as an Interlibrary Loan because of a chapter that Amanda Walling referenced in the article we looked at in class. Chapter 8, "Household Rhetoric: Violence and Eloquence in the Tale of Melibee" addresses the influence of Albertano, a popular medieval author, and his work Liber consolationis. In Liber, Prudentia leads her husband into penitence through her rational argumentation, preventing him from impulsively resorting to violence. This persuasion parallels Prudence's argumentation with Melibee. Wallace argues that both Prudence and the Wyf of Bath "threaten to uncover disequilibrium, if not violence and unruliness, within [male] critical discourse" (223).

Wallace goes on to suggest that the Wyf and Prudence have much more in common than scholars usually credit. Both wives are attempting to dissuade men from engaging in violence. In the Wyf's tale, the violence of rape is protested by the court of ladies, but they spare his life in an attempt to prevent further violence. Melibee is distraught over the violence done to his daughter, but Prudence persuades him to not seek revenge through violent means. The way both women go about this is through a feminized "glossynge" of texts. Wallace argues that both women combat the necessarily masculinized (which I'm not sure about) desire to ignore the inherently contradictory nature of texts. In this way, they are able (to varying degrees of success) gain auctoritee through a non-exigetical interpretation of texts. This connects to the discussion that I'm creating in my longer paper. Importantly, they are only able to do so in the private sphere of the home (the Wyf tearing Janekyn's page, Prudence and Melibee conversing in private). A gaining of auctoritee in the public sphere is only possible through the fantasy of the Wyf, where the court is largely ruled by ladies who get to interpret texts (and male understandings of women) as they see fit.

Anyway. Cool book. If you want to borrow it you can!

Wallace, David. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Print.