Marion Turner

Award-winning Chaucer biographer Professor Marion Turner explains where the author’s Wife of Bath character came from and looks at the enduring fascination with the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature.

Turner shows how the Wife of Bath related to real 14th-century women and how she has appeared many times since from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. The Wife of Bath is also known as Alison, a sexually active and funny working woman and a victim of domestic abuse who tells a story of rape and redemption. Turner explains how the character was formed from misogynist sources and plays with stereotypes.

Turner is professor of English literature at the University of Oxford. Her books include Chaucer: A European Life.