Merchants Tale Critic Quotes Flashcards
H.A. Kelly on medieval church reasons for marriage
‘mutual love between spouses is notably absent’
Bernard O’Donoghue on the MT
‘halfway to allegory’
Jay Schleusener in ‘The conduct of TMT’ on love and marriage
‘all good feelings [Chaucer’s] audience might have about love and marriage are demolished
‘January shops for his bride’
Stephanie A. Tolliver
Martin Stevens in ‘chaucer review’ on tale
dimly misogynistic and bitter’ … ‘a story intending to show the deceitfulness of women’
David L. Shores on radical nature of tale
‘cynical condemnation of courtly convention’
Norman T. Harrington in ‘Chaucer and the Merchant’s Tale’ on happiness through stupidity
we are left with a disturbing notion that a level of happiness is possible through folly and self-deception’
‘no faith in wives, no loyalty in wives, not rectitude in religion, no hope in supernatural powers’
Earle Birney in ‘The Beginnings of Chaucer’s Irony’ on irony
an irony so quiet, so delicate, that many readers never notice it is there at all’
JSP Tatlock on religion in MT
‘religion itself if bemocked’
John Thorne on sacred authority in TMT
draws attention to the fate of a sacred authoritative text in the hands of a naive enthusiast’
John Thorne on January’s selfishness
‘January’s bending of religious authority to his own selfish purposes leaves religion untouched but adds to our sense of his delusion and error’
G L Kitredge on MT
‘irony of passion and personal experience’ compared to Miller’s tale which is more philosophical
John Burrow on TMT
‘January is subjected to the most unblinking scrutiny throughout the poem’ a tale of ‘clarity, critical observation, and disgust’
Laura Varnam on garden
‘Chaucer’s garden in this tale is no longer a place of courtly love or intellectual debate but of lust and sexuality’
Laura Varnam on Chaucer’s value system.
‘Chaucer subtly brings into play the very system of values that traditional fabliaux tend to work without’
