Chaucer's Merchant's Tale and Its Irish Analogues.

Author / Editor
Wentersdorf, Karl P.

Title
Chaucer's Merchant's Tale and Its Irish Analogues.

Published
Studies in Philology 63 (1966): 604-29.

Description
Anatomizes motifs in the sources and analogues of the pear tree episode in MerT, focusing on several modern Irish analogues that have details of characterization which parallel those in MerT and have an intervention by male and female fairies. Suggests that an early version of these Irish analogues may have influenced Chaucer while he was in service to Prince Lionel and his wife Elizabeth, heiress of Ulster and Connaught, perhaps while Lionel was royal viceroy in Ireland, 1361-66.

Chaucer Subjects
Merchant and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Chaucer's Life