Goode Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage
摘要
“The Good Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage” is the name given to a Middle English poem of fourteen stanzas found in one late fifteenth-century manuscript: Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Brogyntyn ii.1. In the poem, a fictional mother (who intends to travel on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land) offers her daughter practical and moral guidance on how to govern herself in her absence. The mother advises her daughter against frivolous behaviors and encourages virtues like humility, prudence, and moderation. The final two lines of each stanza of the poem begin with the same refrain and end with a different proverb relating to the advice in each stanza. While scholarship on “The Good Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage” is scant, the poem has received attention within discussions of conduct literature and in discussions of mother–daughter relationships.