Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Merchant's Tale," Giovanni Boccaccio's "The Tale of the Enchanted Pear-Tree," and "Sir Orfeo" Viewed as Eroticized Versions of the Folktales about Supernatural Wives.

Author / Editor
Wicher, Andrzej.

Title
Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Merchant's Tale," Giovanni Boccaccio's "The Tale of the Enchanted Pear-Tree," and "Sir Orfeo" Viewed as Eroticized Versions of the Folktales about Supernatural Wives.

Published
Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture 3 (2013): 42-57.

Description
Discusses MerT; Boccaccio's "Decameron," 7.9; and "Sir Orfeo" as "slightly different" varieties of the enchanted-tree motif, emphasizing their structural similarities, their uses of enchantment, and the relative happiness of their endings.

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