How does his presentation compare to what is known of merchants in Chaucer's day and how do you respond to him as a reader?
“What do we learn of Chaucer’s merchant from the information provided in the General Prologue and the prologue to the tale itself? How does his presentation compare to what is known of merchants in Chaucer’s day and how do you respond to him as a reader?”
Chaucer describes the Merchant in a subtle but detailed way. The Merchant is presented as favourable and yet several indistinct statements challenge this initial portrayal. Chaucer’s typical use of irony excels here for the reader to interpret the Merchant openly. Taken literally, the Merchant could be seen as a conservative member of the developing middle class and yet the more popular interpretation, taking into account that the ambiguous statements are ironic, implies that the Merchant is enigmatic and somewhat dubious.
The General Prologue gives us a clear physical description of the Merchant. He is well-dressed and considered contemporarily stylish with his “Flaunderissh bever hat”, his “bootes clasped faire and fetisly” (line 274-75) and his “forked berd” (line 272). This makes him appear as a successful merchant who can afford to dress in the fashionable way. He is also described as “His reasons he spak ful solempnely”, which again describes him as a respectable member of society, “solempnely” meaning “with dignity”. However, the next few lines undermine this image of him being a dignified citizen as they describe him boasting about his profits, which is seen as a distasteful quality at this time. We hear that “Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette”. This technically could mean that nobody knows of his debt because there wasn’t any, but the line implies that there was and the fact that he harks on about his profits suggests that he is covering for his losses to make him seem more successful than he actually is. This paints him as a man full of his own self-importance and one who may be slightly deluded as to how important he actually is in society. The phrase “hye on horse he sat” perhaps suggests that he is a man who makes himself look more impressive than he is and who tries to give out false impressions of himself in order to cover up the reality behind his career choice. This would relate to the modern day saying describing someone who is full of themselves as “sitting on their high horse”, a phrase commonly used in the 21st century.
