Vision, Truth, and Genre in the Merchant's Tale Essays

The mirror on the bedroom wall examines the public perception of her private life. Looking only at its reflection, the audience cannot tell the room is in a mess; the rosebush and the dirt trail are not apparent to the audience. In the mirror, only the back of woman’s head is evident. Her face and her emotions are hidden from the mirror. It appears as if she is doing an ordinary task; she could very well be sitting on the bed, reading a book. She turns her back to the mirror and denies it a true reflection.

The merchant claims that he knows nothing of long-suffering wives. Rather, if his wife were to marry the devil, she would overmatch even him. The Merchant claims that there is a great difference between Griselde's exceptional obedience and his wife's more common cruelty. The Merchant has been married two months and has loathed every minute of it. The Host asks the Merchant to tell a tale of his horrid wife.

On the pilgrimage to Canterbury, the Knight started off with his romantic story about two lovesick men fighting over a lady. Chaucer chose to follow this with the “Miller’s Tale” that is full of dirty humor. The Miller is drunk so he is able to get away with the dirty puns and jokes he tells. The “Miller’s Tale” is an example of a fabliau, a short humorous narrative. Fabliaux include sex, adultery, drinking, swearing, farting, and anything that would create a stark contrast between what would take place amongst courtly love in a royal court and what went on between peasants in more rural areas. Even though fabliaux talked about the lower class, they were enjoyed by the aristocrats. Thus the Miller is so eager to tell his tale right after the

I agree with what Condren’s view on Chaucer. Chaucer shows in the story Chaucer talks about how dynamic life is and how different the people are. Life is a crazy thing but Chaucer makes it really different. He makes everything “fascinating” with everything he talks about has to have a story behind it and the people have stories behind them. He makes the people “fascinating” he talks about how they have rashes and have nasty eyebrows and the way they dress. Nothing is boring with them.

The Merchant's Tale tells the story of an old man searching for a wife and finding one, who is ultimately unfaithful to him. Chaucer uses a variety of elements in the poem to show his knowledge of contemporary interests and his story telling capacity through another figure. Irony flows through the poem, laced with allusions to the Bible. Chaucer's use of his astronomical knowledge not only allows modern day scholars to date events, but also adds another dimension of interest for the contemporary audience and of course, the pilgrims.

Alison in the Miller's Tale and May of the Merchant's Tale are similar in several ways. Both are young women who have married men much older than themselves. They both become involved with young, manipulative men. They also conspire to and do cuckold their husbands. This is not what marriage is about and it is demonstrated in both tales. What makes the Miller's Tale bawdy comedy and the Merchant's tale bitter satire is in the characterization. In the Miller's tale we are giving stereotyped characters. The principals are cardboard cut-outs sent into farcical motion. The Merchant's Tale gives us much more background and detail of the character's lives. The reader is more involved and can

A relationship is usually seen between the teller of a tale and the tale that he or she decides to share. Chaucer’s pilgrim, the Merchant, uses his feelings on marriage to teach a lesson in his tale. The Wife of Bathe also relies on her life experience to tell her tale. The two relationships in the tales can then be compared.

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses the obscene and the grotesque to illustrate to the readers the bawdy stories of the pilgrims on the journey and highlight their class differences. Although the members of the lower class use elements of the vulgar and grotesque, the erasure of some of the more obscene scenes by the storytellers indicates Chaucer’s humor to the audience as it is a rhetorical device. In “The Merchant’s Tale,” Chaucer gives the merchant, whose position is caught between the higher classes and the lower classes, the power to perform paralipsis to cheekily clue the audience in to the more vulgar moments of the story as well as depicting monstrous imagery.

The structure and characters of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Shipman’s Tale warp the traditional in order to create a thriving network for exchange. Stylistically, this particular tale utilizes common conventions of the fabliau: sex, trickery, and poetic justice. That being said, The Shipman’s Tale is completely void of an overall moral message—a key element in the genre. Instead, there is a focus on the presence of male and female characters who work to fulfill an individual agenda, and on the “[exploration of] each other’s intentions in cloaked terms… [and the avoidance of] direct commitment” (Finlayson 342). Chaucer rejuvenates the fabliau’s structure, which allows the Merchant, his wife, and the Monk to each “assume the mercantile roles of borrower, lender, seller and purchaser of goods” without seriously harming their relationships (Finlayson 343). As a result, the meaning of the tale is not embedded in the fulfillment of norms of this genre, but in its displacement of these conventions by focus on the exchanges between the characters.

There is no question that contradictory values make up a major component of The Canterbury Tales. Fate vs. Fortuna, knowledge vs. experience and love vs. hate all embody Chaucer's famous work. These contrasting themes are an integral part of the complexity and sophistication of the book, as they provide for an ironic dichotomy to the creative plot development and undermine the superficial assumptions that might be made. The combination of completely contradictory motifs leads to the unusual stories and outcomes that come to play out in the tales. And these outcomes draw focus on the larger universal issues that in many cases transcend the boundaries of vernacular periods to all of

The integration of Chaucer’s dual persona is important in showing her immediate appearance and how her character develops in her Prologue and Tale.

THE CANTERBURY TALES Geoffrey Chaucer THE MERCHANT ’S TALE  Once there was, dwelling in Lombardy, a worthy knight, January, who had lived nobly for sixty years without a wife.

In the prologue, the narrator introduced a mysterious man, who is known as the Merchant. At first glance, it is assumed he was a wealthy and confident man; however, this assumption is proven wrong when the narrator explained he was quite the opposite. The Merchant covered up his flaws in life with his confidence and attire. In reality, he is in debt and not the man people claimed him to be. “This estimable Merchant so had set his wits to work, none he knew he was in debt” (line 288-289). Nevertheless, his financial issues did not stop him from being a well mannered man. The Merchant exemplifies mystery and irony, since there is no clear information about his true nature. In conclusion, the Merchant brings curiosity into the story, since the

Prominently when they chose to disguise their sexual identities and present themselves as heterosexual towards the two women. This demonstrates that they can mask their identity in a “heteronormative system” to inevitably resist it (Berg, 28). Moreover, as Berg states, it may as well be the “best approach to bring about social and political change”, signifying that Chaucer may have been underscoring a pre-resistance

Negative imagery is used by Chaucer to undermine the effects of the narrator’s words. The manners practiced by the prioress are described by