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OCR A level English Lit The Merchant's Tale context (AO3) notes
18 pages of very detailed contextual notes, all thematically grouped and linked to the Merchant's Prologue and Tale. Helped me achieve A* in my A level!
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The Merchant’s Prologue and TaleAO3 50% marks
AO4 25% 7. marks
AO1 12.5% 3. marks
AO5 12.5% 3. marks
AO3
General context of The Merchant’s Tale
Geoffery Chaucer
- (c.1343-1400)
- Father, John Chaucer, was a prosperous wine merchant - a ‘vinter’
- Chaucer attended a grammar school from around the age of 7 - educated in Latin, only with other
boys. Learnt the importance of debate and argument eg. students encouraged to read and then
debate the Aesop's fables - whether their morals were the right morals, alternative morals and
endings -- were taught independent thinking (which is highly prevalent in the Canterbury tales)
- 1357 - page to Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster
[__ during the medieval era, a page was an apprentice attendant who accompanied a knight, nobleman etc
for a set period of time. He would be a youth of noble birth who left his home at an early age in order to
serve this apprenticeship in the duties of chivalry. The duties of a specifically royal page, of which
Chaucer was one, included personally meeting and greeting important visitors such as dignitaries and
heads of state, taking messages to different persons, attendance at royal functions or receptions such as
‘drawing rooms’ and court levees
- During the Brittany expedition of 1359, Chaucer was captured by the French, while in the retinue
of the Black Prince in France, but was ransomed by the king (Edward III) - documents show this
ransom was £16, which was paid for his release
- Edward III (whose third son was the husband of Elizabeth) later sent him on diplomatic missions
to France, Genoa and Florence. His travels exposed him to the work of authors such as Dante,
Boccaccio and Froissart.
[__ in Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ - in the 9th tale, Boccaccio tells of a young wife who deceives
her husband by telling him that anyone who climbs up their pear tree will see those on the ground
having sex. To test this theory, the husband climbs the tree, and sees his wife on the ground
having sex with her lover. She convinces him that the tree made him hallucinate BUT HE CHOPS
IT DOWN ANYWAY
- c. 1366 - Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting in the queen's
household. They are thought to have had three or four children. Philippa's sister, Katherine
Swynford, later became the third wife of John of Gaunt, the king's fourth son and Chaucer's
patron. John of Gaunt was uncle of the later king, Richard II.
- Surviving documents/records about Chaucer’s life are sometimes prosaic, other times intriguing,
and at times disturbing - in 1380, Chaucer was accused of the ‘raptus’ of Cecily Champaign, who
was probably the daughter of a baker named William Champain. ‘Raptus’ had a range of
meanings in this period – it could mean rape, seduction or abduction of a minor. (Chaucer’s own
father had been kidnapped by an aunt in 1324.) The precise nature of the 1380 incident is
unknown, but Chaucer was cleared of charges in the affair.
, - 1386 - Chaucer was elected member of parliament for Kent. He also served as a justice of the
peace
- 1389 - made clerk of the king’s works, overseeing royal building projects. Also held other royal
posts, and served both King Edward III and his successor Richard II
[__ while many writers of the Middle Ages (eg. Marie de France, the Gawain-poet etc) remain obscure or
anonymous, Chaucer did not. He was a recognised poet in his time and also a public servant, so his life is
well represented in surviving documents
[__ Chaucer’s life as a public servant gave him the opportunity to travel. He made trips to France and
Italy, and the influence of the literary cultures of these two countries can be seen in his verse, an example
being The Legend of Good Women.
- Chaucer's first major work was 'The Book of the Duchess', an elegy for Blanche, Duchess of
Lancaster, the first wife of his patron John of Gaunt, apparently to help him overcome his grief at
the death
- Other works include 'Parlement of Foules', 'The Legend of Good Women' (likely written at the
request of Anne of Bohemia, the wife of Richard II) and 'Troilus and Criseyde' (the great
exploration of love and loss set during the Trojan War)
[__ The Book of the Duchess, The Legend of Good Women and The Parliament of Fowls and ‘Troilus
and Criseyde’ are dream visions
- 1387 - Chaucer began his most famous work, 'The Canterbury Tales'
- Chaucer disappears from the historical record in 1400, and is thought to have died soon after. He
was buried in Westminster Abbey.
