The Non-Dramatic Disunity of the "Merchant's Tale."

Description: Reads MerT as a composite of "various comic attitudes toward lust and marriage," not as the bitter vituperation of an angry narrator, arguing that the latter, conventional view results from seeking to impose "organic unity" on four "strikingly incongruous" sections of the Tale. Examines the "rhetorical debate on marriage . . . , the courtly romance centering in the garden, the episode of Pluto and Proserpina, and the raucous fabliau episode of the conclusion" for their "exploitation of the comic possibilities inherent in impropriety and incongruity."