The Merchant

Hello, I'm Caroline Larrington.

And I'm a professor of medieval European literature

at St. John's College Oxford.

In this set of lectures, I'm going

to be talking about the merchant's tale, one

of the Canterbury Tales composed by Geoffrey

Chaucer in the 1390s.

And first I'm going to talk about the teller of the tale

himself, the merchant, to whom we are introduced

in the general prologue at the very beginning

of the Canterbury Tales.

The portrait of the merchant is quite a short one.

But nevertheless, it's packed with all kinds of details.

He has a fashionable, forked beard.

He has a big beaver hat.

And he's wearing brightly colored clothing.

An impressive figure, but Chaucer suggests to us

that he's a little bit pompous and a little bit boring.

He speaks his reasons very solemnly, we're told.

And we imagine him going on at some length about his views.

The merchant's business is essentially important export.

But in detail, but he seems to be mostly involved in

is foreign exchange trade.

And this is an important and interesting business

to be in at this point in the medieval period.

Although the Church felt very strongly about money lending,

about usury, and said this was sinful,

nevertheless, you could make money on money

by foreign exchange dealing.

In England, there was one currency--

English pounds, or sovereigns.

And across the channel in the low countries, of course,

another currency was used-- shelders or shields.

And trade between England and the low countries

was very important.

All kinds of imports and exports passed across the sea there,

but in particular, the wool trade, which

was England's greatest export.

And so if you were selling your goods

across the sea in the low countries in Bruges

or in Brussels, you would need to change money.

And it seems that the merchant's business

is to skim off a percentage of money

when the foreign exchange trade is made.

And he also tells the other pilgrims, rather boringly,

to also suggest that he's very concerned about security--

that he wishes that the English Navy should secure

the passage between Orwell in England and Middleborough

in what's now Belgium so the ships can pass backwards

and forwards freely.

The merchant seems a very confident businessman.

But Chaucer rather cunningly suggests

that this may not be entirely the case.

"Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette,"

says the Chaucerian narrator.

Nobody knew that the merchant was in debt.

Now that could mean that nobody knew

the merchant was in debt because he wasn't in debt--

that his credit, in fact, was perfectly respectable .

Or it could mean that the merchant was

so clever in keeping up a public facade of prosperity

that he fooled everybody and that his business might

be failing.

But nevertheless, everybody was confident

that he knew what he was talking about.

Now we turn to the tale itself and the question

of the genre of the tale in.

The tale, strictly speaking, belongs

to the genre of fabliaux.

And there are a number of other fabliaux in The Canterbury

Tales, such as the Miller's Tale and the Reeve's Tale

and the Shipman's Tale.

But generally, fabliaux are short stories--

in a sense, rather extended jokes about stock characters.

And they usually deal with working or lower class people--

with carpenters, with students, with millers.

They don't normally deal with the social class

that we find in the Merchant's Tale--

a knight, his lady wife, and his squire.

These are, rather, the characters

that we find in romance.

And so we might be inclined at first,

when we begin to hear the merchant telling his tale,

to think that this is a romantic story.

But we're very soon disabused of that.

The tale has an important role to play within the marriage

debate, as this discussion is sometimes called

within the Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer is interested in unpacking contemporary views

about marriage--

what it means for husbands, what it

means for wives, what a really happy and egalitarian marriage

might look like, and what kinds of exploitation

are possible within marriage.

And so he explores these themes in a number of tales--

the Wife of Bath's prologue and her tale and the Clark's Tale--

the tale which immediately precedes the Merchant's Tale.

Now, the Clark's Tale tells of a sadistic husband

and an extremely obedient wife.

And the merchant responds to it with a certain degree

of regret.

He, himself, has only been married for two months,

he says.

But his wife is a terrible shrew,

and he's suffering greatly in his marriage.

If only he had a wife like patient Griselda

in the Clark's Tale.

And so he warns us that his tale is

going to be a tale that will be an important intervention

in the marriage debate, which will engage with the arguments

pro and contra marriage, which were so

important in the 14th century.