- Wrote in a range of poetic forms and genres. Also produced philosophical and scientific works -
Chaucer translated the ‘Consolation of Philosophy’ by Boethius, the Roman Senator and
philosopher, and he wrote a treatise on the ‘astrolabe’ (an astronomical device)
- Change in texts Chaucer writes over time - early on he writes more conventionally (dream
visions, poems about Troy) but as he moves on to the Canterbury tales, he became more
interested in questions of ethics (shows us that ethical behaviour does not belong to the nobility,
shows us women who have roles apart from being a commodity or a sexual object)
The Canterbury Tales
- A collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines, written in Middle English by Geoffrey
Chaucer between 1387 and 1400
- Widely regarded as Chaucer’s magnum opus
- Enormously popular in medieval England, with over 90 copies in existence dating from the 1400s
- The tales are mostly written in verse, in iambic pentameter (-x), although some are in prose.
Written to be read aloud
- Some critics argue that the greatest contribution of The Canterbury Tales to English literature was
the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature (as opposed to French,
Italian or Latin.) - the tales were written in Middle English, a language that developed after the
Norman invasion, after which those in power would have spoken French
[__ However, English had been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of
Chaucer's contemporaries - eg. John Gower, William Langland, Julian of Norwich - also wrote major
literary works in English
- Frame narrative - Chaucer's long poem follows the journey of a group of pilgrims, around 30 (the
exact number is unclear from the extant manuscripts), from the Tabard Inn in Southwark to St
Thomas à Becket's shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. The host at the inn suggests each pilgrim tell
two tales on the way out and two on the way home to help while away their time on the road. The
best storyteller is to be rewarded with a free supper at the Tabard Inn on their return.
[__ this gives Chaucer the opportunity to paint a series of vivid portraits of his society; hear multiple
voices. The work is a compendium of tales that offers a rich diversity of characters, subjects and genres,
creating a vivid, dynamic picture of contemporary England.
, [__Frame narrative establishes verisimilitude - Chaucer is not affiliated with or endorsing any of the
views (apparent when clear there is a tale being told, created with context of the pilgrimage)
- Likely inspired by Boccaccio’s ‘the Decameron’
- Chaucer meant for there to be more than 24 tales - his original plan was for over 100 stories -
each teller telling twice on the way and twice returning. It was left unfinished when Chaucer died
- Chaucer mixes satire and realism in his lively characteristics of his pilgrims; the tone of their tales
ranges from pious to comic. Their humour veers between erudite wit and good honest vulgarity
- Satirical - satirises modern society and religious belief
- Chaucer knew the tabard inn and knew Harry Bailey (MP, tax keeper and innkeeper) personally -
can’t know how much this is an accurate or satirical depiction of him - blurs boundary between
fiction and reality
The Merchant’s Tale
- Unusual in the Canterbury Tales - many of the tales deal with corruption, or are told by corrupt
narrators, but there is often a degree of irony and humour which prevents the story from being too
unpleasant. Yet here, Chaucer seems to deliberately expose Januarie to the reader as thoroughly
disagreeable, and his marriage to May as obscene. May and Damyan do not escape condemnation
either, and are presented as depraved too
- The Merchant tells and intriguing and complex tale which engages with one of the works most
commonly debated topics: marriage
[__ The Wife of Bath, the franklin, the Clerk, the Merchant = ‘the marriage tales’
Attitudes towards gender in Medieval England
- Medieval gender rules seem both foreign and familiar today. Some medieval views are echoed in
modern traditions, and those echoes tease out critical tensions of continuity and change in gender
relations.
- Most ppl in medieval Europe lived in small rural communities, making their living from the land
[__ peasant women had many domestic responsibilities eg. tending livestock, caring for the
children, preparing food, often participated in vital cottage industries like brewing and baking,
joined their husbands in the field to bring in crops during the busiest times of the year (the
harvest) - research has determined that there was limited gender division of labour among peasant
men and women
- The lives of peasant men AND women were difficult - women at this level of society are
usually considered by historians to have had considerable gender equality, but this often
meant shared poverty
- Peasant women had numerous restrictions placed on their behaviour by their lords - if a
woman was pregnant, and not married, or had sex outside of marriage, the lord was
entitled to compensation. The control of peasant women was a function of financial
benefits to the lords - not motivated by women's moral state
- After the Black Death killed a large part of the European population and led to severe
labour shortages, women filled out the occupational gaps in the cloth-making and
agricultural sectors
[__ Simon Penn argued that the labour shortages after the Black Death furnished
economic opportunities for women, but Sarah Bardsley and Judith Bennett countered that
women were paid about 50-75% of men's wages
- The late medieval poem ‘Piers Plowman’ paints a pitiful picture of the life of the
medieval peasant woman: “Burdened with children and landlords' rent;
What they can put aside from what they make spinning they spend on housing,
Also on milk and meal to make porridge with
To sate their children who cry out for food
And they themselves also suffer much hunger …
That it is pity to describe or show in rhyme
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