The Wife of Bath’s Passing Fancy
Louise O. Fradenburg
The Wife of Bath's Passing Fancy Louise 0.Fradenburg Dartmouth College In h;s Lettm on Chi,a/ry andRoman" (1762), B;shop Hmd tdls, tale that can help us better understand the strange power own storytelling. bishop's tale, like Wife's, is about death romance: ...at length magic ofthe old romances was perfectly dissolved....reason, in end, ...drove them off scene, and would endure these lying wonders, neither their proper shape, nor as masked figures.Henceforth, taste ofwit poetry took a new turn: Andfancy, had wantoned it so long world fiction, now constrained...to ally herself with strict truth, if she gain admittance into reasonable company. What we have gotten by this revolution, you will say, great deal ofgood sense.What lost, fine fabling.1 This passage suggests extent to which romance genre, postfeudal eras, comes be identified wonders enchantments formerly helped make up plots ofromance. By timeofBishop Hurd enchantment seen not something form depicts but does: genre itself enchants unwary readers. Bishop accordingly represents struggle between other genres an allegorical lies truth for fancy's allegiance. Romance, equated abuse fancy, must 1 Richard Hurd, Letters Chivalry 1762, ed. Edith J. Morley (1911; rpt., New York: AMS Press, 1975). My attention drawn work Patricia Parker's Inescapable Romance: Studies Poetics ofa Mode (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University 1979), makes use quotation epigraph chap. 1, my discussion indebted at many points. I take opportunity thank Brenda Silver, Lee Patterson, Donald Pease reading various drafts ofthis article. All citations ofChaucer's are taken from F. N. Robinson, ed., Works ofGeoffrey Chaucer, 2d (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1957). 31 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER understood both psychological epistemological prob­ lem-as mode desire ignorance. Moreover, find heart cavalier, sensibility ofaristocratic exile: "world offine fabling" irretrievably lamenta­ bly lost. passing ofromance-offancy her wanton youth, before subjection "strict truth"-makes image absent, re­ gressive, heart's desire; continuing allegiance indeed foolish gallantry, gallantry poets previous century, whose Altheas evoke ofan age. experience ofnostalgia, specifically gallant futility exile, depends particular oftime. It is, fact, essence kind oftime feudalism, romance, women vanished objects archaic, archaizing desire: "Time Male," writes Adrienne Rich, "and his cups drinks fair."2 For past either desired or rejected such-for its pastness investedwithmeaning-it mustfirstbe imagined aspast,as different present. nostalgic cavalier stance sense inseparable obverse, forward-looking roundhead stance. Both poeticize past; give newly interior resonance-a moral, status. "Strict truth"-the new,secular, "everyday" reality, distaste carnal temporal prodigality-may seem stand opposed "lying wonders" Hurd's fancy Duessa, constraint truth" "dissolves" bad magic. But everyday reality-the bourgeois "reality principle"-takes shape through very opposition enchantment. 3 reality persuades exists, all there is- 2 From "Snapshots Daughter-in-Law," Snapshots Daughter-in­ Law (New York London:W...
Studies in the Age of Chaucer