Merchants Tale Flashcards
January quotes about marriage
“For wedlok is so esy and so clene, That in this world it is a paradis.”
January objectifying women as usual
“Tendre veel”
“I wol noon oold wyf han in no manere” - refuses to marry above 20 years old
“Oold fissh and yong flessh” - juxtaposition to “honey swete”
January bigging himself up
“Thogh I be hoor, I fare dooth a tree/ That blosotheth er that fruit ywoxen bee” - young and agile despite age
“Sixty year a wyflees man was he,
And followed ay his bodily delit,
On wommen, ther was his appetit.”
Merchants view on marriage
“To any womman, for to gete hire love” - any woman would be adulterous.”
“She seith nat ones ‘nay’, whan he seith ‘ye’”
“his lyf is set in sikernesse
he may nat be deceyved”
Role of women in medieval England
“To love and serve”
“That womman is for mannes helpe ywroght”
What does critic Stephanie Tolliver say about May?
“May is made of masculine fantasy”
What does critic Stephanie Tolliver say about January?
“January is blinded ‘by the deception of his wife”
“January shops for his bride”
What does critic Prisicilla Martin say about January?
“The male exploitation of economic power for erotic purchase”
“January believes he is inhabiting a romance which is finally bitterly exposed as a fabliaux”
What does critic Elaine Hanson compare May to for January?
“May ‘is devised out of January’s thoughts, just as Eve is out of Adam’s’”
What does critic Derek Pearsall say about the poem’s morals?
“‘The amoral tale reduces ‘all human behaviour to lust and greed”
