An Interpretive Crux in Januarie's Garden: Chaucer's Merchant's Tale and the Crucifixion

Description: Building on three generally acknowledged biblical motifs in MerT, Fumo suggests "the presence, indeed the dominance, of a fourth": the Crucifixion. Januarie's pain in marriage is associated with "Christ's suffering on the cross"; however, the pear-tree climax parodies events associated with the Crucifixion, the husband is complicit in his own suffering, and the climax is an "enactment" of Januarie's "spiritual choice . . . to reject Christian truth." Whatever the Merchant's intentions in telling the Tale, he is "blind" to its implications.