ABSTRACT
The Merchant’s Tale of Januarie and May is by far the longest of Chaucer’s comic tales, nearly twice as long as the second-longest, The Miller’s Tale. Yet without the detailed satirical account of Januarie’s motives for marrying May, the story would be less than a hundred lines longer than the Miller’s. It could begin at the marriage, with the same kind of brief character-sketches as are given of the merchant and his wife in The Shipman’s Tale, or of ‘deynous Symkyn’ and his family in The Reeve’s Tale. Like Ben Jonson’s Volpone, and in much the same way, The Merchant’s Tale is a wholesome serious treatment of an unpleasant subject. Also like Folpone, it is very funny; and the fun is usually at its height when the satire is at its most biting.
