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The Wife of Bath’s Tale
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The Wife of Bath’s Tale

story by Chaucer
Written and fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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History

The Wife of Bath’s Tale, one of the 24 stories in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Before the Wife of Bath tells her tale, she offers in a long prologue a condemnation of celibacy and a lusty account of her five marriages. It is for this prologue that her tale is perhaps best known. The tale concerns a knight accused of rape, whose life shall be spared if in one year he discovers what...

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