Merchant’s tale critics quotes

• mutual love...


  'mutual love between spouses is notably absent' (H.A. Kelly on medieval church reasons for marriage)
• all good feelings...


  'all good feelings [Chaucer's] audience might have about love and marriage are demolished' (Jay Schleusener)
• dimly misogynistic...

  'dimly misogynistic and bitter' ... 'a story intending to show the deceitfulness of women' (Martin Stevens)
• cynical...

  'cynical condemnation of courtly convention' (David L. Shores)
• January's bending of...

  'January's bending of religious authority to his own selfish purposes leaves religion untouched but adds to our sense of his delusion and error' (John Thorne)
• Religion itself...

  Religion itself is bemocked (JSP Tatlock)
• The tale is not...

  'The tale is not easily classified as misogynistic- the woman wins' (Jane Barnard Smith)
• The males organise a...

  'The males organise a market transaction in which woman is a commodity and marriage the particular institution which will secure the transaction' (David Aers)
• January will never be...

  'January will never be able to see May's adultery because he has never been able to perceive her as anything other than his possession' (Stephanie Tolliver)
• May was 'a...

  May was 'a slave to his (Januarie's) libido' (Aisling Murray)
• underlining the lusty ...

  'underlining the lusty appetite which drives his actions and suggesting the true carnal nature which he hides beneath a veneer of social respectability.' (Sam Brunner)
• Damian is no more...

  'Damian is no more than a poodle to this lady dog-trainer (May)' (Pearsall)
• By letting May off the...


  'By letting May off the hook, Chaucer shows the inevitability of youth's victory over age' (Davidson)
• The conflict between...


  'The conflict between male and female in the tale is pointed and stressed by the conflict between age and youth. The very names, January and May, give the incompatibility of the two' (Trevor Whittock)
• Chaucer's moral focus 'not really...

  concerned with an actual marital relationship but with the institution of marriage' NEUSE
• by the end 'it is made clear-


  that May aspires to a relationship with a man of her own choice, one which transcends the economic and religious nexus in which she has been sold and violated' AYERS
• May is


  made of masculine fantasy' TOLLIVER
• Merchant aims 'to sympathise with...


  all men and draw attention to the universal trait of women; their ability to deceive' SMITH
• The tale relies...


  heavily on the bawdy fabliau, in which deception is a principle theme' BATHARD-SMITH
• It is not the deceitfulness...


  of women but the vanity and foolishness of self-beguiled old men which is held up to ridicule' STEVENS
• Once married...


  a woman had the same legal status as her husband's domestic animals' KING
• January shops...


  for his bride (Tolliver)
• "These lines provide textual proof that...

  January is connected to the Merchant since he appraises May before buying her" (Tolliver)
• "January's mental blindness...


  "January's mental blindness to the reality of marriage parallels his later temporary physical blinding" (Tolliver)
• Chaucer's garden in this tale...

  is no longer a place of courtly love or intellectual debate but of lust and sexuality' - Varnam
• GL Kittredge "Chaucer's Discussion of Marriage"


  Love and marriage, according to the courtly system, were held to be incompatible, since marriage involves mastery on the husband's part, and mastery drives out love
• Jacques Lacan's 'mirror stage'


  Human desire is fundamentally about a lack that we seek to fill through others who seem to possess what we lack
• Stephanie A Tolliver


  'May is made of masculine fantasy
• Stephanie A Tolliver


  January is blinded 'by the deception of his wife
• Stephanie A Tolliver


  'The Merchant's misogyny is a product of his marital disillusionment
• Priscilla Martin


  'The male exploitation of economic power for erotic purchase
• Priscilla Martin


  'January believes he is inhabiting a romance which is finally bitterly exposed as a fabliaux
• Derek Pearsall


  'The amoral tale reduces 'all human behaviour to lust and greed
• Elaine Hanson


  'Early critics reviews of May as 'a completely unfeeling wife' is because many are unable to accept her vanquishing over the senex amans
• Beidler


  'January's folly is that he sees what he wants to see, rather than what is actually before him
• Dr Barrie Saywood


  'In Chaucerian comedy, 'there are no values, secular or religious, more important than survival or satisfaction of the appetite
• T W Craik


  Tone of tale is 'mordant venom
• Tatlok


  Tone of tale is 'unrivalled acidity
• Burnley


  'Cynical narrator contemplating a scene of moral desolation
• Kittredge


  'The fabliau 'becomes a complete disquisition of marriage