The Merchant's Prologue and Tale is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Debatably it is a fabliau. (Derek Pearsall is for; Maurice Hussey against.) In it Chaucer mocks antifeminist literature like that of Theophrastus ('Theofraste'). The tale also shows the influence of Boccaccio (Decameron: 7th day, 9th tale), Le roman de la rose (which Chaucer translated in English), Andreas Capellanus, Statius and Cato. Though several of the tales are sexually explicit by modern standards, this one is especially so.
- The central episode of the Merchant's Tale is like a fabliau, though of a very unusual sort: It is cast in the high style, and some of the scenes (the marriage feast, for example) are among Chaucer's most elaborate displays of rhetorical art. ©The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Another important question is to what extent the Tale is intended to reflect the Merchant's view of marriage, and to what extent it—accidentally or not—reflects Chaucer's.
The main character, Januarie, is an old knight, gone blind from his age. He marries May largely out of lust, while she marries him for the inheritance after his death and because it would be socially unacceptable to refuse him.
Sexually unsatisfied by Januarie, May secretly sets up an affair with Damyan. One day, Januarie and May have sex in Januarie's garden, while Damyan is hiding secretly above them in a tree.
After their lovemaking, May requests a pear from the tree. As Januarie is blind and cannot get the pear, he lifts May into the tree. She is promptly greeted by her young lover Damyan, and the two of them then have sex in the tree: 'And sodeynly anon this Damyan / Gan pullen up the smok, and in he throng.'
The gods Pluto and 'Proserpina' (or 'Proserpyne'), watching the affair, mischievously decide to grant Januarie his sight back. Januarie sees his wife and Damyan engaged in intercourse, and May successfully convinces him that he is still blind because there is no way she would do that to him.
Harvard's interlinear translation.
Harvard's page