The Wife Of Bath's Tale Essay

The 1300s were a time riddled with plague, struggle, and despair, during which time literature was beginning to experience a renaissance. Emerging from this renaissance were works such as The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, and The Decameron by Boccaccio. These collections of stories shared common themes and devices, which exemplified the mindset of the time period. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” from Chaucer, and “Federigo’s Falcon,” from Boccaccio, both deal with themes of love and sacrifice, and allegorically state that love leads to the surrendering of something important. Chaucer states that the sacrifice of power is important in a relationship, whereas Boccaccio states that love can make people blindly sacrifice the things they cherish. In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer states that power is often sacrificed in a relationship. When a Knight, shunned for forcefully taking the virginity of a maiden,
This is exemplified when Federigo falls in love with a beautiful woman named Monna Giovanna, and in attempts to win her love, enters in jousting tournaments and gives her many gifts, “spending money without any restraint whatsoever” (Boccaccio 161). This can be interpreted as an allegory that states that love can make people blind to reality, and causes them to throw caution to the wind. Federigo loves Monna Giovanna so much that he is even willing to sacrifice his best friend, his falcon, to please her, as he has nothing else to give to her when she comes to his house for breakfast, and finds that “it would make a worthy dish for a lady such as this” (Boccaccio 163). After sacrificing everything he has, Federigo still does not win Monna’s heart; instead, she marries him out of appreciation for his sacrifice rather than for love. Boccaccio uses story to illustrate the point that love is a fool’s