City Of Bath Research Articles

The burden of city's pain treatment – A longitudinal one year study of two cities via wastewater-based epidemiology

This paper explores Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) as a tool enabling understanding of city's pain treatment in an intercity longitudinal study. An intensive 13-month monitoring programme was undertaken in two adjacent urban areas in South-West England: a small commuter town Keynsham and the city of Bath (>180 samples collected). The study has shown a great potential of using triangulated WBE and National health Service (NHS) prescription data in understanding pain treatment in two contrasting communities with strong apparent seasonal patterns of short pain medications vs chronic pain treatment as well as the type of treatment used (e.g. oral vs topical). Community-wide usage of Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) and paracetamol in the intercity study is population size and season driven with the highest usage recorded in winter months. This contrasts with other pain pharmaceuticals, especially those used for chronic pain, where no/limited seasonal usage was recorded. Unmetabolized NSAIDs are, to a large extent, directly disposed of into the sewerage system bypassing metabolism due to their topical application. This is particularly apparent in winter months with naproxen showing the highest seasonal variability. Pharma/met (ratio of pharmaceutical and its metabolite concentration) analysis allows for tracking topical (non-metabolic) application/down-the-drain disposal of pharmaceuticals with frequent instances of direct disposal of NSAIDs into the sewerage system observed. Normalisation of pharma markers to population size shows comparable estimates of pharma usage in the two cities confirming population as the main driver of pharma loads in wastewater. Variable application patterns of pain pharmaceuticals make back-calculation of intake more convoluted. Intake calculated using percentage excretion of parent NSAIDs will likely lead to overestimation, as it is assumed that NSAIDs are subject to extensive metabolism (this is not the case for topical applications). Intake calculated using percentage excretion of metabolites (or parent compound) as consumption markers leads to underestimation of NSAIDs usage due to contributions from topical application not being accounted for. Prescription data indicates cumulative internal and topical usage, but the data ignores large proportion of over-the-counter usage. Therefore, we have proposed a combined approach allowing for estimation of total usage including, and differentiating between, topical application and oral administration.

HSRPP 2022 Bath – Foreword

Welcome to the third virtual HSRPP conference in this 28th anniversary of the conference. We hope to provide you with an enjoyable and interesting conference. Little did we know when we were invited to host this conference that we would be unable to welcome you in-person to the lovely city of Bath. After much deliberation in Summer 2021, with too many unknowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to make the call to run the conference online. By October 2021 we doubted ourselves. As we write this in January 2022, with the Omicron wave upon us, it feels like it was probably the right decision. We do all of course hope that HSRPP 2023 can bring us all together again in-person, but until then, we hope you enjoy our online event.HSRPP 2022 continues to provide an environment for researchers and practitioners, both new and experienced, to come together to share research and exchange ideas. Our conference theme is ‘Delivering impact for patients and other stakeholders’. We chose this theme because we believe it is central to why most of us do health services and pharmacy practice research. The days are long gone when research could remain within the pages of academic journals. We need to be able to demonstrate to our patients, our funders and the public how we will turn our findings into something that improves care. We need to work with patients and the public to make sure our research is relevant to them and efficient in its spend of what is, very often, public money. In short, it is what gets us up in the morning and through the tough times of research, of which there are many!The COVID-19 pandemic has shown just how valuable pharmacists are, whether that be delivering vaccinations, caring for critically ill hospitalised patients or coping with the huge pressure that community colleagues have faced from the worried public. These contributions to the pandemic cause are of course on top of the ‘day job’. There is much learned and to be learned about how we move forward to deliver healthcare that is sustainable, patient-centred and fit for purpose. Research is the tool from which this learning comes.We are going to hear real world evidence under our conference theme from our three keynote speakers: Dr Barbara Farrell, a pharmacist with the Bruyère Continuing Care Geriatric Day Hospital, and Senior Investigator with the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, will discuss her research experience with engaging stakeholders and users to promote the uptake and impact of deprescribing guidelines. She will highlight how her research has influenced and contributed to change in how people approach deprescribing and what difference this has made. Professor Mahendra Patel, University of Bradford, is the national Pharmacy and Ethnic Minority Communities Research Lead with the PRINCIPLE trial, University of Oxford, the world’s largest randomized clinical trial investigating COVID-19 treatment in the community. He will talk to us about promoting inclusion and diversity in clinical trials, which is critical if trial results are to be meaningful and successful when implemented to bring about change. Mr Ade Williams, lead pharmacist and independent prescriber at the multi-award-winning Bedminster Pharmacy in Bristol will discuss how researchers can work with practising pharmacists to co-develop “real-life’’ impact programmes. He will also highlight how transformations in the NHS governance structure, Long Term Plan ambitions and COVID-19 legacy work are unique opportunities for community pharmacy to play a vital role. Mahendra and Ade were both recognised in the New Year Honours List 2022 for their outstanding contributions to Pharmacy.We would like to thank all those who have contributed to making HSRPP 2022 a success. They include those who have submitted abstracts, the conference steering committee, Pharmacy Research UK, our keynotes speakers, workshop leaders, session chairs and prize judges, our sponsor Day Lewis, our colleagues at University of Bath, and you – research presenters and conference delegates. We would like to offer our special thanks to our Vice Chancellor, Professor Ian White for welcoming delegates to our University. We sincerely hope you enjoy the conference, make the most of the chance to meet researchers from the UK and elsewhere, and leave feeling inspired and excited for new research possibilities that lie ahead. Jenny Scott and Matthew Jones, HSRPP 2022 Conference hosts

