Geoffrey Chaucer, The Merchant's Tale

Natalie Hanna (University of Liverpool)

Ed. by Jamie McKinstry, University of Durham
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.02: English Writing and Culture: High and Late Medieval, 1066-1485.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Rory Critten (Université de Lausanne), David Fuller (University of Durham), Natalie Hanna (University of Liverpool), Hugh Magennis (Queen's University Belfast), Jamie McKinstry (University of Durham), Sarah Peverley (University of Liverpool), Sebastian Sobecki (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1387

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

Context

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale is the second of two narratives found in Fragment IV of the Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, to be read following The Clerk’s Tale. In the Hengwrt manuscript, and some others, the Merchant’s Tale’s Prologue is absent, indicating that Chaucer composed and included it at a later date to make the text a companion piece to The Clerk’s Tale (Cooper, 1996). Some critics have proposed that the Merchant’s Tale was originally intended for another narrator, because on occasion the Merchant refers to “secular” people as though he were a religious figure (1251; 1322; Cooper, 1996). J. M. Manly …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

4641 words

Citation: Hanna, Natalie. "The Merchant's Tale". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 November 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=36247, accessed 20 April 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here