Johnny's Fireside Book

In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, part of this month’s selection from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, “Alisoun,” relates the following about her fifth and latest husband, Johnny:

He had a book, he kept it on his shelf,
And day and night he read it to himself
And laughed aloud, although he was quite serious
He called it Theophrastus and Valerius. (Coghill, trans.)

Johnny’s book was a collection of stories from classical and biblical sources about “wicked wives” (which, by the way, contained the story of Agamemnon’s death at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour, a story told in next month’s reading, Aeschylus’s drama "Agamemnon").

Johnny enjoyed the narrative of wicked wives, until his wife sets him straight.

And when I saw that he would never stop
Reading this cursed book, all night no doubt
I suddenly grabbed and tore three pages out
Where he was reading, at the very place
And fisted such a buffet [punch] in his face
That backwards down into the fire he fell

Johnny then hits his wife on the head and knocks her unconscious. When she comes to, he promises never to lay hands on her again. He gives her full authority over their house and land. Alisoun makes Johnny “burn that book upon the spot.”

Who published Johnny’s book? It was no doubt self-published in Chaucer’s imagination. Insofar as it confirmed Johnny’s preconceived notions about the “wickeness of women,” Chaucer tells us it provided fine fireside reading for Johnny. Then life (er, wife) intruded.

Professor Mark Edmundson writes in his book Why Read? that one function of education is “to use major works of art and intellect to influence one’s Final Narrative, one’s outermost circle of commitments.” Johnny enjoyed the narrative of his book. His wife didn’t. She revised Johnny’s narrative for him in a book discussion of unusual physicality.