Reconstructing the peak flow of historical flood events using a hydraulic model: The city of Bath, United Kingdom

AbstractHistorical flood events on the River Avon in the city of Bath were reconstructed using a 1D hydraulic model. The model represents the river prior to the completion of the Bath flood defence scheme and was developed based on archived data on archival materials including historical cross sections of channel geometry, technical drawings of hydraulic structures, descriptions of floodplain extent, epigraphic markings and photographs. The model was calibrated on two historical floods for which peak flow values were available from hydrological data (March 1947 and December 1960) and the calibration was based on adjustment of Manning's n as well as the introduction of floodplains identified from historical maps and photos. Subsequently, the peak flow was assessed for a total of 16 events for which flood marks existed in the centre of the city. A composite annual maximum series of peak flow was created upstream of Bath city centre and presented a flow series consisting of data from 1866 to present day. Finally, flood frequency analysis was undertaken on the dataset, showing that the inclusion of historical floods increased the 1 in 100 year design flood by up to 30%, that is, a substantial influence.

A Cost-Effective Pulse Oximeter Designed in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper introduces the design of a small and cost-effective optical pulse oximeter, including a finger clip, sensor readout electronics, and associated firmware. The device is based on widely-available commercial optical sensors that are designed for the wearables market and measure the reflection of different wavelengths of light. This design was produced in response to a request from the Royal United Hospital in Bath UK, in light of the severe shortage of clinical pulse oximeters during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Products based on this design have not been submitted for medical device approval; the design documents here should be considered purely for research, educational and development purposes.

William Smith's map brought alive by digital remastering

The geological mapping carried out by William Smith, which resulted in the publication of his famous map in 1815, was remarkable in many respects, not least because it relied on him being able to make consistent and accurate observations on the rock types he encountered during his fieldwork. This ability, gained from his many years studying rocks, allowed him to observe features with his own eyes (or at the very least, with the aid of a simple magnifying device) that others could not. We take a new look at William Smith's original stratigraphical sequences, and with samples collected from his classic field areas (many of which are around the city of Bath, Somerset, UK), demonstrate how spatial mineralogy mapping can be incorporated into the modern age of digital mapping.

Review: Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye, by Timothy Hyde

Review: <i>Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye</i>, by Timothy Hyde

Bath’s ironwork: wartime removal and its subsequent restoration

ABSTRACTIn 1942, three years into World War II, the Ministry of Supply ordered that all cast and wrought iron in the city of Bath be removed for war purposes. This included the railings around garden squares, which were generally thought elitist and old-fashioned anyway. Ironwork could be retained on grounds of architectural or historic merit but reprieval was rare, and much fine ironwork that disappeared, mainly gates and railings, was first recorded by Official War Artists. Since the 1970s much of Bath’s missing ironwork has been restored and the rest has undergone campaigns of repair, notably at Queen Square, Royal Crescent, Lansdown Crescent and Royal Victoria Park. An ongoing project to reinstate overthrows and lighting on the Bathwick estate coordinates best conservation practice, bringing together several materials and technologies of the 1790s.

