How does the tale of the Merchant reflect the character of the Merchant himself?
… Tale’ might simply have caused the merchant to think of the story he knew about the Lombardy in his experience. ; the behavior of Walter and Griselda might also have reminded him by contrast rather than comparison of his own Italian tale of marriage; finally the Merchant might have consciously balanced the Clerk’s account of aristocratic values and behaviors against his own account of the business-like deportment of January. Each of these three relationships to the ‘Clerk’s Tale’ can act as a springboard for one of the many readings that can be done of the ‘Merchant’s Tale’. However, for the present purposes, it must suffice to demonstrate that the tale the Merchant tells very much describes a world of commercial transaction, even in a situation in which exchange is apparently inappropriate, and that this description to some extent implies – if not defines – the Merchant’s engagement with such a …
