Limited art edition (200 copies printed) of MerPT, translated by Nevill Coghill (1960), illustrated by Derek Cousins, and designed by Thomas Simmonds. Coghill's translation is interleaved for comparison with the text from the Ellesmere manuscript,…
Modernizes MerPT in iambic pentameter couplets, with brief notes and facing-page text in Middle English. The introduction (pp. vii-xv) emphasizes the bitter tone of the tale and its satire
Pittock, Malcolm.
Essays in Criticism 17 (1967): 26-40.
Reads MerT as a "striking example" of the "tension between the tale and its teller" insofar as the Merchant fails to understand the "true significance" of the Tale. His "moral perception has been disturbed by anger and by a ludicrous…
The combination of genres in MerT (fabliau, encomium, moral allegory, mock-heroic, and parody) satirizes the social institutions and literary genres within which sex and love are contained and represented. The encomium fuses reality and idealization;…
Irvin, Matthew W.
Studies in the Age Chaucer 40 (2018): 113-53.
Connects "The Prologue and Tale of Beryn" (PTB) with the London Company of Mercers that met at St. Thomas Acon, suggesting that PTB was composed on the occasion of their feast in 1428 or 1430, exploring connections of the poem with John Carpenter,…
Adaptation for the stage of MerT and ShT, framed by introduction by "Chaucer" of the two narrators, who then stand aside and comment on the characters while the action proceeds as drama. In Modern English pentameter couplets; intended "for use in…
Blanch, Robert J., ed.
Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1970.
Textbook edition of MerT, with brief introduction and notes, accompanied by ten selections from previously published criticism of the Tale by various authors, all from the twentieth century. Includes suggestions for student essay topics and "General…
Innes, Sheila, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2001.
Middle English text of MerPT and the GP description of the Merchant,with notes, glossary, and discussion questions on facing pages. Includes contextual information concerning Chaucer's life, courtly love, and the rest of CT, particularly the…
Hussey, Maurice, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Presents MerPT in Middle English (following Robinson's 1957 edition), with notes and glossary at the end of the text. The Introduction (pp. 1-34) comments on the GP description of the Merchant, the relations between MerT and ClT and between MerT and…
Swan, Richard.
Deddington, Oxfordshire: Philip Allan Updates, 2005.
Student guide to MerPT and the GP description of the Merchant (text included for GP selection only), with general information about CT and reading Chaucer, and more specific discussion of plot, characters, themes, genre, and techniques of MerT.…
King, Pamela M.
Harlow: Longman; London: York Press, 2003.
Study guide to MerPT that includes a plot synopsis, running commentary, and glosses (text not included, except for three passages for closer analysis). Also includes descriptions of the Merchant's character and the characters in his tale, various…
Olson, Paul A.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 3 (1961): 259-63.
Explores the Merchant's "animus toward Italians or, at least, toward Lombards from Pavia" in his characterization of January. Responding to the Clerk's view of Lombards, the Merchant reflects late-medieval English malice against Italian commercial…
Brown, Emerson, Jr.
Chaucer Newsletter 13:1 (1991): 5.
The name "Damyan" in MerT alludes to St. Damian, whose healing talents support a pun on "lechour." Explores Chaucer's sources of knowledge of the saint.
Honda, Takahiro.
Koichi Kano, ed. Through the Eyes of Chaucer: Essays in Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Society for Chaucer Studies (Kawasaki: Asao Press, 2014), pp. 111-24.
Focuses on contrastive characterizations of the husband figures in MerT and ShT. Considers the common motif of the untruthful wife in relation to the theme of mutability. In Japanese.
Oxford, Christ Church College, MS 152 encloses Gamelyn in an inserted quire and supplies the long ending of MerT and Link 17 on substitute bifolia. Considered in relation to corresponding "fault lines" in Hengwrt and Ellesmere, this evidence suggests…
Goddard, Richard.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 170-86.
Examines how Chaucer's understanding of medieval trade, finance, and commerce is reflected in the Merchant's portrait in GP. Connects historical fluctutions in the English and Italian wool trade to the Merchant's business acumen in MerT.
Ladd, Roger A.
Studes in Philology 99 : 17-32, 2002.
By fitting merchants directly into his larger exploration of the relationship of sentence and solaas, Chaucer uses them to test the limits of the satiric form that dominated previous literary discussions of trade. Portraying merchants as consistently…
Kowalik, Barbara Janina.
Chaucer Review 57 (2022): 162-89.
Considers FranT as a Breton lay that recalls, not ancient history, but Chaucer's recent memories of his own stays in France, tying the tale to the marital situation of Joan of Kent.
Kaempfer, Lucis.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 105-19.
Examines joy in TC--looking forward to it in Books 1 and 2, experiencing it in Book 3, and remembering it in Books 4 and --as aspects of Troilus's identity and of the poem itself. Anticipated joy shapes the characterization of Troilus as a courtly…
Thompson, John J.
Graham Allen, Carrie Griffen, and Mary O'Connell, eds. Readings on Audience and Textual Materiality (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), pp. 9–21.
Considers the shifts from orality to literacy and from manuscripts to printed books in late medieval English book culture, examining the range of implications about audiences evident in various versions of the lyric "Erthe upon erthe." Opens with…
Heffernan, Carol Falvo.
Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 1995.
Summarizes medieval and Renaissance attitudes toward melancholy as a medical disorder and examines literary uses of melancholy in BD, TC, and Shakespeare's "As You Like It" and "Hamlet."
