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The document analyzes 'The Merchant's Tale' as a complex poem that blends fabliau and sermon elements, provoking varied interpretations of its moral tone. It highlights Chaucer's critique of marriage and storytelling through the flawed character of Januarie and the manipulation of narrative focus, ultimately leaving readers questioning their judgments. The poem serves as a reflection on societal values and the contradictions inherent in human relationships, using satire to expose character flaws and moral ambiguities.

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4 views3 pages

Article Summaries

The document analyzes 'The Merchant's Tale' as a complex poem that blends fabliau and sermon elements, provoking varied interpretations of its moral tone. It highlights Chaucer's critique of marriage and storytelling through the flawed character of Januarie and the manipulation of narrative focus, ultimately leaving readers questioning their judgments. The poem serves as a reflection on societal values and the contradictions inherent in human relationships, using satire to expose character flaws and moral ambiguities.

Uploaded by

ashita.pothugunta
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Morality of ‘The Merchant’s Tale’

Key Message: TMT is an extraordinarily complex poem, half fabliau and half
sermon, with ‘discordant elements’ that have divided critics to such an extent
that their opinions of its tone extend from ‘a spirit of satirical fun’ to ‘mordant
venom’

- Fabilaux are amoral, and so moral qualms are therefore out of place
- It is noteworthy that throughout the poem, various moral ideals are
persecuted
- Damyan’s haste also emphasises the falsity of his pretensions as a lover
(Chaucer is parodying the idea of Courtly Love by presenting his ‘love’ as
‘lust’)
- Justinus’s views seem inexcusably rigid and cynical, there is none of the
idealism which Chaucer elsewhere expressed about marriage
- We cannot accept Justinus’s views as the moral orthodoxy as the poem,
since they derive from a misogynistic tradition descending from much
earlier
- Chaucer is the ‘Seneque en meurs’?
- There exists in TMT, a deliberate system of allusion which juxtaposes the
shocking events of the tale with an idealised conception of marriage from
a corpus of doctrine
- This is contained in the liturgy of the Nuptial Mass
- These attitudes to marriage culminate in the actuality of the paradise of
sensual delight which Januarie constructs for himself and May
- Marriage is a paradise in which no harm can occur, no sin can be
committed
- Januarie’s spiritual blindness is evident in the contrast between his garden,
which serves as a setting for a song inspired by Song of Solomon, and the
eternal paradise of Eden
- Juxtapositions between Mary and Eve was commonplace in Marian liturgy
- Deception of Eve v redemption from Mary (closing and re-opening of
paradisal gates) has a massive significance in Christian history
- The tree of the garden of Eden emerges as a conceptual neighbour to
Januarie’s pear tree
- The content of TMT expands to form part of a complex network of values
and ideals, secular and religious, which contrast with and condemn the
events in the narrative
- Chaucer creates a fascinating picture of inhumanity, a negation of his
customary courtly and religious ideals
- He likely believed the revulsion of the audience would inspire in them a
positive moral vision

‘The Merchant’s Tale’ and The Art of Bad Storytelling


- Chaucer makes the Merchant an exemplar of bad storytelling through the
many digressions, ill-chosen protagonist Januarie and the overuse of
epithets ‘worthy, knyght’ and ‘fresshe May’
- Chaucer connects the storyteller with his protagonist by using ‘worthy’ to
describe both
- Januarie is presented as a medieval peeping Tom, the mirror in the
marketplace captures this, as well as the financial reality of medieval
marriage
- Chaucer spends so long making the reader aware of Januarie’s lechery
that sympathy for May is inevitable
- Chaucer also makes the affair look like a forgivable sin in this marital
mess, which causes the Merchant’s plan to present May as the antagonist
backfires
- Chaucer delays May speaking until close to the end of the tale, which
completely shatters her shrewish stereotype, as a waterfall of lies spring
from her mouth
- However, by this time Chaucer has encouraged us to switch allegiance to
her, and hence we see May as the best of a bad bunch
- Whilst we may assume that the tale is about the danger of shrewish wives
and men needing to be careful in marital decisions, this message is
jumbled in a series of contradictions
- This makes is too easy for the reader to become frustrated with the lack of
narrative focus
- Most damaging digression is when Chaucer spends 125 lines at the start
glorifying marriage as a paradise, but it’s also laced with imagery of
burden, raising the question of who narrates this digression
- Perhaps it was a way to point out the Merchant’s self-contradicting
stupidity
- Lack of clarity and focus diminishes the Merchant’s power as a compelling
storyteller
- If digressions were removed, May would dominate the poem as much as
Januarie, so morally they would not be so different
- This lack of clarity may also be why Chaucer felt compelled to make the
Host, Harry Bailey echo the male fear of shrewish humiliation in epilogue
- Mercantile class a justifiable target in wider war against Medieval
corruption?

Deluding Words in The Merchant’s Tale


- Chaucer uses methods that focus on the words themselves and points out
the discrepancy between them and the actual situation of the plot
- Some phrases, such as ‘warm wax’, have an effect in intensifying the
general movement of the tale from deluding words to disillusioned
actuality
- It allows us Chaucer to reinforce the depiction of Januarie’s illusions and
express the cynicism of the Merchant

An Experiment in Maneres – Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale

- Although the Canterbury Tales are seen as the foundations of English


Literature, it is also one of its more provisional in-progress experiments
- In TMT, we are both entertained and disoriented by the seeming mismatch
between what we expect of a fabliau and what we get in the story, and
between what is being narrated and how it is being narrated
- Apostrophe is the literal turning away of speech from one audience to
another
- Damyan is apostrophised as if he is a lovesick courtly lover in a romance
- TMT keeps us on our toes, as we can never be sure where the style of the
narrative will take us
- Damyan’s fashionable love poem to May is in complicated verse forms,
and we realise that Damyan is much more cultivated than we might
expect, especially when listening to Januarie’s crude lust and Damyan’s
pear tree experience
- May’s ripping up of this letter leads us to consider what is more
appropriate in this fictional world, that a lusty squire should write a poem ,
or that a poem should be flushed down the loo
- Chaucer uses comedy and satire to expose and emphasise these
characters flaws
- The shifting of styles and various discrepancies makes even consistent
irony or satire doubtful
- Like Januarie at the end of the narrative, we are left doubting our own
conceptions and judgements

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