The Merchant's Prologue and Tale
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The Merchant's Prologue and Tale is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In it Chaucer subtly mocks antifeminist literature like that of Theophrastus ('Theofraste'). The tale also shows the influence of Boccaccio (Decameron: 7th day, 9th tale), Deschamps' Le Miroir de Mariage, Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (allegedly translated into English by Chaucer), Andreas Capellanus, Statius and Cato. Though several of the tales are sexually explicit by modern standards, this one is especially so. Larry D. Benson remarks:
- The central episode of the Merchant's Tale is like a fabliau, though of a very unusual sort: It is cast in the high style, and some of the scenes (the marriage feast, for example) are among Chaucer's most elaborate displays of rhetorical art.
The main character, Januarie (a senex amans), is a 60-year-old knight from the town of Pavie, in the region of Lombardy. Pavie was a place known for having many banks and brothels (thus revealing certain characteristics about both the merchant and Januarie). Januarie marries May, a teenage girl, largely out of lust and under the guise of religious acceptablilty, while she marries him for the inheritance after his death and because it would be socially unacceptable to refuse him.
Sexually unsatisfied by Januarie, May secretly sets up an affair with Damyan, Januarie's squire. One June 8, Januarie and May have sex in Januarie's garden (a locus amœnus), while Damyan is hiding secretly above them in a tree.
May requests a pear from the tree and as Januarie is blind and cannot get the pear, he lifts May into the tree. In the process, May climbs on Januarie's back. In the tree, May is promptly greeted by her young lover Damyan, and the two of them then have sex in the tree: 'And sodeynly anon this Damyan / Gan pullen up the smok, and in he throng.'
The gods Pluto and 'Proserpina' (or 'Proserpyne'), watching the affair, have a short argument in which Pluto condemns women's morality. He decides to grant Januarie his sight back, but Proserpina in turn grants all women the ability to talk their way out of anything, saying, "I swere / That I shal yeven hire suffisant answere / And all wommen after, for hir sake; / That, though they shulle hemself excuse, / And bere hem doun that wolden hem excuse, / For lak of answere noon of hem shall dien."
Januarie regains his sight just in time to see his wife and Damyan engaged in intercourse, but May successfully convinces him that his eyesight is deceiving him because it has only just been restored and that she is only 'struggling with a man' because she was told this would get Januarie's sight back.
[edit] The Fabliau debate
One question that splits critics is whether the Merchant's tale is a fabliau. Typically a description for a tale of carnal lust and frivolous bed-hopping, some would argue that especially the latter half of the tale, where Damyan and May make love in the tree with the blind Januarie at the foot of the tree, represents fabliau. Derek Pearsall, for example, is in favour of this view. Some critics, such as Maurice Hussey, feel that Chaucer offers a great deal more sophistication and philosophical insight to put this on a level above fabliau.
[edit] See also
[edit] Elsewhere
Harvard's interlinear translation.
Harvard's page
| Preceded by The Clerk's Prologue and Tale |
The Canterbury Tales | Succeeded by The Squire's Prologue and Tale |
