Wife of Bath

The Wife's is the sixth tale (of twenty-four, including two by Chaucer), while Coghill in his modern version places it fourteenth. In both, her tale (from what is known to scholars as Fragment III, containing Group D of the tales) precedes the Friar's and the Summoner's. In Robinson she follows the Cook, while in Coghill she follows the Pardoner. In both cases, her tale is the first of a group of seven (Wife, Friar, Summoner, Clerk, Merchant, Squire, Franklin) known as the "Marriage Group", as all of them deal with the subject of authority (where it lies and how it is exercised) in married…