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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Until very recently the Merchant's Tale has been the least controversial of all the Canterbury Tales. Several generations of critics have been united in scandalized astonishment over the un-Chaucerian qualities of the tale. Tatlock expressed the prevailing view in these often quoted words: “For unrelieved acidity the Merchant's Tale is approached nowhere in Chaucer's works. … Without a trace of warm-hearted tolerance or genial humor, expansive realism or even broadly smiling animalism, it is ruled by concentrated intelligence and unpitying analysis.” A generation earlier Kittredge had called the tale a “frenzy of contempt and hatred,” and a generation later Hugh Holman brought together all the old terms, “savagely obscene, angrily embittered, pessimistic, and unsmiling,” and contributed his own “dark cynicism.”
This paper was read in shortened form at the annual meeting of the MLA in Chicago, 1961.
1 J. S. P. Tatlock, “Chaucer's Merchant's Tale,” MP, xxxiii (1936), 367.
2 G. L. Kittredge, “Chaucer's Discussion of Marriage,” MP, ix (1912), 435–467; C. Hugh Holman, “Courtly Love in the Merchant's and the Franklin's Tales,” ELH, xviii (1951), 241–252. Both are reprinted in Chaucer: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Edward Wagenknecht (New York: Oxford Galaxy, 1959). The same view is expressed by G. G. Sedge-wick, “The Structure of the Merchant's Tale,” UTQ, xvii (1948), 337–345; and Germaine Dempster, Dramatic Irony in Chaucer (New York: Humanities Press, 1959), pp. 46–58.
3 Bertrand H. Bronson, “Afterthoughts on the Merchant's Tale,” SP, lviii (October 1961), 583–596. The only other comic interpretation is John C. McGalliard, “Chaucerian Comedy: The Merchant's Tale, Jonson, and Molière,” PQ, xxv (1946), 343–370.
4 The imprudence of this procedure is pointed out by Bronson (p. 584), who reminds us that “in approximately half of the more complete MSS of the Canterbury Tales, there is no Merchant's Prologue.”
5 “The Structure of the Merchant's Tale.” p. 340.
6 John M. Manly, pursuing the question of suitability of-tale to teller, registered a dissent similar to mine in his note to this passage in his edition, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (New York, 1928), p. 596.
7 “Chaucerian Comedy…,” PQ, xxv (1946), p. 354.
8 “Afterthoughts. …” p. 593.
9 The same voice is heard in the Nun's Priest's Tale (ll. 3226 ff.): “O false mordrour, lurkynge in thy den! / 0 newe Scariot, newe Genylon …” The passage is as ironic and humorous as that cited from the Merchant's Tale and equally irrelevant to the pilgrim-character presumably being dramatized.
10 “The Crucial Passages in Five of The Canterbury Tales: A Study in Irony and Symbol,” JEGP, lii (1953), 299. Reprinted in Chaucer: Modern Essays in Criticism.
11 “The Original Teller of the Merchant's Tale,” MP, xxxv (1937), 15–26. Manly (C.T., p. 624) suggests the Monk.
12 Germaine Dempster, “The Original Teller of the Merchant's Tale,” MP, xxxvi (1938), 1–8.
13 Chaucer and the French Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif., 1957), pp. 167–173.
14 Ernst Curtius cites “affected modesty” as one of the established topoi of antique rhetoric sustained through the Middle Ages. European Literature and the Latin Middle A ges, trans. W. R. Trask (London, 1953), pp. 83–85.
