Merchant's Tale Essay

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    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

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    If you and 29 of your friends went on a trip and all told stories, whose story would win? In the case of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, this was the question at hand. The Canterbury Tales explains the religious pilgrimage of many individuals to Canterbury, and the stories they told along the way. With them traveled a Host, who served as the judge of the contest. He determined who the winner would be based off of how clean the story was and if the story was morally sound or not. The

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    On its surface, the Host’s presence in the Merchant’s account from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales seems to portray the Host as empathetic towards the Merchant. This makes sense because the Host is initially depicted as a Christ-like figure in the General Prologue. Close reading reveals, however, that the deeper significance of the story is that the Host uses the Merchant as a mechanism to express his own desires. Consequently, the Christ-like persona that the Host embodies in the General Prologue

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    The Merchant in The Canterbury Tales is influenced by the standards of society of the tale. The Merchant acts in interesting ways in response to his background and people’s view of him. Some of the standards of the society cause the Merchant to act in self-interest and that factor propels many of his choices throughout The Canterbury Tales. The Merchant’s portrayal in the story is affected by the role of merchants in society, his pompous attitude, and his unhappy marriage. The view of a merchant

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    In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes his pilgrimage to Canterbury by using several different pilgrims. The shipman is one of these pilgrims on this trip, and he is known as one of the most brutal pilgrims on this pilgrimage. The shipman is one of the best travellers because he goes all over Spain and Britain because of his job; he works as a commercial shipman that trades among the mercantile class. He is known as an unsavory type, who has no feelings for law or conscience, as he will throw

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    usually was some sort of successful trick in the story. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, he uses the fabliaux style writing to portray how they viewed women in the medieval period. He shows how a fabliaux can actually be a satire of a romantic scene. Chaucer displays the fabliaux style writing in the stories of The Reeve’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, and The Miller’s Tale. In the Reeve’s Tale, John and Alan went to the miller’s house to use the mill. The miller says they can stay the

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    In a significant number of his tales Chaucer uses the comic genre of fabliaux, which are short, typically anti-intellectual, indecent tales of bourgeois or low life. The plot usually involves an older husband who is cuckholded by a younger man whom (often) the older man has himself brought into the house, and his often younger wife. The Miller, the Reve, the Merchant and the Wife of Bath all tell tales which are essentially amoral - in fitting with the genre; tales which would not have been acceptable

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    The Canterbury Tales: Wealth, Morality and Success In the prologue of The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, through his choice of style devices such as imagery and details for the merchant and the five guildsmen, highlights materialism in the medieval middle class and challenges the oft perceived notion that material wealth is an automatic determinant of personal success or morality. Chaucer uses imagery and detail to paint a picture of a stereotypical merchant, later to reveal truths contradictory

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    Canterbury Tales, many travelers gather together to begin a pilgrimage. During their quest, each of the pilgrims proceed to tell a tale to entertain the group. From these stories arise four different tales, in which Chaucer uses to examine the concept of marriage and the problems that arise from this bonding of two people. In the tales of "The Franklin", "The Clerk", "The Wife of Bath", and "The Merchant", marriage is debated and examined from different perspectives. Out of the four tales, The Franklin's

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    The Shipman’s Tale exhibited a positive viewpoint through the Marxist lens, but it is not the only instance of a positive viewpoint in The Canterbury Tales. In addition to The Shipman’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, of The Canterbury Tales, through the Marxist lens displays a positive perspective when the miller is defeated by the students. The favorite in this scenario is the

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