--- Go to the Opening Page of the [Baren] web site ---

Subject: 'Hyakunin Issho' Newsletter: summer issue uploaded

The summer issue of David's newsletter is ready, and uploaded to the website ...

This item is taken from the blog David Bull, Woodblock Printmaker.
'Reply' to Baren about this item.

Subject: The Loathly Lady
Posted by: Robert Simola

5" x 7" cherrywood block print on Somerset with Graphic Chemical vine black ink In ?The Wife of Bath?s Tale? in Chaucer?s Canterbury Tales a knight rapes a young woman and is sentenced to death for his action unless he can find out what it is that women really want. Eventually the knight finds a ?loathly lady? who promises to tell him what women really want if he will marry her. He makes and keeps his promise, and on their wedding night this ?loathly lady? appears to him as a beautiful young woman with a proposition. The knight can either have her as a beautiful young woman when they are alone at night and be loathly to everyone who sees her during the day, or she can be beautiful for all to see during the day and be loathly to him at night. The knight can?t make a decision and finally decided to let her decide for herself. This is the right answer because according to the Wife of Bath what women really want is to have mastery over themselves. They want to be the deciders. And as a result of letting her decide her own fate, the ?loathly lady? stays young and beautiful both during the day and at night. I have always found this tale to be problematic and full of questions I can find no answers for no matter how often I read the story: Why is the knight ultimately rewarded for his loathsome act at the beginning of the story? Is the ?Loathly Lady? the same person as the young maiden who was raped by the knight? Was the ?Loathly Lady? only loathly because of her class and not because of her looks so that upon marriage she only looks different to the knight and the court because her marriage has transformed her from one class to another? And where does the Wife of Bath fit into all this? Is she a loathly lady herself because of her age and because she is a widow, and will she undergo a similar transformation from loathed to respected when she is . . . [Long item has been trimmed at this point. The full blog entry can be viewed here]

This item is taken from the blog Robert Simola.
'Reply' to Baren about this item.

• Subscribe/Unsubscribe to [Baren] here
• Switch your Digest subscription between 'Plain Text' and HTML here
• Upload your image to be used in these Digests here
• Send your 'ads' for the monthly Ad Roundup to [ads@barenforum.org], before the 15th of the month.
• Most recent statistics on our website are here
• Contact the group managers here
• [Baren] members: if you have a printmaking blog, or a website with a published ATOM feed, and wish it to be included in our daily checklist, please write to the Baren Blog Manager here. (If your blog also contains material other than woodblock-related items, we can only add you if the woodblock posts will be 'labeled' as such. The Blog Managers can provide details.)
• A list of Blogs/Sites currently being tracked by our feed scraper is here