Summary and Analysis of The Merchants Tale Essays -- Canterbury Tales

Summary and Analysis of The Merchants Tale (The Canterbury Tales)Prologue to the Merchants TaleThe merchant claims that he knows nonhing of long-suffering wives. Rather, if his wife were to marry the devil, she would overmatch even him. The Merchant claims that there is a great difference between Griseldes exceptional obedience and his wifes more common cruelty. The Merchant has been unify cardinal months and has loathed every minute of it. The Host asks the Merchant to tell a tale of his horrid wife. AnalysisThe prologues that link the various Canterbury Tales shift effortlessly from ponderous period of play to light comedy. The la custodytable tale of Griselde gives way to the Hosts complaint about his shrewish wife. This prologue further illustrates how each of the characters informs the tale he tells. The travelers for the most part tell tales that conform to their in-person experiences or attitudes, such as the Merchant, whose awful marriage is the occasion for his tale a bout a difficult wife. In most cases the influence of the narrator on his tale is apparent, but the authorial touch lightly felt. The Merchants Tale, for example, gains little from the prologues information that the Merchant is disenchanted with his own marriage. Only a few of these tales exist largely as extensions of the characters who tell them the Wife of Baths Tale is the most prominent of these stories. The Merchants TaleThe Merchant tells a tale of a prosperous knight from Lombardy who had not only taken a wife. But when this knight, January, had turned sixty, whether out of devotion or dotage, he decided to finally be married. He searched for prospects, now convinced that the married life was a paradise on earth. Yet his brother, Placebo, cited... ...y. Januarys repeated insistence that their intercourse includes a rationalization that a man and wife are one(a) person, and no man would harm himself with a knife, an unpleasant phallic image. January uses May only as a sexu al object he hammers away upon her, deliverance her only pain and boredom. The Merchants Tale also stretches the conventions of fabliau through the climax of the tale in which Pluto and Proserpina intrude upon the sexual intrigues among January, May and John. Proserpina and Pluto discuss the virtues of men and women in marriage, coming to the conclusion that few men are commendable, but absolutely no women are worthy. Their intervention in the situation gives divine encourage to the condemnation of women, purposely giving January his sight so that he can condemn his wife (although in a mordant twist, January can literally not believe his eyes).