The Merchant's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer - Literature review Example

The Merchant’s TaleThe merchant’s tale revolves around the marriage and love. The tale explores the marriage life of a bachelor whose, January. He had a lot of life expectations after marriage. In addition, the tale tells of the paradox of the knight’s life after the marriage. His dreams of finding happiness were not realized. Instead; he is drowned in misery when he loses his sight and also lives in fear of losing his beautiful wife. Towards the end of the narrative, the author has brought out the actual character traits of the women through May the new bride and also the supernatural beings (gods) through Pluto and his wife Prosperina.

This narrative is silly because, the author chose to use the impossible scenarios and character choices in order to favor his perspective. He uses a knight, who is much old to marry a young bride. True to the fact these two people cannot express affection to one another adequately. He furthermore brings out the aspect of friends’ opinion about love and women. It is then clear that; the bridegroom has no principles and is driven by what his friends’ ideas. Therefore, this is clear indication that the narrative is silly.

It is clear from the anecdote that, marriage, love, friendship and personal or societies’ believes have been mocked. From the January’s friend, Justinus, marriage is not good. He believes women are fickle and also believes that one has to repent of marriage for him or her to gain entry into heaven. Engagement of sex between May and Damian is mockery of love between the wedding couples. There is no love in engagement. Cultural believes and Marriage contributions made by January’s friends and the involvement of disagreement between gods are a clear indication of mockery of the personal and society’s believes.

They have been depicted as weak and misguiding. From the tale, the faction of women character has been depicted to be wiser than men character. Both the mortal and immortal women outdo their men in thinking and convinces the beyond reasonable doubt that they true lovers. The male-faction is depicted as foolish, through January and Pluto, they have been depicted as people who have no control of their life, weak to respond and they also lack foresight. This tale is a true reflection of modern social media courtships and marriage.

In this modern scenario, the women faction convinces their male counterpart that there exists love between them through regular chats. However, this is not true since the bride has more than one online groom. These scenarios are popular across the world since the rate of heart breaking and cheating in marriages has been in the rise. Reference Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Robert J. Blanch. Merchant’s tale. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1970. Print.