Abstract

One of the more notorious of Alison of Bath's wanderings by the way is her digression into the realm of classical scholarship. In the midst of an Arthurian romance she interposes an Ovidian epyllion, a version of the tale of Midas and his ass's ears. Her stated purpose is to show that “we wommen konne no thyng hele” , but despite this laudable attempt at self-criticism her telling is both inaccurate and incomplete. The male servant of the original becomes Midas's wife, and the crucial conclusion, in which the reeds whisper Midas's secret abroad, is suppressed. No wonder, then, that modern commentators have seen the Wife's Ovidianism as evidence of her irrepressible loquacity, her bad scholarship, even her moral turpitude. But the very unanimity of these conclusions tempts a counterthought: does not the wife here, as elsewhere, mean more than she says?