ABSTRACT
To describe the humor of the Shipman’s Tale as fabliau wit is somewhat misleading if one thinks immediately—as one does—of the Miller’s or Reeve’s tales, where a good part of our enjoyment derives from the appropriate, almost inevitable ways in which vividly drawn characters like Nicholas, or Alayn and John act out the implications of their own portraits. The merchant of St. Denis, his wife, and their friend, daun John the monk from Paris, are sparely drawn, generic figures. 1 Their lack of physical and psychological coloring forces us to seek the tale’s comic art and significance in its formal elements—the details of its social setting, as well as the structure of its episodes, and in particular, the dialectical play characteristic of the character relationships and dialogue.
