Sight and Sexual Performance in the Merchant's Tale

Author / Editor
Everest, Carol A.

Title
Sight and Sexual Performance in the Merchant's Tale

Published
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998) pp. 91-103.

Description
From the perspective of medieval psychology, January's pretensions to youth and sexual vigor are ridiculous and potentially fatal, since his sexual overactivity diminishes vital spirits and causes, among other effects, blindness and eventually death.

Alternative Title
Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde.

Chaucer Subjects
Merchant and His Tale.