Chaucer's May, Standup Comics, and Critics
- Author / Editor
- Hagen, Susan K.
Chaucer's May, Standup Comics, and Critics
- Published
- Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 127-43.
- Description
- Compares the narrative strategy of MerT with the techniques of standup comedy. The narrator of MerT holds up for ridicule the socially sanctioned convention of marriage between young women and old men, while at the same time affirming conventional attitudes about the sexual appetites of women. Our laughter at January implies our complicity in his misogyny.
- Alternative Title
- Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale.