{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect20_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect20_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect20_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/eng/mect/mect20.htm","summary":"\"The Merchant's Tale\" is one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a verse narrative in Middle English from the late 14th century, belonging to the tradition of the medieval fabliaux and estates satire. The excerpt introduces January, a Lombard knight who spent sixty years as a libertine and now, in old age, has convinced himself that marriage \u2014 specifically to a young, malleable wife under twenty \u2014 represents earthly paradise and spiritual virtue. The tale opens with an extended, mock-enthusiastic defense of marriage that praises wives as perfectly obedient, tireless, and God-given gifts, while dismissing bachelor life as unstable and foolish. January then convenes his friends to announce his intentions, and two advisors emerge: the sycophantic Placebo, who flatters January's every wish, and the cautious Justinus, who urges careful deliberation before binding oneself to any woman for life. The passage's most distinctive quality is its sustained, layered irony \u2014 Chaucer voices January's rhapsodic praise of wifely virtue with such exaggeration (the ideal wife never says \"nay,\" never wastes a penny, obeys instantly) that it reads as satire of both male self-delusion and misogynist idealization simultaneously. Readers familiar with what follows \u2014 January will be cuckolded by his young wife May \u2014 are invited to enjoy the gap between January's fantasy and the reality the tale will deliver.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":9290}