The American Scholar: Chaucer’s Main Girl
Coloured element from Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims, an 1810 engraving by William Blake
We first spoke to Marion Turner, an English professor at Oxford College, in 2019, about her award-winning biography of Geoffrey Chaucer. In her newest guide, The Spouse of Bathtub: A Biography, Turner paints an unconventional portrait of Chaucer’s most well-known—and clearly favourite—character: a bawdy, middle-aged, middle-class lady of a number of marriages. Alison of Bathtub is however one of many pilgrims Chaucer gathers across the desk in his Canterbury Tales, however she is the one one to have impressed everybody from Shakespeare to James Joyce to Zadie Smith—and an equal variety of misogynist critics, whether or not they had been writing on vellum or in a Twentieth-century educational journal. Turner joins us on the podcast to debate the Spouse of Bathtub in her time and past, and why her voice nonetheless rings out with such pressure right this moment.
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Tune in each week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the humanities, sciences, historical past, and public affairs; experiences on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Comply with us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.
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