The “Voice of the Clerical Satirist”: Revisiting Pearsall’s Reading of The Merchant’s Tale

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article revisits and affirms Derek Pearsall’s reading of Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale, elaborating it with reference to the medieval theory of satire, ecclesiastical literature relating to the sacrament of marriage, analogues of the pear tree escapade from the novella tradition, and David Lawton’s research on “voice.” The idea of a single, all-encompassing narrative voice is challenged. Pearsall’s assertion that we do not need the Merchant to understand the tale, because its voice is “fully established from within,” gives rise to the question of whether there is any need to assign it to a singular voice. The contemptuous references to “secular estate” by a teller who is supposedly a merchant drives the speculation that Chaucer may originally have intended the story for a member of some religious order—a friar or monk perhaps. However, the risk of a cacophony of different voices is averted by the ultimate dominance of mercantile discourse. Whatever the poet’s original intention may have been (the Canterbury Tales being a work in progress), it has convincingly grown into a merchant’s tale, wherein supposedly noble characters speak and act in ways inappropriate to their high estate, and the values of commerce gain priority.