Towards a Better Understanding of the Relationship between Individual’s Self-Reported Connection to Nature, Personal Well-Being and Environmental Awareness

This paper examines the relationships between an individual’s self-reported connection to nature (CTN) and aspects of their personal well-being (PWB) and environmental awareness. Specifically, it addresses (i) the relationship between CTN and PWB; (ii) the external variables which influence trait-level CTN over a person’s life course and (iii) how individuals feel about CTN. A mixed methodology is used, with qualitative data adding depth and insight into the statistical associations recorded. The results are drawn from a sample of 222 respondents living in the City of Bath, UK. This study uncovered a significant relationship between CTN and some aspects of PWB which did not always align with research undertaken in other countries. Demographic variables, childhood experiences of nature, usual frequency of nature contact, and nature-related hobbies were all found to affect CTN. A number of barriers to CTN were also identified. Although the literature already provides considerable evidence of positive relationships between contact with nature and a range of mental and physical health benefits, the nature and mechanisms behind these relationships are not well understood, particularly for the UK population. As these associations are increasingly being used to underpin both health and environmental interventions and campaigns it is important that we better understand these relationships.

An Elusive Legacy: The Rediscovery of Roman Baths in Eighteenth-Century Britain

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I investigate how eighteenth-century antiquarians engaged with the remains of Roman bath buildings in Britain and discuss their multifaceted attitude towards the ancient practice of bathing, with a focus on the city of Bath. I also examine the interests and priorities of Georgian scholars in studying Roman baths and their structure, highlighting their sometimes uncritical use of Classical sources and tracking the origins of their misconceptions regarding the components and function of these facilities. Finally, I briefly address the elusive socio-cultural legacy of Roman baths and bathing in eighteenth-century Britain, stressing influences and differences in practice and architecture.

The 3rd Antibody Validation meeting: Bath UK 20-21 st September 2018.

The International Antibody Validation meetings offer a welcome British forum for discussing this important topic, which is existentially crucial for the biological sciences community. Now in its 6th year, the biennial meeting is organized by Andrew Chalmers (University of Bath; CiteAb), this year with Carly Dix (Astra Zeneca). The organizers gathered some 100 members of industry and academia, producers and users, for a day and a half to describe their efforts to ensure that their antibodies have the desired specificity and selectively for well-defined molecular targets. The meeting is largely available as WebCasts ( http://www.antibodyvalidation.co.uk/past-events/2018).

Fashionable Diseases in Georgian Bath: Fiction and the Emergence of a British Model of Spa Sociability

AbstractPublished at different times, Christopher Anstey's The New Bath Guide (1766), Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) and Jane Austen's Persuasion (1818) testify to the emergence of new forms of social interaction, particularly on display in spas. Their apprehension of the role of illness, a major agent of sociability in Bath, varies considerably. This essay interrogates the function of fashionable diseases in three literary genres: the satirical epistle, the epistolary novel and the novel of sensibility. Most particularly, it examines the way these genres negotiate the construction or the destruction of a specific model of spa sociability.

Battle of Bathampton: Charting the campaign to stop Bath’s last park and ride

In July this year Bath and North East Somerset council gave up on its years-long struggle to build a bus-based park and ride on meadows east of the historic city of Bath. The council claimed that insurmountable road safety issues made the £17.5-million facility unfeasible but campaigners, who included experts in data analysis, local government and architecture, and who tapped into research and latest thinking on transport policy, insist they successfully challenged the council’s arguments for the park and ride and won in the court of public opinion. Containing interviews with key participants in the struggle, including the council’s former cabinet member for transport, this article is intended as a case study for local governments considering infrastructure schemes that could become politically poisonous.

The costs of housing developments on sites with elevated landslide risk in the UK

New housing targets are being set for local planning authorities resulting in more areas being zoned for development. There is currently no requirement for a landslide assessment prior to this zoning, and sites at elevated risk of landslides are being put forward for development without consideration of the additional costs and other impacts of building on these higher risk sites. This study aimed to reveal the increased financial, economic, social and environmental costs associated with these decisions. Case studies were focused on the city of Bath, an area of increasing population and “one of the most intensely landslipped areas in Britain’’. The case studies found the financial costs associated with building in a landslide risk area to be significantly higher than the equivalent construction in areas of greater geological stability. Furthermore, it was found that uncertainty in cost when developing in unstable areas exacerbates this problem as the final cost cannot be accurately predicted before construction.

