Chaucerotics by Geoffrey W. Gust

Author:Geoffrey W. Gust
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319897462
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The Merchant’s care here suggests the controversial nature of such material, and highlights the shock-factor that Chaucerotics could generate. However, whether or not an erotic charge would follow is only determined in the mind’s eye of the reader, who must uncloak the narrator’s cautious language to determine exactly how January “wroghte.”

Evidently, this term is a variant of “werken” and the Merchant is therefore given pause by the manner of January’s work, his sexual performance with his bride. But one might also wonder if a variant of the verb “wroten” is at hand here—a prospect that might fit well with January’s animalistic appetites, since this verb form may be used to describe a person working the soil, but is most often used in describing an animal that roots around in the dirt and literally digs in. The Lombard knight does indeed “dig in” with his wife and enters her flesh, and the “wyse” in which he frolics with her until the evening vespers are varied and open to the imagination. Even if this particular play on words is not evident, the storyteller’s language in this passage represents a method of “refusal-to-specify to make us imagine ourselves as watchers in the privee too.” More to the point, the suggestions of the tactile experience serve to “draw us in close to the narrative events, closer than we ought or want to be, and thus create an embarrassment that is part of the tale’s harsh comedy”—while it is also possible that “the voyeurism so cunningly imposed by the narrative on its audience” not only leads to fascination but also may engage our own amorous desires as we imagine the scene before us.79

The Merchant’s Tale not only depicts multiple sex scenes, but is a story centered upon love affairs that are both sanctioned and illicit. This is another extraordinary feature of the tale that arguably ties it more closely to modern pornography than most fabliaux, with the illicit nature of the adulterous affair especially enticing and central to the narrative’s sensuous vigor. Though love triangles are common within the fabliau tradition, here the sexual details are not limited to the unmarried parties and the triangle itself becomes, in effect, a steamy adventure featuring three willing participants, a common generic paradigm of recent pornography.80 The third party in this sex triangle, if you will, is the virile squire Damyan, whose participation—and, in time, penetration (of May)—heightens the possibilities at hand. In fact, Damyan not only brings a fresh physical presence to the scene, but furthers the narrative intrigue by facilitating a kind of meta-fictional erotica in the form of love letters to (and from) May.

As with May, the Merchant does not provide many details about Damyan. However, returning to his brief introduction on May’s wedding day, perhaps his apparent role as an enrapt courtly lover tells us all we really need to know in order to imagine a strong, handsome champion of the kind characteristically seen in chivalric romance: after seeing May for the first time,

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