Chaucer's 'Merchant's Tale' and Its Narrator

Author / Editor
Beidler, Peter Grant.

Title
Chaucer's 'Merchant's Tale' and Its Narrator

Published
DAI 29.11 (1969): 3969A.

Description
Encourages separation of teller and tale in interpreting CT, reading MerT in light of its sources but not MerP. The narrator of the Tale identifies more with Justinus than with January and shows "a measure of sympathy" for May. In this way the Tale is inconsistent with the attitudes toward husbands and wives found in MerP, which was written "in all probability after the tale itself."

Chaucer Subjects
Merchant and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations