Exploring Online Communities
First language, then print, and now telecommunications allow us to link thoughts and form communities, or groups based on common interests or common localities. However, in the not so distant past of the pre-virtual reality and pre-telecommunications age, community was the place where people lived, worked or played. For most of human recorded history, community was close to home and place dependent. Nowadays, cyberspace exists and permeates the 'real' world in which we live. Increasingly more humans belong to multiple communities, some of them transcending the limitations of location, time and space. As a result, new kinds of communities have emerged. Cyber communities have expanded the parameters of what we call communities and that process demands a new look, or a definition of electronic communities, most particularly educational cyber communities.
Mercer (2000) gives all communities, virtual or face to face (F2F), the following attributes: 1) they share a body of experience or a common history; 2) they are united by common purposes and joint activities to develop a community of practice; 3) they form a collective identity such as students in a class, members of a church, etc.; 4) they give members reciprocal obligations or responsibilities towards each other and define roles for appropriate behaviors; in addition, they have rules and norms affording membership to the group and stability of the community; 5) they build a discourse community employing a specialized language and genre and not using the “proper” format may exclude members; thus newcomers may need to be ‘apprenticed’ to experienced ‘experts’ to learn the discourse. Therefore, electronic communities like F2F communities...
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The use of euphemism and crudeness in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” is simultaneously unnerving and amusing, and begs the question of how a “wicked” woman like The Wife could ever actually progress in medieval society. Chaucer incorporates subtle allusions to female sexual organs and it is this bluntness (that would raise eyebrows even today) which establishes the Wife as such a powerfully outspoken character. Because courtship in Chaucer’s time was considered worthy of complete submission, the fact that the Wife places such emphasis on domination and even psychological power hints at her being an object of irony (and not a feminist figure “before her time”). It is for this reason that Chaucer’s delicate use of “queynte”- a term from which
In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer opens his story by telling about a certain amount of people who are going on a pilgrimage. The Wife of Bath stands out more compared to the other characters that are involved in these stories. In Chaucer’s “General Prologue,” the Wife of Bath was described as a woman who was talented and a flamboyant person who shows she is not fearful. She is also referenced as a woman who is powerful and gets anything she desires. She has a lot of experience in love and sex. She shows off her clothes with evident pride, her face is wreathed in heavy cloth, her stockings are a fine scarlet color, and the leather in her shoes is soft and fresh. In “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” the Wife of Bath discusses marriage, power and sex. The Wife of Bath is an selfish an authoritative woman.
The Wife Of Bath’s Tale is a magnificent story, that relates and under covers what every women wants, and what every man dreads. This tale is very unique concerning how rebellious it was to the views of the time period it was written in and even in the values that are set in stone today. Chaucer did an excellent job of expressing his outward views towards the subject of how women should be treated. The story starts off with a Knight who has just been convicted on the crimes of rape on a young lady, he is condemned to death by hanging, until the queen chirps up and makes a deal with him, if he can come back in one year and a day and tell her what every women wants then he will be hanged. The knight runs around for that entire year, soul searching throughout the kingdom trying to solve this impossible riddle. He returns from whence he came to no avail, until his encounter with the old haggardly lady. She is of an ugly sort that the knight as a last resort asks for an answer to his riddle to save his soul. She agrees, but only if he will do something for him in return, and the came to an agreement. The Knight then comes before his queen and states his newfound knowledge, which she is completely taken aback that he has figured out the solution to her riddle. After he is released, the old lady comes back up to him and reminds him of the deal that they struck not so long ago, but its a cliffhanger. The old lady wants to marry him. He is wary and at first completely disagreed saying that anything else would be a better solution to the wager, but the old women is persistent and he finally agrees. They get married shortly after, a very private affair, and then the story switches to their wedding bed. The knight is completely dreading ...
The investigation into whether or not Geoffrey Chaucer was ahead of his time in terms of his views on feminism has been up for debate for hundreds of years. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue is just one solitary
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a story about a widow who took a pilgrimage to the town of Canterbury with an array of dynamic characters whose diverse backgrounds allowed them to share their stories with one another to make the long journey more interesting. The widow named Alisoun in the “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” told the tale of her experiences with her five past husbands and a story about a knight and a witch. She truly believed that for a woman to have a happy life she would need to gain dominion over a man; however one could assume this was programmed into her by her influential mother and her own religious doctrines. Accordingly, Alisoun argued that the woman must control everything in order to have a happy marriage; however, her life experience and the story she shared should tell her otherwise.