Bath Stone and Purbeck Stone: A comparison in terms of criteria for Global Heritage Stone Resource Designation

Two limestone resources from the Mesozoic strata of south-west England, Bath Stone and Stone, are compared in terms of criteria proposed for designation of Heritage Stone Resources. Both have been used locally for some 2000 years and have had significant wider use in the past 350 years. Bath Stone has been used widely in the UK and to some extent elsewhere. Its use throughout the city of Bath provides an overall architectural integrity that contributed to it achieving World Heritage City status. Stone, with the exception of a variety known as Purbeck Marble, has been mainly used locally. It was used to build several structures now designated as Ancient Monuments but Marble has been used extensively for interior ornamental work in many ancient and important buildings. Bath Stone has been widely recognised as a cultural icon but there is less awareness of Stone. Both are still quarried, and have an assured future, subject to continuing demand. However, for both, Heritage Stone Resource designation might help to reinforce their status. Overall, the case for designation of Bath Stone appears to be stronger than that for Stone.

A critical reflection on my learning and its integration into my professional practice

This paper, ‘A critical reflection on my learning and its integration into my professional practice’, was successfully submitted for a Master’s programme at the University of Bath (UK) in 2010, whilst Sally was working full-time as a teacher in a large secondary school in an English town 10 miles from the city of Bath. Sally died of a brain tumour in 2013. By making her writings public she offered the knowledge she created as a gift to the development of the educational knowledge-base of professional educators. While the detail of practice, procedures, policies and regulations change, the learning she offers is as relevant today as it was then. Teachers continue to experience tensions, as Sally did, in trying to be true to their values and improve the educational experience of their students in contexts dominated by economic rationalism. Sally’s account will particularly resonate with teachers who are committed as professional educators to struggling to develop their professional knowledge and contribute to evolving, rather than revolving, educational practice that contributes to the flourishing of their students.

Diseased, Douched and Doctored: Thermal Springs, Spa Doctors and Rheumatic Diseases by Roger Rolls (review)

Reviewed by: Diseased, Douched and Doctored: Thermal Springs, Spa Doctors and Rheumatic Diseases by Roger Rolls Amanda E. Herbert Roger Rolls. Diseased, Douched and Doctored: Thermal Springs, Spa Doctors and Rheumatic Diseases. London: London Publishing Partnership, 2013. 244 pp. Ill. No price given. (978-1-907994-09-8). Scholars interested in the medical history of Bath Spa will learn much from Roger Rolls’s book Diseased, Douched and Doctored: Thermal Springs, Spa Doctors and Rheumatic Diseases. Rolls, a medical doctor as well as an author and amateur historian, provides a detailed examination of the medical uses of the thermal waters that have made Bath, a small city located in the west of England, a famous health resort. The book is structured around a portrait by William Hoare, Dr. Oliver and Mr. Peirce Examining Patients (1762), which depicts two men conducting physical examinations of three patients: a small child suffering from a skin disease, a man with palsy, and a woman who has rheumatism. The book commences with two chapters on the chemical properties of the waters, and describes their uses from the first century CE through to the present. For much of Bath’s history, medical practitioners believed its waters were impregnated with beneficial salts and minerals. But when nineteenth-century analyses revealed the waters to contain few, if any, of these substances, spa doctors shifted their treatments to include the use of static electricity, radio waves, and even radon. Rolls’s expertise as a medical doctor anchors these chapters, as he provides helpful information about modern understandings of the relative efficacy of these regimes. The book then returns to the Hoare portrait, with subsequent chapters on “Aches, Paints, and Rheumatism” (represented by the female patient), “The Palsy” and “The Gout” (after the male patient), and “Scabbes, Scurf and Lepers,” as well as “Children at the Spa” (for the youthful patient). The final two chapters, “Spa Doctors” and “Hospital [End Page 384] for the Nation,” honor the portrait’s subjects, Oliver and Peirce. In each of these remaining seven chapters, Rolls offers evidence of the diseases, injuries, and complaints that brought clients to the spa at Bath, and he explores the people and institutions devoted to easing or curing these maladies. The book’s strengths lie in its exemplary primary sources, and most notably its extensive use of rare seventeenth-, eighteenth-, nineteenth-, twentieth-, and even twenty-first-century images. There are nearly one hundred figures in the book, painstakingly culled from archives, hospitals, and libraries across Britain. One of the most affecting images shows an unusual sampler made in the Bath General Hospital by a patient named Mary Wise. The sampler depicts the hospital itself, with its many empty windows and rather grim façade. Only one figure humanizes the building: the hospital porter, stitched into guard duty within a miniscule doorway (p. 208). Wise’s embroidery speaks to the tedium that surely characterized early nineteenth-century hospital stays, and also suggests that patients’ activities while in hospital were structured by complex sets of assumptions about gender, surveillance, and time management. But such engaging sources also serve to highlight the limitations of the work. This book is devoted to study of “the rationale behind spa therapy,” but the city of Bath was and is so much more than just a location for medical treatment (p. 1). Within Bath—and within many of Britain’s other popular hot spring cities, which go largely unexamined in the book—practitioners and patients mingled with politicians and priests, philosophers and natural scientists, dramatists and musicians. Spa cities were sites for the creation of many different kinds of discourses, experiments, and ideas: not just of medicine, but of literature, art, philosophy, and theology. The wonderfully rich sources examined by Rolls may not, on first glance, seem to reveal the private lives, personal experiences, and mental worlds of the people of Bath. But as recent works on the history of medicine have shown, these sorts of detailed cultural analyses are necessary if we are to gain a more complete understanding health and healing in the past.1 Rolls’s evocative evidence suggests that spa cities are very deserving of continued and comprehensive scholarly attention. [End Page...

Where to park? A behavioural comparison of bus Park and Ride and city centre car park usage in Bath, UK

Integrating car parking facilities with public transport in Park and Ride (P&R) facilities has the potential to shorten car trips, contributing to more sustainable mobility. There is an ongoing debate about the actual effects of P&R on the transport system at the subregional level. A key issue is the relative attractiveness of city centre car parks (CCCP), P&R and public transport. The paper presents the findings of a comparative empirical case-study based on a field survey of CCCP and P&R users conducted in the city of Bath, UK. Spatial and statistical analyses are applied. Radial distance to parking, availability of P&R sites in the direction of travel, gender, age, income and party-size are found to be important factors in a binary logistic regression model, explaining the revealed-preference of parking type. Stated analysis of foregone parking alternatives suggests more use of public transport and walking/cycling would likely occur without first-best parking alternatives. The policy implications and possible planning alternatives to P&R at the urban fringes for achieving greater sustainability goals are also discussed.

Engineering significance of superficial structures and landslides in the Bath area, UK

The City of Bath is located in a steep-sided valley eroded through the competent, thickly bedded limestones and incompetent, weak mudrocks of the Lower and Middle Jurassic. In the Pleistocene, two types of camber developed; their engineering significance is discussed. In addition, a number of large landslides occurred in the valley of the River Avon during the Pleistocene. Historically, smaller landslides developed within these, one of which resulted in the destruction of 135 houses while another accounts for the presence of an asymmetric crescent in this world-famous Georgian city.

Noble gas, CFC and other geochemical evidence for the age and origin of the Bath thermal waters, UK

The city of Bath is a World Heritage site and its thermal waters, the Roman Baths and new spa development rely on undisturbed flow of the springs (45°C). The current investigations provide an improved understanding of the residence times and flow regime as basis for the source protection. Trace gas indicators including the noble gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton and xenon) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), together with a more comprehensive examination of chemical and stable isotope tracers are used to characterise the sources of the thermal water and any modern components. It is shown conclusively by the use of 39Ar that the bulk of the thermal water has been in circulation within the Carboniferous Limestone for at least 1000years. Other stable isotope and noble gas measurements confirm previous findings and strongly suggest recharge within the Holocene time period (i.e. the last 12 kyr). Measurements of dissolved 85Kr and chlorofluorocarbons constrain previous indications from tritium that a small proportion (<5%) of the thermal water originates from modern leakage into the spring pipe passing through Mesozoic valley fill underlying Bath. This introduces small amounts of O2 into the system, resulting in the Fe precipitation seen in the King’s Spring. Silica geothermometry indicates that the water is likely to have reached a maximum temperature of between 69–99°C, indicating a most probable maximum circulation depth of ∼3km, which is in line with recent geological models. The rise to the surface of the water is sufficiently indirect that a temperature loss of >20°C is incurred. There is overwhelming evidence that the water has evolved within the Carboniferous Limestone formation, although the chemistry alone cannot pinpoint the geometry of the recharge area or circulation route. For a likely residence time of 1–12kyr, volumetric calculations imply a large storage volume and circulation pathway if typical porosities of the limestone at depth are used, indicating that much of the Bath-Bristol basin must be involved in the water storage.

Chaucer’s Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in the Canterbury Tales by John A. Pitcher (review)

Reviewed by: Chaucer’s Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in the Canterbury Tales by John A. Pitcher Giselle Gos John A. Pitcher, Chaucer’s Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in the Canterbury Tales. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. pp. 214. ISBN: 978–1–4039–7322–1. $85 Pitcher engages deconstructionist and psychoanalytic theories of the subject to study the presentation of female characters as subjects of desire in four tales and their prologues. Pitcher contends that Chaucer’s use of figurative language and the [End Page 119] resulting ‘rhetorical instability’ are ‘the very matrix for his presentation of decentered subjectivity’ (p. 3). In other words, Chaucer’s construction of the self is not the liberal, humanist individual but the decentered, unstable, even contradictory subject of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. Chapter One, on identity and desire in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, suggests that Chaucer capitalizes on the ‘indeterminacy of reference’ (p. 36) of several multivalent signifiers (the city of Bath, the incubus and Midas) to ‘demystif[y] the self as a linguistic effect’ (p. 36). Ultimately Pitcher sees Alison’s desire not as a desire for mastery, but a desire ‘to be the other’ (p. 42), thereby explaining her submissiveness in response to Jankyn’s obedience. The chapter ends with a discussion of Jankyn as an exemplary masculine subject whose abuse of the Wife is a symptom of the ‘production of masculine identity in relation to an ideal image’ (p. 57) of a rival lover that is the preferred object of women’s and the Wife’s desire. At times thought-provoking, this chapter could benefit from more careful consideration of the following issues. Pitcher observes that ‘Chaucer has made the witness of the truth of violent antifeminism: a woman accomplished in the art of rhetoric and deception’ (p. 40), but despite his investment in Chaucer’s sexual politics, he does not discuss the important political implications of this observation. Nor does he address the fact that his theorization of masculine subjectivity—identification with an imaginary rival—encodes misogynistic violence as its inevitable by-product. Finally, despite Pitcher’s insistence that Chaucer intentionally demystifies feminine difference (pp. 44–45), in his discussion, masculine subjectivity (as exemplified by Jankyn) appears to be formed through a straightforward identification with an idealized image, whereas feminine subjectivity (exemplified by Alison) is a rhetorical construct that that does not ‘coalesce around a core of identity’ (p. 36). This unheralded distinction between masculine and feminine subjectivity recurs in the second chapter, in which Pitcher discusses Dorigen in the Franklin’s Tale as a ‘divided subject.’ He argues that Dorigen’s rash promise to Aurelius, clearly intended as a rejection, nonetheless implies her latent, repressed desire for him. Pitcher justifies this reading via reference to Freudian psychoanalysis, namely that ‘an individual’s self-understanding is not likely to be a reliable guide to unconscious motivations’ (p. 69). The problem is that these alleged unconscious desires of Dorigen have no textual expression, so Pitcher has to co-opt evidence of the opposite to support his point. The resulting logic is circular: her identification with the ideal of a faithful wife is exactly what provides the motivation for her repression: ‘any hint of desire for Aurelius would be forced into just the realm of fantasy offered by her promise’ (p. 69). Again, Pitcher portrays feminine desire and subjectivity as contradictory and decentered, whereas masculine subjectivity appears straightforward and unified. The chapter is as much about Arveragus and Aurelius’ desire as Dorigen’s, but these male characters are not psychoanalyzed in such a way as to isolate and alienate them from their reported desires. The third chapter is dominated by a concern to disentangle the Clerk’s intentions in telling the tale of Walter and Griselda through attention to the Clerk’s ‘rhetorical nuances’ (p. 84), and to psychoanalyze Walter’s desire to test his wife. Griselda’s desire [End Page 120] and subjectivity take up only a little more than a third of the chapter. Pitcher finds that the Clerk’s motivation for telling the tale is to problematize unconditional submission and adherence to a vow as ‘self-destructive’ (p. 107). Walter’s...