'And Venus Laugheth': An Interpretation of the 'Merchant's Tale'
- Author / Editor
- Stevens, Martin
'And Venus Laugheth': An Interpretation of the 'Merchant's Tale'
- Published
- Chaucer Review 7.2 (1972): 118-31.
- Description
- Rejects readings of MerT as "savage and mordant self-revelation" of the Merchant, characterizing the Merchant's wife as more similar to the Wife of Bath and the Host's Goodelief than to May. MerP is an extension of the Clerk's Envoy, the Merchant should not be identified with Januarie, and MerT is more comic and joyful than bitter. Includes hypotheses about Chaucer's sequence of composition in CT parts 4 and 5.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale
- Clerk and His Tale
- Squire and His Tale
- Franklin and His Tale
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale