TMT critics

Question 1

“Although some have regarded ‘The Merchant’s Tale’ as an example of anti-feminist literature that was popular in the fourteenth century, arguably, it

Answer 1

is actually a tale that has more to say about the dangers of male desire”
John Hathaway

Question 2

“What attracts January to marriage is, in part, the fantasy of

Answer 2

having nothing more than a living puppet who puts her husbands desired permanently above her own”
John Hathaway

Question 3

“January views marriage as a state that will give

Answer 3

him carte blanche to carry out his perverted desired without concern for the consequences”
John Hathaway

Question 4

“Matrimony, January believes, will transform

Answer 4

his debauchery”
John Hathaway

Question 5

(about mirrors in the marketplace) “What January fails to realise is that mirrors do not expose reality. They are only able to

Answer 5

offer a reflection of what is shown to them, which stresses how his eventual choice is more a reflection of his own desires, exposing his own narcissism”
John Hathaway

Question 6

“In terms of the narrative, [May] is

Answer 6

only given life on the day of her wedding”
John Hathaway

Question 7

“Nowhere is his self-deception more clear revealed than

Answer 7

in his anticipation of his wedding night”
John Hathaway

Question 8

“The Merchant’s Tale is basically a fablian. It has the obligatory triangle - jealous

Answer 8

old husband, restless young wife, lusty squire - and the inevitable act of adultery achieved through trickery”
Larry Benson

Question 9

What is the counter argument for TMT being a fablian?

Answer 9

biblical allusion and elaborate comparisons are not typical of genre

Question 10

“the elaborate style and

Answer 10

courtly allusions cast an ironic reflection on the sordid action”
Larry Benson

Question 11

“The tale has more than a trace of the bitterness

Answer 11

the Merchant apparently feels at his own recent unwise marriage”
Larry Benson

Question 12

“January chooses a wife, as he

Answer 12

or The Merchant would choose a horse”
Brunner

Question 13

“There is no love between

Answer 13

January and May, only sexual obsessesion on his side and revulsion on hers”
Allan

Question 14

“The Merchant’s Tale parodies

Answer 14

such courtly behaviour amongst the young lovers”
Caie

Question 15

“Church and society gloss over

Answer 15

and indeed applaud what can be a grotesque existence”
Caie

Question 16

“The tale can be read as a

Answer 16

critique of the gender imbalance of the medieval marriage market, in which women can be traded as commodities”
O’Neill

Question 17

“May’s cleverness and ingenuity

Answer 17

mean that we root for her as she outwits the controlling January”
O’Neill