“What Women Are All About…”—Literary Traditions Students School Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue (lines 111-120)
Virginitee is greet perfeccioun, And continence eek with devocioun. But Crist, that of perfeccioun is welle, Bad nat every wight he sholde go selle Al that he hadde, and gyve it to the poore, And in swich wise folwe hym and his foore He spak to hem that wolde lyve parfitly And lordynges, by youre leve, that am nat I. I wol bistowe the flour of myn age In the actes and in fruyt of mariage.
“Summer is Icumen In” (c. 1260), Dufay Collective