Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas

The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

"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 — specifically to a young, malleable wife under twenty — 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 — 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 — January will be cuckolded by his young wife May — are invited to enjoy the gap between January's fantasy and the reality the tale will deliver.

The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...

Related pages View as graph →