The Merchant's Tale AO5

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  • Created by: __Jess
  • Created on: 12-03-23 08:56
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  • The Merchant's Tale AO5
    • Love
      • "Mutual love between spouses is notably absent." - Kelly
      • "Chaucer's garden in this tale is no longer a place of courtly love or intellectual debate but of lust and sexuality." - Varnam
    • Marriage
      • "All good feelings [Chaucer's] audience might have about love and marriage are demolished." - Schleusener
      • "Januarie shops for his bride." - Tolliver
      • "As far as marriage is concerned, it is far too easy to get ideas which... suppress the woman from the equality with the man which the execution of the principles of Christian marriage finally have granted her." - Peterson
      • "Chaucer evokes the economic nexus which both moulded medieval marriage and was supported by it." - Aers
    • Women
      • "A story intending to show the deceitfulness of women." - Stevens
      • "Women represented the irrational, like the body or bodily functions and desires." - Stuber
      • "From birth until widowhood they are living under control."
      • "Women are blamed for all the physical, intellectual and moral weakness in society."
    • Literature
      • "Halfway to allegory." - O'Donoghue
      • "Cynical condemnation of courtly convention." - Shores
    • Happiness
      • "We are left with a disturbing notion that a level of happiness is possible through folly and self-deception." - Harrington
    • Religion
      • "Not rectitude in religion, no hope in supernatural powers." - Harrington
      • "Religion itself is bemocked." - Tatlock
      • "January's bending of religious authority to his own selfish purposes leaves religion untouched but adds to our sense of his delusion and error." - Thorne
      • "[The wedding] is noting to do with religion, and more to do with a business deal."
    • Irony
      • "An irony so quiet, so delicate, that many readers never notice it is there at all." - Birney
      • "Irony of passion and personal experience." - Kittredge
    • Pessimism and cynicism
      • "The cynicism is the Merchant's." - Kittredge
      • "[The Merchant] speaks in a frenzy of contempt and hatred. The hatred is for women; the contempt is for himself and all other fools who will not take warning by example." - Kittredgre
      • "The Merchant condemns both women and men in his tale."
    • Masculinity
      • "A definition of masculinity based purely on male dominance and virility." - Stuber
      • "Males symbolised the more rational parts of a person, mainly the soul." - Stuber
    • Rationality
      • "Justinus does not let emotion cloud his ability to assess each situation individually." - Murray
    • Class
      • "May saw a chance to advance herself socially and economically."

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