Fire in the House: Ralph Waldo Emerson's Misreading of Lines 1139-45 in Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale

Abstract

There is no question that Emerson knew and admired the works of Chaucer, though his references to Chaucer tend mostly to be general, as in my two epigraphs above. Only once does he make a more extended allusion to Chaucer. That allusion comes in his 1844 essay, "The Poet." In 1925 Caroline Spurgeon briefly mentioned this allusion to Chaucer, 3 but so far as I have been able to determine, virtually no one, among either Emerson scholars or Chaucer scholars, has discussed the allusion. Indeed, most editions of Emerson's essay "The Poet" do not bother to give the reference for Emerson's allusion. Although Spurgeon did not tell what incident Emerson is alluding to, it is not hard to discover that the reference is to the old wife's pillow lecture in the Wife of Bath's Tale. My central point in this essay is that in his brief allusion to the Wife of Bath's Tale in "The Poet," Emerson quite misreads the Chaucerian passage that he refers to. I shall begin by discussing what Chaucer was about in the passage, then show in what ways Emerson misreads that passage, then suggest some reasons [End Page 86] why Emerson may have misread it, and, finally and perhaps most interestingly, indicate why I believe Emerson may well have known that he was misreading the passage, and may, indeed, have done so willfully.