The Merchant's Tale - Critical quotes

Hidgen

'Children in school…[were] compelled to drop their own language…[for] French'

Mark

Fin amour; 'women were free to choose their own partner and have complete control over him'

Middleton

Serves the 'common good…neither courtly, nor spritual, nor popular'

Mann - exaggeration causes undermining

'the notion of specialised duties, when taken to its limit, destroyed the idea of a total society'

Mann - critique depends on the reader

'hierarchy depends on our own position in the world'

Mann - subversive estate satire

'not the traditional one of criticizing’

Bakhtin - festival as equalising

'bring[s] together…the lofty with the lower'

Bahtkin - liminal nature of carnival

'belongs to the borderline between life and art'

Norton - peace of carnival

'carnival…provided an antidote to overbearing, ecclesial solemnity

Norton - carnival in the literary canon

'equilibrium/disequilibrium/close equates to the order/carnival disorder/return to order'

Norton - carnival as soul freeing

‘the liberation of our ideal selves'

Harrington

'no loyalty in wives, not rectitude in religion, no hope in supernatural powers

Tatlock

'religion itself is besmocked'

Brewer

'social fluidity creates personal insecurity and ambiguity'

Kline

'the genre violating…disperses authority'

Howard - materialism and class

‘the lower stratum is by no means ignored'

Howard - carnival is special

'carnival mocks official culture on certain licensed occasions'

Hansen - ambiguity of perception of women

'no definitive position on the victimization of women'

Hansen - Griselda

'attains…power by embracing powerlessness'

Hansen - presentation of women

'a revelation of the male speaker's anxiety about his manliness'

Wentersderf

'demonstrat[es] the reprehensible folly and lechery of men'

Benson

'economic comfort…sacramental basis of marriage…exhortation to husbands to recognize their wives as good councerllors'

Thorne - Chaucer scepticism to authority

'comes as a welcome support'

Thorne - undermining big authority

'illustrates the power of received wisdom'

Wagenknecht

"January's physical blindness is the outward sign of his long-standing moral blindness."

Shoaf

"January shops for a wife like a merchant appraises goods"

Beidler

'January sees what he wants to see'

Tolliver

"Chaucer invites us to see what they cannot."

Crocker - May’s power

'shows that the difference between passivity and agency is only a matter of display'

Crocker - male weakness

'heroic masculinity's repressed dependence on…passive femininity'

Sheridan

'Damian and January fail in their attempts to control May because they adopt a one-sided approach'

Peter Bruegel the Younger (1559)

‘the battle between Carnival and Lent’

Murray

‘Justinus represents Chaucer’s own subtle authorial comments’

Seneca

‘Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injurs’

Pearsal

'fabliau asserts the certainty that people will always behave like animals'

Dunlop - use of gardens with courtly love

‘highlight the true, base desires of the characters’

Dunlop - symbol of gardens

‘symbols for the ways in which medieval society sought to control women and their sexuality’

Neuse - TMT focus

'not really concerned with an actual marital relationships but with the institution of marriage'

Neuse - pagan gods

Pluto and Prosperina 'create a disconcerting ambivalence…a natural vitality and joy'

Neuse - fairies

'the fairies represent a stage in Western history…before the triumph of monastic scepticism'

Neuse - M&J as P&P

‘rule over a perpetual winter'

Larrington - questions of Fabliau

Fabliau 'ask challenging questions that finally get battered away as the story comes to an end'

Larrington - genre bending

‘the merchants tale is a sort of generic hybrid between the romance and the fabliau'

Dalbey

‘it is this lust for earthly delight which causes the downfall’ of the characters