The Merchant’s Tale – Geoffrey Chaucer

Characterisation:
- Character fulfil the functions required of them by the plot
- The participants are the object of ridicule, they are animated to appear plausible but
not enough for the audience to sympathise with them
- The Merchant- he exists at a different layer in the narrative composition, but he is
given physical characteristics in the general prologue and in the introduction to his
tale – we, as readers, are listening to the Merchant’s voice
- Chaucer is on the pilgrimage himself, and he pretends that each story is a retelling of
a prodigious feat of memory
- In a modern novel, the inner thoughts of the character can provide the audience
with a lens, giving them the ability to explore the contexts of the time and the ways
in which each individual character lived
- The Merchant’s Tale offers a lens into a dysfunctional marriage
Chaucer the ventriloquist:
- Chaucer’s own characterisation in the play prevents the pilgrims from being read like
characters- he puts stories forward himself (Melibee and Sir Thomas) which are both
experiments of bad story-telling
- From this position, as a storyteller, he can tell an explicit story about illicit sex by
hiding behind the character of the Merchant- Chaucer implies he cannot control the
merchant yet of course, the Merchant is Chaucer’s own invention- thus Chaucer uses
the character of the Merchant to tell a story about sex- yet, equally, he neither
agrees nor disagrees, with the attitude he has constructed
- He intervenes in his own voice at the end of the Clerk’s Tale, urging women to not
behave in a passive manor towards their husbands who make unreasonable
demands on them
- This may suggest to the reader that the merchant’s presentation of bad marriages as
a result of bad wives is not a view Chaucer himself shares
- He sets the scene for various differential readings through his constructs of pilgrims
The Merchant:
- The characterisation of the Merchant has given rise to extensive critical debate, not
helped by the dubious Merchant’s prologue which does not exist in many of the
manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales
- The debate- whether or not the depiction in the general prologue is sympathetic, is
he vain or successful, hypocritical or just a man of this world- is the story a tale from
an embittered man or the outpouring of a newlywed whose wife, when in male
company has been stray away
- The Merchant, like all characters in the collection, manipulates an old story for his
own purpose- the tale about bad marriages is suggestively reflective of all bad
marriages, especially his own
- The Merchant attempts to allow the reader to see January as misguided- a marriage
that is based on the sacrament of materialism and sexual desire and that all women
are devious and lecherous
- Important to remember that it was not uncommon to ‘buy’ a bride, Merchants used
their assets to seek country estates, coats of arms and the status at the court
whereby
 - Attitudes towards women and marriage were very close to January’s own attitudes
and the marriage is presented as a mercantile transaction
- Wedding vows are a way to express care and fidelity, sanctifying the partnership in
the eyes of God and where those vows are kept, the marriage is said to be good
despite the inequality between partners
- The narrator of the Merchant’s Tale draws no distinction between good and bad
marriage, belittling the sacrament itself
Anti-feminism:
- St Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate Latin Bible, was the ultimate authority on
women in the Middle Ages- he was the first and most influential pronouncement on
the celibacy of the clergy- he stated that virginity was far superior than marriage-
marriage was at best, a necessary evil
- Jerome also quoted one pagan authority- Theophrastus, whose work didn’t survive
but was believed to have written a short vitriolic treatise containing the archetypal
portrait of a wicked wife
- The 12th century British writer, Walter Map, wrote a long commentary in the form of
a letter to a friend, citing mythical and biblical reasons why he should not marry-
within that, the literary tradition of misogyny was established
- The Merchant lies within this tradition and January is often comparing women with
food, as if they are to be demolished and dominated
- The Wife of Bath in her prologue states that this is devaluing the mature woman, she
says that once the ‘flour’ is gone she must sell the ‘grain’ the best she can.
- Chaucer’s work is unusual for its literary milieu as it allows room for the reader to
develop sympathy for the woman’s case
- Eustace Deschamps, Chaucer’s French contemporary is remembered for his ‘Mirror
of Marriage’ which includes a list of the ploys used by a woman when her husband
will not give her what she wants, how she will deceive him, and on how everything in
marriage turns to torment for the man, whether his wife be beautiful or ugly, rich or
poor- texts written like this became known as ‘badly married’ and evolves into this
conventional diatribes in which the speaker (a man) practically lists his wife’s
failures.
