Mercury in the Garden: Mythographical Methods in the Merchant's Tale' and 'Decameron' 7.9
- Author / Editor
- Smarr, Janet Levarie
Mercury in the Garden: Mythographical Methods in the Merchant's Tale' and 'Decameron' 7.9
- Published
- Jane Chance, ed. The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular in Early France and England (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1990), pp. 199-214.
- Description
- Examining erotic elements, "identifications of the pear tree and the garden," and Mercury's role and attributes, Smarr analyzes similarities between Chaucer's and Boccaccio's handling of the pear-tree tale--similarities greater than those found in the three most likely sources for MerT--and argues that, although Chaucer may not have known Boccaccio, he worked with the same complexity.
- Alternative Title
- The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular in Early France and England.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.