From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers—from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched her influence or capacity for reinvention in poetry, drama, fiction, and film. In The Wife of Bath, Marion Turner tells the fascinating story of where Chaucer’s favourite character came from, how she related to real medieval women, and where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century, from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. A sexually active and funny working woman, the Wife of Bath, also known as Alison, talks explicitly about sexual pleasure. She is also a victim of domestic abuse who tells a story of rape and redemption. Formed from misogynist sources, she plays with stereotypes. Turner sets Alison’s fictional story alongside the lives of real medieval women—from a maid who travelled around Europe, abandoned her employer, and forged a new career in Rome to a duchess who married her fourth husband, a teenager, when she was sixty-five. Turner also tells the incredible story of Alison’s post-medieval life, from seventeenth-century ballads and Polish communist pop art to her reclamation by postcolonial Black British women writers. Entertaining and enlightening, funny and provocative, The Wife of Bath is a one-of-a-kind history of a literary and feminist icon who continues to capture the imagination of readers.
More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life--yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer's adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer's travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. The narrative recounts Chaucer's experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter's nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer's writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales. By exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant's son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales." -- Publisher's description.
This book offers a completely new reading of Chaucer. While most critics have seen his work as essentially socially optimistic and congenial, Marion Turner argues that Chaucer was profoundly concerned with conflict and social antagonism. Chaucer's texts are examined alongside a wide variety of poetry and historical documents from the period.
From Grief to Gratitude gently guides you through a simple but profound process of self-discovery combined with meditations that will facilitate your personal shift from grief to gratitude. You will rediscover your self, your purpose, and passions as you learn how to let go of the past and embrace the present—reclaiming your life and getting back to you! Marion Turner shares the steps that took her on this profound journey over ten years, resulting in a state of gratitude and acceptance of life for what it is. Whether you are grieving the loss of a loved one, the loss of a relationship, the loss of health, or any other thing of importance to you, this book will help you make sense of your state of being and reactivity, which will restore clarity, peace, and joy to your life. Honour what you have lost by living your life to its fullest, living with purpose and on purpose! This is a book about awareness, acceptance, forgiveness, self-compassion, gratitude, and joy.
A FALLEN OFFICER Glenn Turner was a big strong cop, a good friend, a loyal husband, and a loving son. But Glenn died in agony—his body racked with spasms, his mind plunged into delirium. And by the time he was found dead, Glen's wife was more than ready for his funeral. A SEDUCTIVE WIDOW Julia "Lynn" Turner, a former sheriff's assistant and 911 operator, had a thing for men in uniform—and for their money. While detectives and forensic examiners ruled Glenn's death the result of a virulent flu, time would tell another story. Lynn was already secretly living with Randy Thompson, a firefighter, who would meet the same excruciating death... A POISONOUS TRUTH... Driven by family who would not give up their quest for justice, a new investigation and an explosive trial eventually exposed the truth about a woman who had a way of making men die, and about a means of murder that was pure intoxicating evil.
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