'The Merchant's Tale': A Tragicomedy of the Neglect of Counsel--The Limits of Art

Author / Editor
Bloomfield, Morton W.

Title
'The Merchant's Tale': A Tragicomedy of the Neglect of Counsel--The Limits of Art

Published
Siegfried Wenzel, ed. Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 37-50.

Description
MerT is about limits and trangressions. January violates a limit marrying May; May violates moral limits; modes of parody and irony raze barriers between tragic and comic, making the tale its own anti-tale. The explicit cynicism and "realism" of the fabliau conflicts with the values of the tragic "lai."

Contributor
Wenzel, Siegfried, ed.

Alternative Title
Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Chaucer Subjects
Merchant and His Tale.