The Marriage 'Encomium' in the 'Merchant's Tale': A Chaucerian Crux
- Author / Editor
- Benson, Donald R.
The Marriage 'Encomium' in the 'Merchant's Tale': A Chaucerian Crux
- Published
- Chaucer Review 14 (1979): 48-60.
- Description
- Rhetorically nearer to exhortation than to encomium, the didactic structure of this passage (4.1267-1392) rises in a series of contradictions that confuse doctrines and undercut ironic perceptions. None of the proposed assignments of the passage resolves the problematical aspects of this anomaly, which may point toward an incomplete stage of revision.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale.