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

Summary and outline of The merchandisers Tale (The Canterbury Tales)Prologue to the Merchants TaleThe merchant claims that he knows nothing 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 bowing and his wifes more common cruelty. The Merchant has been married two months and has loathed every nice of it. The Host asks the Merchant to tell a rehearsal of his horrid wife. AnalysisThe prologues that link the various Canterbury Tales shift effortlessly from ponderous drama to softly comedy. The la handstable tale of Griselde gives way to the Hosts complaint about his shrewish wife. This prologue unless illustrates how each of the characters informs the tale he tells. The travelers largely tell tales that conform to their individualised experiences or attitudes, such as the Merchant, whose awful marriage is the occasion for his tale about a difficul t wife. In most(prenominal) cases the influence of the fabricator on his tale is apparent, alone the authorial touch lightly felt. The Merchants Tale, for example, gains infinitesimal from the prologues information that the Merchant is disenchanted with his own marriage. Only a a couple of(prenominal) 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 lucky knight from Lombardy who had not yet taken a wife. But when this knight, January, had glum 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 nirvana on earth. Yet his brother, Placebo, cited... ...y. Januarys repeated insistence that their intercourse includes a rationalization that a spell and wife are one person, and no man would harm himself with a knife, an unpleasant phallic image. Januar y uses May altogether as a sexual object he hammers away upon her, bringing 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 bode sanction to the condemnation of women, purposely giving January his sight so that he base condemn his wife (although in a mordant twist, January can literally not believe his eyes).