The Merchant's Tale: Literary Contexts, the Play of Genres, and Institutionalized Sexual Relations
- Author / Editor
- Finlayson, John.
The Merchant's Tale: Literary Contexts, the Play of Genres, and Institutionalized Sexual Relations
- Published
- Anglia 121: 557-80. , 2003.
- Description
- The combination of genres in MerT (fabliau, encomium, moral allegory, mock-heroic, and parody) satirizes the social institutions and literary genres within which sex and love are contained and represented. The encomium fuses reality and idealization; the allegorical debate mocks January and parodies the literary elevation of sex. The garden scene parodies courtly love, the Edenic fall, and the authority of the gods.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale.