Valerie and Theofraste a work attributed to Walter Map, a minor satirist who disparaged marriage. All the writers the Wife of Bath quotes have written something either antifeminist, satiric, or unpleasant about marriage.
Valerius, Tullius, Boethius, Seneca writers who espoused that gentility comes from within and not from outward appearances.
Venerien . . . Marcien astrological terms.
Virgil, Dante (Virgile, Dant) Virgil has a description of hell in his Aeneid, and Dante has the elaborate, complicated Inferno. The fiend tells the Summoner that he will be better able to describe hell after seeing it than did the two poets.
The Warning the moral "Don't tell your wife any secrets" differs significantly from the usual references to fortune in the other tragedies.
with revel to Newgate In Chaucer's time, when a man was taken to prison, he was most often preceded by revelers and minstrels so as to call public attention to his disgrace. Until the 19th century, Newgate was the most prominent debtors' prison in the world.
With the ardor paris showed for helen Old January wishes he had the youthful strength of a Paris (who absconded with Helen of Troy) when he gets May in bed.
Zion the land in and around Jerusalem; by Chaucer's day, it also meant the heavenly city.
