When was the merchants tale written

University of Georgia Press, University of Illinois Press, Estes, Heide. Amsterdam University Press, Huggan, Graham, and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. Branch and Scott Slovic. Lampert, Lisa. Gender and Jewish Difference from Paul to Shakespeare. University of Pennsylvania Press, University of Michigan, Neville, Jennifer. Lees and Gillian R. Pennsylvania State University Press, University of Minnesota Press. Rudd, Gillian. Manchester University Press, Silva, G.

Slovic, Scott. University of Nevada Press, Norton and Company, Warren, Karen J. Rowman and Littlefield, Tools Using ecocriticism as a lens through which to read the Tale allows a new perspective on how gender and other human social categories are constructed. Text Vegetative and Animal Metaphors The Merchant is explicit in his telling of his tale that women should be subordinate to men, and he uses a variety of vegetable and animal metaphors to underscore human hierarchies, though not always in expected ways.

Compare descriptions of Damyan, who is not quite of the same noble class as Januarie and by marriage, if not by birth of May. What does the difference in descriptive terms for the two characters suggest about gender and the natural world? What does it mean for our own understanding of urban environments when we take a walled garden as representative of nature in a medieval text? To what extent are built environments part of the natural world?

To what extent are human beings male and female part of the natural world? Revisit the opening lines of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales using the ideas in this chapter. How are human interests and natural phenomena intertwined?

To what extent is nature represented as process, an agential entity in flux, versus as a static background for human actors? Consider a private or only partially accessible outdoor space near you, for example a golf course, event site, or park with entrance or parking fees.

In medieval England, human and non-human worlds interact and potentially blur: forests as legally defined spaces, fields for agricultural production, hedges, ports, among others. To what extent is gender represented as disabling? How does that interact with blindness? Benson, Larry D.

The Riverside Chaucer , 3rd edition. Houghton Mifflin, Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy. London, The Exeter Book Riddles , trans. Kevin Crossley-Holland. May responds with a note to Damian, acknowledging her reciprocal desire. Then January is suddenly stricken blind, and he insists that May remain by him at all times; she can go nowhere unless he is holding her hand.

Nevertheless, May is able to give Damian a wax impression of a key to January's secret garden, and she later signals for Damian to climb a pear tree. In an interlude, the god Pluto and his wife, Proserpina, discuss the situation involving January and May. Pluto admits that he will restore January's sight because women are so deceitful, but he wants to wait until just the right moment to do so.

His wife, Prosepina, says men are so lecherous that she will provide May with a believable excuse when he does. Later, May leads January to the pear tree and, pretending she has an insatiable lust for a pear, tells her husband to bend over and let her stand on his back. At this moment, while the couple is in amorous bliss, January's sight is miraculously restored.

He looks up and sees the young couple "swyving" having sex , and he bellows with rage, "He swyved thee, I saugh it with myne yen" "He screwed you, I saw it with my own eyes". Thanks to Proserpina, however, May gives a credible excuse: January's sight is faulty — the same as awakening from a deep sleep when the eyes are not yet accustomed to the bright light and seeing strange things dimly.

She then jumps down from the tree, and January clasps her in a fond embrace. When the Merchant ends his tale, the Host says he wants to be preserved from women like May, but his wife does have a babbling, shrewish tongue and many more vices.

He bitterly regrets that he is tied to her for life but hopes no one will mention it because women have ways of finding out. Even for those who have never read The Merchant's Tale, the concept is widely familiar.

A marriage between a decrepit old man and a young maiden is commonly referred to as a January-May wedding, taken of course from this tale. While this tale is the most original of Chaucer's, the trick played at the end on the old dotard — often referred to as the "Pear-Tree episode" — was found in many popular tales of the time.

In fact, the figure of the aged or feeble lover is frequent in literature of all ages. In this tale, as in others, the reader assumes that the older man will be cuckolded by a younger, handsomer, more virile man, especially because the older man has difficulty coping with his young wife in bed. The Host then cuts himself off again from discussing his wife, as he worries that someone in the company will report his doing so back to his wife.

He is, he claims, clever enough not to reveal everything, and therefore his tale is done. There is a real sense in this tale of goodness slightly gone bad, ripeness becoming slightly rotten.

This starts, perhaps, with the opening paean to marriage and the description of January as a worthy, noble knight. It is only as we read on that we realize that, in fact, this apparent positivism is flecked with a bitter irony. January, the noble knight, is also portrayed in unforgiving detail, even down to the scratchy bristles on his neck, and the loose skin on his aged body. The narrator is unstinting when he wants to focus our attentions on something unpleasant.

The authorial condemnation of May also departs from the other fabliaux of the Canterbury Tales. Like Alison of the Miller's Tale, she is crafty, but May is also wicked.

She escapes without punishment from her husband, but unlike the Miller's Tale this is not a satisfactory conclusion. While the Miller's Tale prized cunning and crafty behavior, the Merchant's Tale adheres to more traditional values. Therefore, May's escape from punishment is a dissonant element of the story, for she behaves contrary to the established values that the Merchant has set for his tale.

What we see of May is largely a matter of her secret signs and cunning behavior: and the only lengthy description of her, significantly, is given in the context of presenting her as a good option for January to marry. What appears beautiful on the visible outside is clearly rotten in the middle. This too is represented in the strand of Biblical imagery throughout the tale.

In this tale, beautiful women are really venomous, malicious tricksters - beautiful, lyrical poetry is really only old, obscene words. Perhaps May — at the end of this tale — has actually got something someone! The Question and Answer section for The Canterbury Tales is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. Considering the nature of pilgrimages, why is it significant that this journey begins at this time?

Which musical instruments are used in prologue to Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer? Because the narrator is staying at the tabard inn, he is doing what.

The Canterbury Tales is the last of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, and he only finished 24 of an initially planned tales. The Canterbury Tales study guide contains a biography of Geoffrey Chaucer, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. The Canterbury Tales is considered one of the greatest works produced in Middle English.