The Merchant's Tale

Larry Benson remarks: The central episode of the Merchant's Tale is like a fabliau, though of a very unusual sort: It is cast in the high style, and some of the scenes (the marriage feast, for example) are among Chaucer's most elaborate displays of rhetorical art.

Meanwhile, Damyan has sneaked into the garden using a key that he has made from a mould May has given him and waits for May in a pear tree, symbolising, it has been said,[by whom?]

May, implying that she is pregnant and craving a pear, requests one from the tree and Januarie, old and blind, and therefore unable to reach, is persuaded to stoop and allow May to climb onto his back herself.

Indeed, the narrator does apologise for this explicit description, addressing the pilgrims saying: "Ladyes, I prey yow that ye be nat wrooth; I kan nat glose, I am a rude man –" Two gods are, at this moment, watching the adultery: husband and wife Pluto and Proserpina.

Indeed, Proserpina's promise that "alle wommen after" should be able to excuse themselves easily from their treachery can be seen as a distinctly misogynistic comment from the narrator, or perhaps even from Chaucer himself.

Indeed, the presence of particular gods has individual relevance when related to this tale: as the classical myth tells, Proserpina, a young and much loved goddess, was stolen and held captive by Pluto, the King of the Underworld, who forced her to marry him.

However, Chaucer does not end the tale entirely happily: a darker suggestion is there, as May tells Januarie that he may be mistaken on many more occasions ("Ther may ful many a sighte yow bigile"), indicating that, perhaps, her infidelity will not stop there.

[citation needed] Some critics, such as Maurice Hussey, feel that Chaucer offers a great deal more sophistication and philosophical insight to put this on a level above fabliau.

[citation needed] Similar tales are Boccaccio's Story of Lydia and Pyrrhus[1] and The Simpleton Husband from One Thousand and One Nights.

[7] In Pasolini's film The Canterbury Tales, this story is adapted with Josephine Chaplin as May and Hugh Griffith as Sir January.