The Scorpion of Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale."

Author / Editor
Pace, George B.

Title
The Scorpion of Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale."

Published
Modern Language Quarterly 26 (1965): 369-74.

Description
Describes the medieval tradition of representing the scorpion as a figure of female sexuality and explains how this underlies the depiction of Fortune as a harlot and a treacherous "woman-visaged scorpion" in MerT 4.2057-62.

Chaucer Subjects
Merchant and His Tale