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Available from University of Michigan, this resource offers a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips, the largest collection of this kind.

Interprets Alisoun's message to other wives about how to handle marriage as an independent woman. Makes reference to historical facts about the conditions of women at Chaucer's time.

Interprets Alisoun's childlessness, her 3 early marriages, her sexual pleasure or lack thereof, and her shift to feudalistic chivalric code in her Tale all in relation to the rise of 14th century mercantilism in England, of which Alisoun (according to Chaucer's depiction) took part as a merchant in woolens.

Close reading of Alisoun's courtship (especially her dream) and marriage with her fifth husband Jankyn.

Argues that the project of the Miller's tale is to open up the construction of masculine identity that (in the Knight's Tale) is supposedly anchored in notions of nobility and blood, and admit "new men" like the Miller and Chaucer, himself.

Suggests that the Miller's Tale may have originated as a Christmas tale.

Draws on visual evidence of erotic and sometimes violently erotic images from illustrated manuscripts from Chaucer's era and performs close readings to argue that the Wife of Bath is not a wife but a sexually experienced widow, outside of the regime of marriage and beyond masculine control. Also examines the erotic violence of Jankyn.

Chapter 4, "The Wife of Bath and Her Glossaters," explores the connections between glossing a text and the wife's sexuality.

Chapter 2, "The Wife of Bath and the Mark of Adam," is written against views of the wife as triumphant and powerful and against views of the wife as victim of misogyny. Instead, she argues that the wife is a site of anxious re-enactment of gender differentiation.

Argues that laughter is a means of social control, and Alisoun exhibits the greatest mastery in her marriage and sexual practices. Explores "Goddes pryvetee" as related to female sexuality and divine events. Allegorical reading of Alisoun's husband, the carpenter, as a comical Joseph figure.
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Chapter 3, "Robyn the Miller's Thrifty Work," explores the subversive and threatening dimensions of the Miller and his tale, and chapter 8, "Alisoun Looms," examines the wife's subversive connections (1) to the increasing lay literate public and vernacular bibles (2) to the mercantile market of wool manufacturing.

Interprets how Chaucer removes the morality from Noah's Tale to make room for mirth, and there is special attention to Alisoun's portrait and Nicholas' playful use of astrology.

Explores the prologue and the tale's intersecting foci: their public concerns--a proto-feminist agenda against misogynist views of women; and private concerns--the wife's own experiential concern about how to live and age as a woman.

Interprets Alisoun's prologue as a "Mirror of Marriage"--how to be married and conduct oneself in a misogynistic world; how to appropriate male arguments against women and use them to leverage power. Develops the notion of "retrospective" revision that both accounts for the non-linear structure of the wife's memories of her husbands and how her digressions reveal an interiority/emotion that gie the wife's character reality-effect, that is a sense of being real, as though she is a real person.

Investigates Alisoun's status within the marriage as well as the sexuality of all three characters, cross dressing, and their performance of sexual identities.

Explores Alisoun's agency.

Chapter 5, "The Miller's Tale and the Politics of Laughter" examines why the Wife's tale is accepted by the pilgrims whereas the Miller's tale is not. Sees the Wife's tale as a gender subversion but the Miller's tale as threatening the social order of estates (or class). Draws on history of miller's involvement in 14th century uprisings and the emergence of wage labor.

Chapter 6, "The Wife of Bath and the Triumph of the Subject: makes an interesting connection between Alisoun of the Miller's Tale and Alisoun the Wife. Dwells mostly on interpreting he Wife's sexualized rhetorical strategies for prevailing over her husbands.

Argues that Alisoun is an oral reader who shapes her views of marriage by freely glossing previous texts in contrast to visual/literate readers who must adhere to a fixed written text.