"Rival Wisdoms is a revelatory book, composed with grace and clarity. The insights Bradbury offers into how the culture of wisdom literature permeates the Canterbury Tales enhance understanding of Chaucer's vision, from the fabliaux and the Wife of Bath through Melibee and the Nun's Priest's Tale." -David Raybin, coeditor of Chaucer: Visual Approaches "Rival Wisdoms is an important work that promises to reshape the scholarly discourse surrounding the proverbs Chaucer employs so lavishly in the Canterbury Tales. Nancy Mason Bradbury has a real-and rare-gift for expressing herself in prose that is erudite while being equally accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike, and in this well-wrought study she leads her readers on a meticulously plotted journey through the myriad (and at time surprising) ways Chaucer and his fictional characters deploy proverbs." -Mark C. Amodio, author of The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook "Rival Wisdoms is a learned and sprightly account of medieval and early modern appreciation of proverbs and of the reading practices proverb-love prompted. With Chaucer as her guide, Bradbury reads proverbs for their potential as increasing the interpretive possibilities inherent in narrative. She deepens our understanding of the contestation that lies at the heart of the Tales.

As Bradbury demonstrates, for good or ill, the proverb adds meaning and becomes central to the conversations embedded in texts." -Lynn Staley, Colgate University.