Alisoun seems to defy any type of frame of a good woman during the 1300s. However, this is far from unusual in Chaucer’s writing, “Chaucer genuinely wished to write about good women, choose to adapt the biographies of women generally thought to be bad?” therefore even though he may have written the Wife of Bath in
Many believe crop circles are recent, but they have existed for hundreds of years, and since then, have transformed to become more creative. Crop formations are an art, and genuine crop circles are, in all likelihood, created by an extraterrestrial source. Although one portion of the mystery is solved, why these beings create them still remains¬¬ a mystery.
Women in the medieval times were cast into very distinct roles. There was a strict code of conduct that was followed. They were to be submissive to their husbands and follow their lead. A woman’s place was also in the home and the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc. fell into their domain. Women who deviated from these cultural-set norms made for interesting characters. Chaucer’s use of women and their overstepping their boundaries and typical roles in society make them most memorable.
The Wife of Bath’s tale tells about the alteration of an old woman into a beautiful woman. The moral of this tale is that true beauty lies within one’s self. The foul woman may have been representing the Wife, in that she is able to display all of her true beauty of her youth, if her true love comes along; in the Wife’s case, it is Jankyn, her fifth husband and only true love. With Jankyn by her side, she is able to transform into a faithful and loyal wife, just like the old woman.
One of the most interesting and widely interpreted characters in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is the Wife of Bath. She has had five different husbands and openly admits to marrying the majority of them for their money. The wife appears to be more outspoken and independent than most women of medieval times, and has therefore been thought to symbolize the cause of feminism; some even refer to her as the first actual feminist character in literature. Readers and scholars probably argue in favor of this idea because in The Canterbury Tales, she uniquely gives her own insight and opinions on how relations between men and women should be carried out. Also, the meaning of her tale is that virtually all women want to be granted control over themselves and their relationship with their husbands, which seems to convince people that the Wife of Bath should be viewed as some sort of revolutionary feminist of her time. This idea, however, is incorrect. The truth is that the Wife of Bath, or Alisoun, merely confirms negative stereotypes of women; she is deceitful, promiscuous, and clandestine. She does very little that is actually empowering or revolutionary for women, but instead tries to empower herself by using her body to gain control over her various husbands. The Wife of Bath is insecure, cynical towards men in general, and ultimately, a confirmation of misogynistic stereotypes of women.
Carter, Susan. "Coupling the Beastly Bride and the Hunter Hunted: What Lies Behind The Wife of Bath's Tale." Chaucer Review, Vol. 37 No. 4 (2003), 329-345.
The character of the Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is one of three female pilgrims and the only one not in the clergy. She can be interpreted as a proto-feminist ideal due to her independence, talent and dominance over her husbands. However, I will argue that the Wife of Bath is meant to be a satire of feminism in Chaucer’s time and is meant as a deliberate attack on women. I will examine the description of the Wife of Bath in the general prologue and the Wife of Bath’s prologue to demonstrate how Chaucer portrays the Wife of Bath as a rude, immoral, and power-hungry woman.
The Wife of Bath 's prologue and tale has a very personal authenticity to it. Although Geoffrey Chaucer is the author, the wife of Bath takes agency to talk about herself and her experiences. It is almost as if the wife speaks for him. The expectations of married women, at the time The Canterberry Tales were written, were to be modest, true and obedient wives. The wife of Bath, however, admits to using her own experiences as the source of her knowledge in marriage, and not the views of society. It is the fact that she relies on her internal thoughts and experiences that allows one to see her (and Chaucer 's) personal insight on the desires of married women. Although some may say that the wife of bath is simply looking for dominion over her husbands, Chaucer characterizes the wife of bath as a bold woman, and also uses the first person point of
The Wife of Bath had a strong argument in favour of marriage but is easy to fault. Her argument that marriage grows more virgins, while correct makes us wonder why she bore no children. And she also mentions the fact that “in wyfhood I wol use myn instrument” but her marriage did not seem to have stopped her from restraining her “Chamber of Venus from a good felawe.” The Wife of Bath confuses bigamy with remarriage and manipulates the arguments for remarriage to suit her purpose. Chaucer gives the Wife of Bath’s arguments less credibility
The Wife of Bath has her own perception of marriage, which Chaucer shows in both the