"Its irony makes all the laughter uneasy and slightly strained." How far do you agree with this comment in The Merchant's Tale?

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“Its irony makes all the laughter uneasy and slightly strained.” How far do you agree with this comment in The Merchant’s Tale?

Definition: Fabliau is a versified short story designed to make you laugh, and its subject matter is most often indecent, concerned either with sexual or excretory functions. The plot is usually in the form of a practical joke carried out for love or revenge

Merchant's Tale( furthest away from fabliau-type; does not fit to any simple category; ironic references to the Song of Songs; physical and moral blindness of January has Freudian symbolism; structure of plot is ironical; matter of argument: levels of narration, degree of drama of tale, relationship between Merchant's own experience and tale to be examined: differences and similarities between traditional fabliaux and Chaucer's; Chaucer's philological, linguistic, stylistic resources, levels of narration, kind of characterization.

        From the first reading of The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale the irony is what makes the tale witty and funny but when looking beyond the seemingly humorous irony; we realise that what makes the laughter uneasy and strained is that the audience is the target of the merchant’s sardonic humour.

        The tale begins with an ironic opening speech of a ‘worthy knight’, January and before the merchant further parodies

  1. "January's 'rape' of May is ironic even: he thinks he is the sexually dominant partner, but we are made to know that all the sexual vitality is possesseed by her; how can Winter pleasure Spring?" Trevor Whittock, A Reading of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: U P, 1968): 157. Chaucer’s descriptions of Jan. are at first humorous “find quote” but we later see that it is disturbing because she is being raped =>uneasy and slightly strained
  2. "Ironically May is as impressionable as Januarie hopes [4.1429-30]--the only problem is that she is impressed with the image, thought, and desire for someone else [1977-81]. Her impression of Damyan inspires her to steal the key to the garden and to impress it in wax from which she creates a mold to make a new key to the secret garden, a key for her would-be lover, Damyan, to use." Carolyn P. Collette, Species, Phantasms, and Images: Vision and Medieval Psychology in The Canterbury Tales. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001. 84. whole cuckolding theme is seemingly humourous but when relies that Chaucer is not parodying women, but January and men in general, including the merchant(who is synonymous with the merchant), the laughter becomes uneasy. 
  3. "When May seeks to allevaiate her unhappy existence it is in an alternative relationship which will not overtly challenge the accepted power relations between husband and wife. . . . The relationship [between May and Damian] is the product of a legitimate marriage. We may laugh at May's 'pitee' for the randy squire (ll. 1986-2000), but we read poorly if we stop at mockery and moralism. For however perverted by the culture in which she has been sold to Januarie, her aspirations include an aspect whose significnace should not be ignored. It is made clear that she aspires to a relationship with a man of her own choice, one which transcends the economic and religious nexus in which she has been sold and violated:
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. . . whom that this thyng displese,

I rekke noght, for heere I hym assure,

To love hym best of any creature,

Though he namoore hadde than his sherte. (Merchant, ll. 1983-5)/157/ * * *

She is still very closely guarded by her legal owner, hardly propitious circumstances for developing a personal and loving relationship even if the mutual wishes were there. May is compelled to read and dispense of Damyan's letter 'in the pryvee' (ll. 1946-54) and the utterly joyless affair, lacking in any sensual fulfilment whatsoever, has to be hurriedly consummated in a ...

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