The Narrating of Chaucer's 'Merchant's Tale'
- Author / Editor
- Nelles, William.
The Narrating of Chaucer's 'Merchant's Tale'
- Published
- John Deely and Jonathan Evans, eds. Semiotics 1986 (Lanham, New York, and London: University Press of America, 1987), pp. 15-23.
- Description
- Reviews interpretations of MerT. To use Genette's terminology, the Merchant as teller is an "intradiegetic" narrator among other narrators--extradiegetic (Chaucer the pilgrim), hypodiegetic (Justinus, Pluto), hypo-hypodiagetic (Solomon)--whose interactions are at times metaleptic.
- Analyzing relations among these narrators help reconcile opposed readings and suggests that the tale is what Barthes calls a "multivalent" text, marked by openness and ambiguity.
- Contributor
- Deely, John,
- Evans, Jonathan,ed.
- ed.
- Alternative Title
- Semiotics 1986.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale.