The Price of Sex in Chaucer's 'Shipman's Tale'
- Author / Editor
- Beidler, Peter G.
The Price of Sex in Chaucer's 'Shipman's Tale'
- Published
- Chaucer Review 31 (1996): 5-17.
- Description
- It is impossible to determine an exact modern value of the 100 francs in ShT, but internal, economic, and comparative literary evidence indicates that {dollar}5,000 is "a specific lower limit to the value of that amount in 1990's U.S. dollars." Although Chaucer makes the amount more conservative than in Boccaccio's analogous tale, the merchant is generous to his wife, who has an inflated self-evaluation.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Shipman and His Tale. .
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.