- One woman, another of Chaucer’s French contemporaries, Christine de Pisan, wrote
a rejoinder called ‘Letter to Cupid’, which points out the discrepancies between the
literary convention of courtly love in which men languish and threaten to die from
unrequited love for unattainable women and the wide-spread male assertion in the
anti-feminist tradition that women are inferior beings who are not worth having
Marriage:
- In Chaucer’s day- marriage was rarely undertaken for love- consolidation of land and
money was paramount
- Betrothals of infants were common- marriage between elderly men and younger
women was common- men in search of an heir
- Chaucer’s own granddaughter, Alice, was married in her early teens to a man in his
fifties- she outlived him and two other husbands- she bore one child to the third
husband- a son =
- Once married, women had the same legal status as domestic animals- the equation
in The Merchant’s Tale is not shocking
 - The treatise ‘The Goodman of Paris’- written by an elderly man in regards to how his
wife may improve her conduct for her next husband which suggested that she
should behave like a lap-dog, keeping close to him even if she is maltreated
- January’s attitudes to women were not uncommon
Joseph and Mary/ Adam and Eve:
- The problem for women in a world dominated by Christian theology interpreted by
celibate male writers, was twofold
- The legacy of eve- the first woman created by man- given to him as a help and
companion. She was beguiled by the adder, the symbol of the devil, into eating a
forbidden fruit and therefore blamed for the loss of paradise
- Ironic referenced to the garden of Eden are hidden within the Merchant’s Tale, early
in the tale when the narrator is extolling the supposed virtues of marriage, he
supports his argument with the stories from the garden of Eden
- May and Damian betray January in the pear tree, although the garden may be
symbolic of sexual pleasure from the outset- it was May who devised the betrayal
- Women had to deal with the role model of the virgin Mary- being both virgin and
mother was an impossible act to follow- the story of Joseph and Mary is cited
throughout the tale and January and May share the same initials
- According to the story, it was told that, Joseph presented himself at the temple as an
unwilling suitor for Mary, but the rod he carried burst into bloom- God’s way of
saying he was meant for her- January is not unwilling, but he describes himself as a
tree miraculously bursting into bloom into his old age
- The story of the virgin birth- was also commonly incorporated into comic and anti-
feminist stories
- When Joseph returned, he found Mary pregnant, he first did not believe her
accounts of the angels and felt he had to abandon her, his doubts had to be
corrected by an angel
- The Fabliaux abound in which either gullible girls are persuaded into adultery and
men dressed up as angels, or gullible husbands returning from a period of absence
are persuaded that their wives’ unexpected pregnancies are of supernatural origin.
- January is offered an implausible explanation of what happened in the tree- he is
persuaded to believe due to the intervention of Proserpine, the pagan goddess of,
among other things, childbirth- when he strokes May’s womb, January like Joseph, is
happily reconciled with a woman who is bearing a child that is not his.
Calendars and astrology:
- The names of the principal characters in the tale indicate that they are types rather
than individual characters, the tale develops a calendrial theme, suggesting that
winter should not attempt to marry early summer.
- The tale is embellished with astrological references which take it beyond the bounds
of simple fabliau. Medieval calendars were elaborate things, showing all the fixed
and moveable feasts of the Church, traditional human occupations for the month,
and a star-chart showing the zodiac- astrology for Chaucer and his contemporaries
was scientific reading.
- January is the season for feasting, marked by images of an old man toasting his feet
by a roaring fire. He labels and recognises women as food and the wedding feast is
the most important element of the ceremony- January then takes several mixed
 wines and aphrodisiacs before the wedding night with his newly wed. His natural
setting is indoors, he loses control when he is outside.
- May, is passive indoors and by night, juxtaposing January. After the wedding, she
spends 4 days indoors, which in the tale are very astrologically described. The four
days represent the four months between January and May, the astrological
phenomenon when the moon moves from Saturn to Mercury, occurs mid-way
through January and May. January fatally takes May into the garden in the month of
may. In the calendars May is associated with hunting, hawking, and gathering
flowers, pursuits associated with courtly love. January’s blindness renders him
passive outdoors, this is the domain in which May is in control.
- Damian is not as directly related to the astrological theme- indirectly however, with
the association of fate with the scorpion, which suggests that January will be a victim
of a sexual predator. The signs of the zodiac were each thought to govern a limb or
origin of the body, Scorpio ruled the male genitals.
- The myth of Pluto’s rape of Proserpine is associated with the creation of the seasons.
Astrological detail throughout the tale, and the suggestion that events may have
been brought about by destiny, chance, nature or the stars, all point towards an
attempt to elevate an obscene fabliau by giving it a moralised universal meaning: the
marriage of old age and youth is an unnatural conjunction.
Blindness:
- Blindness is a common theme in literature because of its metaphorical potential,
connecting the physical faculty of sight with moral and spiritual vision.
- The merchant suggests that January has always been blind: blind to the risks of his
choice of bride, blind to the sacramental nature of marriage, and, ultimately,
physically blind. It is, however, possible for the reader to resist the opinions of the
narrator and conclude that it is the Merchant who is truly blind. He cannot see the
possibility of resurrecting any ideals in relationships between the sexes because he
understands only materialism and lust. He is blind to the possibility of beauty, and
that blindness infects every element of a tale which presents no redeeming features
in character or action.
Chaucer’s life and work:
- Chaucer was born in London in the early 1340s- most probably in 1343- possibly the
son of John Chaucer and his wife Agnes.
- The family originated in Ipswich where they had been called ‘de Dynyngton’ or ‘le
Taverner’ and it seems likely that his great grandfather had been a tavern keeper.
- Chaucer’s grandfather, Robert de Dynyngton, appears to have worked for a
Merchant, but when the merchant died in a brawl in 1302 Robert inherited some of
his money and property. The family were now far more prosperous as a result and
because of this change, they changed their name to the name of their dead
benefactor: Chaucer.
- They settled in London, where Chaucer’s father became a prosperous wine
Merchant. He supplied wine to the king’s cellars, supervising imports from France.
He was influential and successful and was heavily involved in the business and
political affairs in the city. His wealth and connections meant that he could provide
for his family and son as well as provide them with many benefits, primarily,
Chaucer’s enrolment as page boy in the royal household.
 - A page was a boy between 10-17 who worked as an attendant to the royal family. He
was practically a servant, but he learnt polite manners and would later be hopefully
accepted by a patron, someone who would guide his career and later life. Chaucer
became page to the Countess of Ulster, the king’s daughter-in-law, and eventually
served her husband Prince Lionel.
- It was in service of Prince Lionel that Chaucer got captured in France. Edward III
made an unsuccessful attempt to gain the throne in 1359 and Chaucer is named
among those whom a ransom was paid for. After this, he seemed to have entered
the direct service of the King, though his diplomatic skills appeared to be more in
demand than his military expertise. He was sent on diplomatic missions to Spain,
France and Italy over the next few years and some of his business was very secretive.
- Chaucer’s social standing was improved by his marriage in 1365 to Philippa Payne, a
lady in the household of Queen Philippa, Edward III’s wife. Philippa’s sister,
Katherine, was the mistress and eventually the third wife of John of Gaunt, the rich
and powerful son of Edward III. Chaucer’s marriage connected him to John of Gaunt
and therefore the royal circle. John’s son by his first marriage would later become
King Henry IV and Chaucer’s nephews were therefore half-brothers to the future
king.
- Chaucer’s daily life does not seem to have been affected by his family connections. In
1374, he was appointed to a new position with the customs department in London, a
move which took him away from court. He was responsible for checking the
quantities of wool, sheepskins and hides being shipped abroad so that the correct
export duty could be charged. He was still sent overseas on state business and these
trips probably brought him into contact with the works of the great European poets.
- In 1389- Clerk of the King’s Works- he oversaw the building and repairs of the King’s
properties. He supervised the workmen and paid their wages. However, paying the
wages became a problem. Chaucer was robbed certainly once, but possibly three
times within 4 days when delivering money. He was later instructed to give up his
position.
- Chaucer retired from the King’s service but still received annual payments from the
court and gifts from Henry IV and wine from Richard II.
- Chaucer left ‘The Canterbury Tales’ unfinished when he died on 25th October 1400.
He was buried in one of the humbler chapels in Westminster Abbey but his body was
later moved to the east aisle of the south transept, where he became the first tenant
of ‘Poets Corner’.
Chaucer and Italy:
- The Merchant’s Tale is set in Italy. In some ways, this is used to distance the reader
from the characters in the tale and romance commonly had exotic settings.
- Chaucer’s other fabliaux, however, are set closer to home: the tales tolf by the Miller
and Reeve are set in Oxford and East Anglia.
- The Italian setting, therefore, is another marker of the mixed pedigree of The
Merchant’s tale. Chaucer was also familiar with the real Italy, having travelled there
as part of Royal Commissions in 1372 and 1378, and could well have met the great
Italian poets of his time, Giovanni Boccaccio for example, who wrote The
Decameron.
- Chaucer was included in these voyages because of his Italian fluency, which he had
learnt through his father’s trading relations with the Genoese merchants. On his
 second journey he visited the seat of the great, if legendarily corrupt, Visconti, dukes
of Milan. The Visconti, wee owners of a library where Chaucer may have extended
his understanding of the Italian vernacular literature.
- The Clerk’s Tale, immediately precedes that of the Merchant and is also set in
Lombardy, which derives from versions of the story by both Boccaccio and Petrarch.
- Fabliau was too a genre more popular in Italian literature than in English, and the
pear tree story exists in one version of the Italian tales.
Chaucer and trade:
- Chaucer’s father was a prosperous wine merchant from Ipswich who secured his son
a position as pageboy at the royal court from which Geoffrey built a career as a royal
servant. Chaucer based his CT for aristocratic high society, but he himself had
mercantile origins.
- The period through which Chaucer lives was one where Merchants thrived and grew
in status.
- Cities had begun to increase in size as the Black Death had left many men from the
country without masters, they then moved to towns and cities for independent
living.
- English society for those who survived the plague was affluent and offered a larger
market for consumer goods than before. As the demands of the nobility and their
estates were joined by the crafts and tradesmen of the cities, any moderately
substantial town came to represent a market for essential and luxury goods.
- England imported all manner of goods. The main imports came from the North Sea
from the Low Countries, but the major ports on the other side (Antwerp and Bruges)
offered direct access to Danzig, the Black Sea and points east.
- English wool was still in demand in all the cloth-producing centres of the Low
Countries, but England was also poised on the brink of becoming a major cloth-
producer and exporter too.
- The way of life for the merchants differed significantly from that of the nobility of
the peasant. He suffered from the teachings of the Church that to store up treasures
in this world inevitably meant to suffer in the next. But busy men could not devote
their lives to prayer, and reaped rewards in return of their hard work.
- Being charitable was seen as highly beneficial and in the Gospel of Matthew in
chapter 25, Christ preaches that clothing the naked, feeding the hungry and giving
drink to the thirsty were Corporal works of mercy. These ideas became the
merchant’s salvation as they founded guilds and hospitals in the cities in which they
lived to engage in charitable acts and secure passage to heaven.
- The largely unrecognised merchant class were anxious to acquire social recognition.
Many medieval merchants married daughters of or married their daughters to,
impoverished members of the gentry. Via this, they gained entry to closed social and
court circles, as well as gaining the ability to become MPs and members of the royal
commissions.
- Investment in land protected merchants from capital fluctuation and offered a
security which reinvestment in shipping did not. Without the security of owning
land, Merchant’s ran great financial risks. Co-ownership of cargo ships increased the
risk further and a merchant who did not have the source of rental income to
supplement the profits of trade could easily fall into temporary debt.
 - The demand for financial backers exceeded the supply and capital investment was
hard to secure, so merchants did not have recourse to credit despite the Church’s
teachings about sins of usury.
- For its part, the landed marriage market was open to injections of mercantile cash
because of protracted war with France- the ‘Hundred Year’s War’- had been financed
by heavy taxation. Land was easy to tax, but with no modern tax returns or effective
means of getting cash-rich, man had to declare how much he had.
- The main source of taxation was the imposition of duties upon goods entering and
leaving port, and customs accounts at all England’s major ports were assiduously
kept and returned to the Exchequer. Chaucer spent some part of his adult life as a
controller of customs at the Port of London.
Chaucer’s other works:
- His work spans most major genres of medieval literature
- Earliest works to survive- short love ballads, although he is chiefly remembered as a
narrative poet.
- Medieval poets tend to draw on already existing material which they saw as
authoritative, rather than inventing new stories, so much of what Chaucer wrote is
described as ‘’translation’ or ‘carrying across’.
- Sometimes his translations were loosely connected to the great works of European
poets- this is the case with his earliest longest work ‘Romaunt of the Rose’ the
rendering of a long French poem about his love.
- Elsewhere, Chaucer drew on old stories from the European tradition, creatively
adapting them in his own ways to make them fit different narrative contexts and
voices, and to convey new meanings. He wrote three ‘dream visions’, narratives in
which the narrator tells of a dream he had which had cast particular light on a
subject
- The first of these- The Book of the Duchess- offered John of Gaunt oblique
consolation on the death of his first wife, Blanche.
The Canterbury Tales:
- Chaucer died before he could finish his collection, but he did write an ending to it
which he dedicated to his wife and God’s teachings
- Here he commended his philosophical and religious writing, but retracted what
modern readers consider his best work, his narrative fictions, the dream visions,
Troilus and Criseyde and those of The Canterbury Tales which incline to sin. The
collection was a hugely ambitious final project.
- In the framing narrative- several pilgrims meet in the Tabard Inn in Southwark to go
on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket. Pilgrimages to the shrines of
saints were a way to repent sins and a way to make peace with God in what was
pervasively a Christian age. Many involved danger and hardship where men and
women set off on journeys from which they often did not return.
- The journey to Canterbury was not a hard one, especially in springtime, the reasons
for making the journey are unclear, for many it seemed to be a holiday outing.
- The pilgrims present a widespread account of Chaucer’s contemporary society, but
not one which is complete or in any way orderly. The game they become involved in
is a storytelling competition whereby each pilgrim must tell two stories on the way
to Canterbury, two on the way back.
 - The scheme was never completed, and the scholars continue to argue about the
intended order of the tales. No correct order survives under Chaucer’s hand, and
manuscripts after his death arranged them differently.
- Some of the tales stand-alone but many are grouped or paired. It used to be thought
that The Merchant’s Tale, alongside the Wife of Bath, Clerk and Franklin were
grouped under ‘marriage’.
- The only secular woman on the pilgrimage, the Wife of Bath, sets up an outrageous
model of how women can manipulate marriage to their own ends. She is countered
by the Clerk, the Merchant then tells a tale of marriage strife from a male
perspective and Franklin diffuses the debate with mutual give and take.
Historical background:
- Many people in Chaucer’s time saw signs of the expected end of the world-
- England was engaged in chronic warfare with France in what later became known as
the Hundred Years War.
- Turbulence in Europe had led to schism in the Roman Catholic Church
- The middle of the 14th century had seen violent weather changes- storms causing
structural damage to harvests
- The outbreak of the plague, later known as the Black Death, had wiped out around
one third of the population of Europe during the 1340s
- The black death- hastened social change and caused psychological shock to all
- The structure of the government- based on land ownership since the Norman
Conquest of 1066, nobility and gentry holding land for the king according to their
place in the hierarchy. In return for land, the king demanded military service as well
as taxes to support the nation in peace and at war.
- The church- had a similar structure, archbishops and bishops were its great lords
who acted as ministers, diplomats, and advisors to the monarch. The church too,
supported itself by land ownership by diocese, monastery, or parish, each with its
tenants. Those who prayed and those who fought made up the first two of the three
‘estates’, which was how contemporary theorists saw society. those who worked,
that is everyone else, made the third estate.
