Afterthoughts on the Merchant's Tale.
- Author / Editor
- Bronson, Bertrand H.
Afterthoughts on the Merchant's Tale.
- Published
- Studies in Philology 58 (1961): 583-96.
- Description
- Argues that MerT "was composed before and independent of" MerP, initially addressed orally by Chaucer to a "courtly audience." Such listeners were familiar with the "humorous antifeministic tradition" into which the "senex amans" convention, January's sardonic "panegyric on marriage," the extravagant rhetoric of the wedding feast, and the Proserpina/Pluto debate fit without recourse to a narrating personality. WBP also fits into this tradition.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations