![]() ![]() ![]() IN a defining interpretive crux, the narrator of Geoffrey Chaucer's Merchant's Tale records in exacting and candid detail several sexual encounters throughout his fabliau, yet he concurrently regrets sharing these prurient details and apologizes to his audience for his crudity. As the masculinist arena of debate is regendered through the tale's unfolding, its fabliau humor envisions a world in which women can debate as persuasively as men-even through their silence. A sixth debate emerges in Chaucer's metatextual construction of the pilgrims' varying views of gender and marriage. ![]() The primary sections of the tale-the marriage encomium, ]ustinus and Placebo's argument, May's wedding night, the mythological interlude of Pluto and Proserpina, and the tale's fabliau resolution-each highlight various aspects of the classical and medieval debate tradition, as they also foreground considerations of male and female desires within the marital realm. Chaucer's Merchant's Tale has long been criticized for its apparently disjunctive themes and style, yet by reading it as a series of five debates concerning gender and marriage, its organic unity comes into sharper focus. ![]()
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