Placebo Effects: Flattery and Antifeminism in Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale" and the "Tale of Melibee."

Description: With Albertanus of Brescia's "Liber de consolationis et consilii" as a common source, Mel and MerT both confront issues of counsel, gender, and lordship. MerT offers a skeptical, antifeminist, homosocial reassessment of the relatively optimistic "Albertanian doctrines of counsel" found in Mel, which also offers a positive view of femininity. In differing ways, each tale suggests that "antifeminism and flattery pose special dangers to the masculine self."

Chaucer Subjects: Merchant and His Tale
Tale of Melibee
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations