Critical approaches for The Merchant's Tale

Burchmore- “Chaucer several times refers to May by the masculine form of her name (e.g. "this mayden, which that Mayus highte," 1693), because, 4 as both Skeat and Robinson point out, the name of the month was masculine. 11 It was not simply a metrical convenience, since the feminine form "Maia" would have been just as expedient and certainly more logical. For Chaucer the identification of May with the month was more important than grammatical appropriateness.
-“ The extent to which this identification dominates Chaucer's conception of personality in the tale is sometimes remarkable. In his most extensive description of her appearance Chaucer will say no more of May than” four lines “The repetition of the words "may" and "beauty" three times in a row is not clumsy, but deliberate. What looks at first like a particularly bad bit of poetry is really a precise expression of her character, for she is less an individual than a type, or state of mind”
-“ It demonstrates above all that her character is less the portrait of an individual woman than the embodiment or personification of an idea.”
- But the features of Januarie's garden had become commonplace in medieval poetry, and although Chaucer certainly knew the Fasti well enough, it would be unwise to emphasize too strongly the influence of this remote analogue… It is, however, of primary importance in explaining why it is a character named May who is brought in to this garden to play a little joke on her husband, and in showing how the iconography of the medieval calendar may have contributed to Chaucer's conception of his protagonists.”

Pittock- “If the Merchant wanted to expose marriage and the infidelity of of wives, one would have expected him to shoes a less equivocal situation: a marriage in which the motives and behaviour of the injured husband were not open to critisicm” 

Katy Lee- “Women are repeatedly compared to food and drink in the Tales, particularly by the unhappily married Merchant and the lascivious Miller, but also (perhaps initially more surprisingly) by the Wife of Bath, the strident, wealthy woman who has already been through five husbands.”

Malcom Pittock- “[The Merchant tale] has often been explained as a moral fable about the nature of lust but this has usually involved a distorting of Januaries senile lechery and a neglect of the intrigue between May and Damian and that of the Merchant as narrator.”

Kittredge- “The Merchants Tale is a contribution to a marriage debate by a disillusioned and cynical husband”

Pittock- “If the Merchant wanted to expose marriage and the infidelity of of wives, one would have expected him to shoes a less equivocal situation: a marriage in which the motives and behaviour of the injured husband were not open to criticism”

Lee- “Chaucer uses the obvious link between appetite for food and for sec throughout the Tale (with increasing irony as it is January’s wife’s appetite which causes the protagonist to be cuckolded).”

Pittock- “If the Merchant wanted to expose marriage and the infidelity of of wives, one would have expected him to shoes a less equivocal situation: a marriage in which the motives and behaviour of the injured husband were not open to critisicm” 

Malcom Pittock- “Critics of the merchants Tale have often found it difficult to account for all the elements it contains in terms of one inclusive interpretation à Are we ourselves blind to Chaucer’s intention?

Jenni Nuttall- “We are both entertained and disorientated by seeing the mismatch between what we expect of a fabliau and what we get in the story, and between what is being narrated and how it is being narrated”

Jane Bathard-Smith- "A reader’s suspension of disbelief is a deception upon which fiction depends. However, the layered narritve of this poem demands a greater acceptance of this deception than other texts”
- "The tale relies heavily on the tradition of the bawdy Fabliau, in which deception is a principal theme; it also exploits the tradition of Courtly Love, another tradition steeped in dishonesty and trickery. The Courtly Love relationship must always be an adulterous one with the lovers communicating by secret letters and secret signs. Never exposed and never consummated, the life-blood of a Courtly Love relationship is deceit."

Malcom Pittock- “[The Merchant’s tale] has often been explained as a moral fable about the nature of lust but this has usually involved a distortion of Januaries senile lechery and a neglect of the intrigue between May and Damian and that of tbe Mrechant as narrator.”
- “If, as Kittredge supposed, The Merchants Tale is a contribution to a marriage debate by a disillusioned and cynical husband, why is it that the tale so clearly condemns January, and in doing so, make Mays infidelity, if not excusable, at least understandable?”

David Burchmore- “There is an unresolved paradox here which nevertheless comes very close to the heart of Chaucer's method of characterization in the fabliaux, a method which can create a figure who is at once a moral type or abstraction and at the same time a memorably realized individual.”

Malcom Pittock- “Critics of the merchants Tale have often found it difficult to account for all the elements it contains in terms of one inclusive interpretation
- “[The Merchant’s tale] has often been explained as a moral fable about the nature of lust but this has usually involved a distortion of Januaries senile lerchery and a neglect of the intrigue between May and Damian and that of the Merchant as narrator.”
- “If the Merchant wanted to expose marriage and the infidelity of of wives, one would have expected him to shoes a less equivocal situation: a marriage in which the motives and behaviour of the injured husband were not open to criticism”

David Burchmore- “Although the fabliau is often described as the most realistic genre of the middle ages, it is generally recognized that its characters tend to group themselves into a number of familiar types -- the jealous husband, the lecherous monk, and so forth -- who are more caricatures than real people.”
-“ It was once customary to speak of Chaucer's greatest contribution to the genre in terms of the descriptive realism and depth of psychology which he, along with Boccaccio, was the first to introduce; but in recent years it has been convincingly demonstrated that he could, at the same time, develop the abstract or typical side of his characters with particular subtlety as well.”
-“ There is an unresolved paradox here which nevertheless comes very close to the heart of Chaucer's method of characterization in the fabliaux, a method which can create a figure who is at once a moral type or abstraction and at the same time a memorably realized individual.”

John McGalliard wrote a pair of articles in which he first observed that "although January and May are by no means abstract characters," Chaucer did think of them as "exemplifying youth and old age;" but then went on to speak of the "full and rich psychological characterization" of Januarie as the primary achievement of the tale.

DW Robertson- "Chaucer's tendency to mingle details of an iconographic nature with other details which produce an effect of considerable verisimilitude.”

Burchmore- “The appropriateness of the names is obvious and has often been remarked. But their function goes beyond the simple analogies between old age and winter, youth and spring, and the opposition of the senex amans and his bride which they serve to reinforce. The names suggest a mode of characterization which is iconographic rather than realistic. Chaucer several times refers to May by the masculine form of her name (e.g. "this mayden, which that Mayus highte,"), because, as both Skeat and Robinson point out, the name of the month was masculine. It was not simply a metrical convenience, since the feminine form "Maia" would have been just as expedient and certainly more logical. For Chaucer the identification of May with the month was more important than grammatical appropriateness.

David Burchmore- “Chaucer's version of the tale constitutes one of his most original narratives, a true masterpiece in his bawdy vein.”

Jenni Nuttall- “We are both entertained and disorientated by seeing the mismatch between what we expect of a fabliau and what we get in the story, and between what is being narrated and how it is being narrated”