Alastair J. Minnis, Fallible Authors: Chaucer’s Pardoner and Wife of Bath.

Minnis, Alastair J. Fallible Authors: Chaucer’s Pardoner and Wife of Bath. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008. Print.

In his well researched and lengthy Fallible Authors, Alastair Minnis sets out to consider the nature of fallibility, authority, and persona. His subtitle would suggest that this approach is focused on Chaucer's Pardoner and Wife of Bath, but these figures operate more as touchstones in Minnis' text to explore the larger issues of interest. Throughout the monograph, Minnis dips into a wide range of Latin and vernacular sources to draw focus and reconsider the ideological concerns around his main texts and research focuses. In his introduction, Minnis states that his "ambition is to place Chaucer, as a maker of texts, alongside his contemporary workers in the medium of power, thereby relating his discourses of authority and fallibility to the larger ideological sources and structures that gave them meaning" (4). This context explores a range of topics including heterodoxy and gender, the latter of which were of particular interest to me. 

Minnis' works to put some of the context of how the Pardoner and Wife of Bath would be so shocking, as this effect may be somewhat less effective on modern audiences. Minnis maintains that these figures' "faults, failings, and limitations along with their moral lore [publish] in ways which...set major medieval discourses of authority and fallibility in sharp, compelling contrast" (4). For the Wife of Bath in particular, gender itself is an aspect of fallibility, with biological sex itself determining that half of the population is fallible without any other factors, not to mention Alisoun's direct challenges to patriarchal authority and preaching. Another interesting point Minnis sets out is the relationship between the work/tale/writing of a fallible authority and that authority's fallibility. Exploring this aspect in Wycliffite arguments about the capability for an immoral priest to perform sacraments validly, Minnis ties these ideological perspectives into both the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath, eventually suggesting that "It seems that we can trust an author's text, even though in certain cases we cannot trust the author itself" (10). In sum, Minnis explores the matter of fallibility in great depth, setting it forth as another possible layer of influence, per John Watt's perspective. 

The only critique I have of this text lies with Minnis' reading of the Wife of Bath's capability as a businesswoman. Jumping off of Susan Crane's reading, Minnis follows the argument that because Dame Alice makes poor marriage decisions with her fourth and fifth husbands she cannot be considered an effective businesswoman. While I feel that this is a complex issue, I would suggest that such an argument fails to take into consideration extra market conditions of the Wife of Bath's marital economy. Alisoun, in her first three marriages, trades on her own sexual currency which is at a strong estimated exchange value. As she ages, however, that currency depreciates in value, leaving the Wife of Bath with less stable capital to commit to exchange. Furthermore, her own perceived value of the sexual commodities of her husband has shifted significantly as she has aged, granting her a very poor bargaining position in the last two marriages. It is not that the Wife of Bath is a poor businesswoman, but she is certainly less able to make as strong of an exchange as she has aged.