Lecture notes
OCR A level English Lit The Merchant's Tale Plot summary and detailed quote bank (with translation)
Detailed plot summary with corresponding quotes and their translation. Helped me achieve an A*.
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AO1 (12.5%)Plot summary:
Plot and explanation Key quotes
The General Prologue ‘A marchant was ther with a forked berd’
Contains a description of the Merchant - ‘Upon his heed a Flaundrissh bever hat’
throughout each of the tales, Chaucer [__ an elegant hat from Flanders
takes on the alter ego of one of the
‘sondry folk’ - pilgrims - on their way to ‘This worthy man ful wel his wit bisette’
the shrine of Thomas Becket. Through [__ Chaucer regularly used ‘worthy’ sarcastically. Ultimately, it is left for the reader to
the broadly non-judgemental voice of an decide how far to trust Chaucer's choice of ‘worthy’ as an epithet for the Merchant.
unnamed narrator, he promises to
describe each of his fellow pilgrims as ‘Wel koude he in eschuange sheeldes selle.’
they appear to him. [__ the Merchant knew how to deal foreign currencies, buy and sell
The Merchant’s ‘array’ is clearly ‘Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette,
intended to impress. His ‘mottelee’ and So estatly was he of his governaunce
‘Flaundryssh bever hat’, signalling With his bargaynes and with his
wealth and sartorial style, mark him out Chevyssaunce.
as the successful foreign trader. [__ no one knew he was in debt because he managed all his trade affairs with bargains and
borrowings and shares
His ‘forked berd’ can be taken as a
signifier of up-to-the-minute fashion For sothe, he was a worthy man with-alle,
savvy, though it can also be read as a But, sooth to seyn, I noot how men hym calle.’
satirical indicator of duplicity.
Similarly open to interpretation is the
narrator’s comment that ‘[t]her wiste no
wight that he was in dette’, a line that
some scholars regard as suggestive of a
dodgy dealer. However, some historical
readings oppose this view eg. in
‘Historians on Chaucer’ (2014):
‘Chaucer must have recognized through
his own experiences … that a merchant’s
perceived credit worthiness was central
to his business, and keeping quiet about
debt was the tactic of any sensible
trader.’
In The General Prologue, the Merchant
is thus described as secretive and
devious. He is not given name by
Chaucer, and though many of the
pilgrims are not named, in this case
Chaucer draws attention to the fact by
telling us that he does not know the
Merchant’s name - adds to the
, impression of secrecy
The Merchant’s Prologue The Clerk’s pronouncement on marriage to:
‘Sklendre wyves, feeble as in bataille,
Although the manuscript of The Beth egre as is a tygre yond in Ynde;
Canterbury Tales is fragmentary, Ay clappet as a mille, I yow consaille.
scholars agree that ‘The Clerk’s Tale’ Ne dreed hem nat; doth hem no reverence’
was intended to immediately precede [__ slender wives, feeble in battle, be fierce as an Indian tiger. Advises them to ever wag
‘The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale’ their tongues like a windmill, not fear their husbands or revere them
- In this preceding tale, a knight,
Walter, who lived in Lombardy, The Clerk’s pronouncement finishes:
is persuaded by his people that ‘Be ay of chiere as light as leef on lynde,
he should marry, and chooses a And lat hym care, and wepe, and wrynge, and waille!’
virtuous but extremely poor [__ be ever in behaviour as light as a leaf on a linden tree, and let him grieve, and weep an
bride called Griselda. Before wring his hands and wail (to wives - addresses
they marry he makes her
promise to obey him in thought, The Prologue begins:
word and deed - then tests her ‘Wepyng and waylyng, care and oother sorwe
promise beyond all reason. The I knowe ynogh, on even and a-morwe,"
Clerk tells the other pilgrims Quod the marchant, "and so doon other mo
that his story is not about mortal That wedded been.’
woman, but is instead an image
of the ideal relationship between ‘I have a wyf, the worste that may be;
Christ and his church For thogh the feend to hire ycoupled were,
She sholde hym overmacche’
Following the Clerk’s pronouncement on [__ I have a wife, the worst that can be; for though the fiend were married to her, she could
marriage which concludes ‘The Clerk’s outmatch him
Tale’, the merchant bursts into his
prologue without any invitation - he ‘my wyf the passing crueltee’
claims that he knows all about weeping [__ the extreme cruelty of my wife
and wailing as a result of marriage, and
thinks many others who are married also
feel the same. Having been married two
months, and having loathed every
minute of it, the merchant sees a large
difference between Griselda’s patience
and his wife’s cruelty.
The Host asks the merchant to tell the
tale of his horrid wife, and though ‘for
soory herte’, he claims that he cannot tell
of his own sorrow (he has suffered so
much that he feels unable to go into any
detail) - he will tell another tale
The Merchant’s Tale ‘A worthy knyght, that born was of Pavye,
In which he lyved in greet prosperitee;
Once there was an elderly wealthy And sixty yeer a wyflees man was hee,
knight living in Lombardy, who had And folwed ay his bodily delyt
gone 60 years without a wife, never On wommen, ther as was his appetyt,
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