- The third estate had long ceased been made up of peasants, however, but also
included fabulously wealthy international merchants and well-to-do urban
craftsmen. The Black Death accelerated the growth of a varied urban life with its
own complex social structures, and of a monetary economy where wealth could be
measured not by land but by cash. The death of so many of the population assisted
the collapse of the old structure by creating labour shortages and consequently
greater social and geographical mobility.
- Many of Chaucer’s pilgrims represent ‘new money’, only the Knight and the Squire
represent the old ruling class. The Merchant is part of the new urban patriciate
whose wealth is tied up in movable goods and cash rather than land. His
involvement in the Black Market- shows his has invisible sources of wealth: land was
hard to conceal and therefore easy to tax, whereas the Crown struggled to find ways
of getting revenue from mercantile riches.
- The Peasants Revolt (1381)- number of violent uprisings in Kent, East Anglia and
ultimately across the Home Counties and as far north as Yorkshire. The crisis was
triggered by the introduction of a new flat-rate poll tax as the Crown desperately
tried to raise more money to sustain the war with France, but the demands of the
 rebels were various, and by no means were all the rebels peasants. At the climax- a
band of peasants marched into London, dragged the chancellor and Treasurer of
England out of the Tower of London where they were hiding, and beheaded them.
They also burned John of Gaunt’s palace at the Savoy. The rebels entered London at
Aldgate where Chaucer lived.
- Richard III (king during the crisis of 1381)- at the time he was only 14 years old, he
inherited the crown from his grandfather Edward III. Richard’s father had tragically
died a year before his own father, nicknamed the Black Prince. He was a great
warrior and hero, a model of chivalry credited with major victories against the
French in the middle of the century. Richard- inherited an unstable country,
impoverished by war, his uncle (John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster) remained the
wealthiest and most powerful man in the kingdom. After a turbulent reign, Richard
was finally deposed in 1399 in favour of John of Gaunt’s son Henry IV. Richard died in
mysterious circumstances at Pontefract Castle while in the custody of Thomas
Chaucer, the poet’s son.
Domestic life:
- The domestic setting of The Merchant’s Tale provides a picture of the household of a
knight. It is located out of town, but within reach of it. May comes from the town,
and is, therefore socially inferior to January. A knight, thought part of the landed
classes, would not have had substantial an estate as a lord, there are numerous
references in the tale towards the scope of January’s household.
- The marriage takes place in a church- not in a private chapel such as a lord would
have incorporated into his house or castle. All substantial houses were built around
the hall. In earlier times the hall formed the entire house, and everyone ate and
drank within it, as well as sleeping there for safety.
- In Chaucer’s time the function of the hall was in transition, the public business of the
household was conducted in the hall, and it was where he entire household ate their
meals.
- The main family or highest social members of the household ate at the ‘raised table’
or the ‘high table’. Damian, the reader is particularly told, is a page or knave, and has
some privileges as he customarily eats at the ‘high table’.
- The newlyweds in the story go to bed in a chamber off the main hall. This is a
‘withdrawing room’, the origin of modern ‘drawing room’, away from the public hall
in a relatively quiet and private space. The notion of private space would have been
alien to medieval people, rich and poor alike.
- Private gardens- popular but again quite unlike modern gardens. The garden
represented the idea of the paradise or the garden of Eden- the biblical Eden and
pagan paradise. The medieval garden was a series of formal plantings with paths and
plants chosen for their aesthetic properties- either for the beauty of the flowers or
their fragrance or both.
- To have a garden was a status mark, leisure and luxury. It was a place where the
members of the household, in particular the ladies, could enjoy fresh air in safety
and relative privacy.

Literary background:
The Fabliau:
 - The main plot leading up to the encounter in the pear tree derives from the genre of
medieval narrative known as the Fabliau
- A form of verse narrative in vogue in France in the 13th century, written by and for
the entertainment of the nobility
- Poked fun at the customs and social-climbing habits from the urban middle class
- Racy in pace, obscene in the focus of its action and rarely ever stops to divulge into
the description of its characters or setting
- Usually centres a practical joke- often a rude one
- Chief purpose is to make the audience laugh
- The Merchant’s Tale- protracted joke with a punchline, an old man blinded by lust is
suddenly struck with physical blindness, to only have his sight restored but then have
his memory manipulated
- Debate with classical and mythological characters or references
- Chaucer’s fabliau became popular with the courtiers and then later with the upper
class bourgeoisie, the very class they satirise
Sources:
- The Merchant’s Tale, unlike many of The Canterbury Tales, is not a reworking of a
single source, but it is one of the most original of Chaucer’s tales.
- The pear tree episode appears in a number of versions in jest-books, and particularly
close parallels to Chaucer’s version have been identified in German and Italian. The
opening of the tale has much in common with Chaucer’s tale of Melibee, one of the
two tales told by Chaucer in his disguise as a fellow pilgrim
- The other material he draws on- Miroir de Mariage- The mirror of marriage- by
Chaucer’s French contemporary, Eustace Deschamps, a long diatribe listing all the
characteristics of a bad wife, and De Raptu Proserpina- ‘On the rape of Proserpina’-
by Claudius Claudianus from which he draws on the story of Proserpina and Pluto
Romance:
- As soon as he sees May at her wedding feast, Damian becomes so overcome with
love that he falls ill and must go to bed. He comforts himself by writing her a letter in
refined verse, he doesn’t send it but places it in a silk purse.
- When he declares his love for her, he swears her to secrecy. He behaves as the
archetype for courtly love.
- However, he is a servant and the object of his desire is a young woman of the town
who readily succumbs to his advances, they have a mutual desire for one another
which leads them up the pear tree. As well as being a sophisticated and inventive
contribution to the fabliau genre, The Merchant’s Tale is a parody romance.
- Chaucer draws on the convention of typical women- hair of spun gold, skin like ivory,
cheeks like roses, lips like coral- he describes May like this but description is
undercut by being set in imagination of an old man in bed.
- Chaucer is drawing on the conventions of the satirical when he describes the actions
of Damian, who combs and preens himself before becoming an even more unctuous
servant, when he has received May’s response.
- Romance tends to be rather long, not only because they indulge in long passages of
statis description and set pieces of speech, but because of their complicated plotting.
- Fabliau is a relatively simple narrative which progresses inexorably and single-
mindedly to its punchline, the romance keeps several plots going at the same time.
 - This mastery of simultaneous action, which switches between location and situation
bringing them together finally for the narrative climax, was a speciality of French
romance writers and called entrelacement or interlacing. Chaucer uses this
technique to great comic effect, when he forces his reader to listen to marital
dispute between the king and queen of fairies before he finally reveals what Damian
is doing up a tree.
Anti-feminism:
- Endemic in medieval literature- relationships between the sexes
- Women in the eyes of the church carried the blame for the loss of paradise,
according to the book of Genesis, Eve stole the fruit from the forbidden tree
- Eve provided the treacherous stereotype for women in medieval times only to be
countered by the Virgin Mary, who both being virgin and mother, supplied an
impossible role model.
- In a society where marriages were arranged and in childbirth, death was common,
many men might marry a series of women throughout their lives, each of whom had
to be child-bearing in order to ensure the survival or sire of an heir. As a result, old
rich men married beautiful young women, so the match made between January and
May would not have been uncommon. Senex amans- old man lover
- Anti-feminism draws on the story of the conception of Christ in Mathew’s gospel
where Joseph returns from a journey, finds the Virgin Mary pregnant, but is
immediately reassured of her virtue by an angel.
- Retellings of the nativity, in particularly in late medieval religious plays, often reflect
the influence in turn of the ‘mal marié’ (badly married) by having an unenlightened
Joseph lament his lot to an audience assumed to sympathise his plight, the common
lot of all old husbands.
- The close satirical relationship January and May have with Joseph and Mary is
further emphasised by the similarity of their names. Moreover, by naming them
after months, Chaucer suggests that the behaviour of these two characters is
universally representative of the inevitable behaviour of those in winter and the late
spring of their lives respectively