Chaucer

• "weeping and wailing"
• "I have a wyf, the worst that may be" - the merchant
• the merchant's wife is described as a "shrewe"
• January is a "worthy knight"
• "for wedlock is so esy and clean, that in this world it is a paradys" - January describing marriage saying it is easy and referencing the garden of eden
• "a wyf is the fruyt of his tresor" - merchant describing his wife
• Theophrastus: said that wives bring distress because they are motivated by greed, and January dismisses this
• "oold fish and yong flessh" - contrasting January and may with animal imagery
• "fair and tendre of age" - January wants someone who is young and beautiful to marry
• "warm wex with hands plye" - January wants his wife to be malleable like warm wax
• "I feele my lymes stark and suffisaunt" - January says he is up to the task of having a younger wife
• "I fare as dooth a tree" - irony of January comparing himself to a young tree (foreshadows the pear tree)
• Justinus: figure who is against marriage and tells January the truth about marriage - he says it is expensive and full of worry
• Placebo: figure who is for marriage and tells January what he wants to hear
• "whoso tooke a mirour polisshed bright, and sette it in a commune market-place" - January is in his imagination setting up a market place to select his bride - objectification of women
• "ther may no man han parfite blisses two" - no one experiences perfect happiness twice, he worries that he will not experience heaven if his marriage is heaven on earth
• "she may be youre purgatorie" - Justinus links May with the wife of Bath by saying she will be the waiting room between life and death
• "Til fresshe May won rewen on his pleyne" - May will take pity on his suffering
• "Thus laboureth he til that the day gan dawe" - January says he will work hard until the day begins to dawn - reference to sex
• "a gardyn: walled al with stoon" - symbolism of the garden and the garden of eden - January's sex garden, walls are symbolic of no escape for may
• "where he sit, the lecchour in the tree" - Damian sitting in the tree, the garden becomes a parody of the garden of eden
• "that I mighte set my foote upon youre bak" - May will stand of January's back to get up the pear tree to have sex with Damian - comedic climax of the play
• "gentil squire wys, discreet and secree" - how January describes Damian - wise and secretive foreshadows his affair with May
• "for of the smale wiket he baar alwey of silver a cliket" - rhyme and onomatopoeia which echoes the sound of unlocking the gate - symbolism of May giving Damian a key to her "wiket"
• "he wepeth and he waileth pitously" - January's reaction to becoming blind, and mirrors the beginning with the weeping and wailing
• "that loveth Damyan so beningnely that she moot outher dien sodeynly, or Elles she moot han him as her leste" - May says she loves Damian so much that she must either die or have him as she desires for sex
• "as good is blind deceyved whan a man may se" - Chaucer implying that even when January could physically see, he was morally blind
• "in warm wex hath emprented the clinket" - May uses wax to make an imprint of the key for Damian to get into the garden
• "winter is goon" - January foreshadowing his own dismissal by May
• "do strepe me and put me in a sak, and in the nexte river do me drenche" - May says that if she should cheat she would be stripped and thrown in the river (first time she speaks)
• Pluto and Proserpine: king and queen of the fairies
• CRIT [Jay]: "all good feelings Chaucer's audience might have about love and marriage are demolished"
• CRIT [Stevens]: "a story intending to show the deceitfulness of women"
• CRIT [Harris]: "May is a woman who knows what she wants and will use her wits to achieve it"
• CRIT [Tatlock]: "Religion itself is bemocked"
• CRIT [Burrow]: "January is subjected to the most unblinking scrutiny throughout the poem"
• CRIT [Bruner]: "May is simply another piece of livestock, bought to fulfull a sexual and procreative purpose"
• Allegory: a story with a hidden oral or political meaning
• Fabliau: a story with sexual innuendos, trickery, wit
• Cratylic naming: when the name means something about the character