Sense, Reference, and Wisdom in the Merchant's Tale
- Author / Editor
- Gallacher, Patrick J.
Sense, Reference, and Wisdom in the Merchant's Tale
- Published
- Robert Myles and David Williams, eds. Chaucer and Language: Essays in Honour of Douglas Wurtele (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), pp. 126-42 and 209-18.
- Description
- Reads MerT for the ways it confronts and rejects skeptical nominalism. The Merchant considers the possibility that language "has sense but no reference"--that it is only games--but the absurdity of January's decision to marry undercuts this notion, and Proserpina's assertion of God as the source of understanding affirms the reality of abstractions.
- Alternative Title
- Chaucer and Language: Essays in Honour of Douglas Wurtele.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale.
- Language and Word Studies.