Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath's Tale' as a Revival of Marie de France's 'Lanval' Julie Murith College

If one was asked to name the epitome of medieval English literature, it is very likely that the answer would be Geoffrey Chaucer. Indeed, this world-wide known poet has played a major role in the development of the English language thanks to his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales, among many others. However, a genius seldom comes up with his or her greater ideas all alone and it is effectively common that famous authors draw their literary works on other writers’ creations. Regarding Chaucer, it has been proven that he did so on Boccaccio or Boethius for instance, but the work that will interest us here is the lai of “Lanval” which was written by Marie de France at the end of the twelfth century. A non-negligible number of similarities can be noticed between this story and Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale” which can lead one to wonder if Chaucer’s purpose was to give a second wind to Marie de France’s lai. The Oxford Dictionary defines a revival as a “new production of an old play or similar work” and it seems to preliminarily correspond to what “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is in relation to “Lanval”. Knowing that Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales two centuries after the publication of Marie de France’s lais, “Lanval” can thereupon...