The Shipman’s Tales, Article Critique Example

By many intends and purposes the novel is a classical display of literary work that is skillfully able to combine an array of diverse themes of that defines the mundane strata of the humanity that is inherently in man.  Needless to say that a good number of the morals that author Geoffrey Chaucer seeks to highlight remain congruently timeless and relevant to the everyday realities of even our day and age. What this essay will be doing in essence is to attempt to take an unusual journey into the internal dynamics of the story with the hope that by delving deeper, a conscientious comprehensive analysis will be the ultimate outcome of the different thematic areas within the story and most importantly understanding the story as and how the author intends it to be without making unwarranted interpolations.

The setting of the story is St. Denys, with the author implicitly introducing the lead characters of the story namely: Sir John the good looking monk, the ostentatious wife of the merchant and of course the rich merchant. It is important to take note of a number of salient distinguishing features in the personalities of the characters involved. For instance the merchant’s wife as presented in the story is reportedly charmingly beautiful with an unusually high affinity for social events and grandiose partying. She is also known to also always exhibit an inexpressible level of aggrandizement derived from hosting these regular festive moments within the confines of their beautiful house. Being what it is, the home of the merchant and his beautiful wife always overflows with scores of guests making merry. Remotely unstated is the cause of the regular celebrations, of course without reckoning that the merchant’s mistress was flamboyantly extravagant the author makes no direct allusion to this statement.

For whatever reason Chaucer provides very little information about Sir John and the author with a more concentrated emphasis on the association between them which is nourished and sustained by the catalyzing social chemistry being whipped by the merchant. The reader is made to understand that both men had some considerable degree of accolades to the chest by way of the social stratification in their society. Whilst the former by dint of his knighthood is placed on a higher social order as opposed to the latter’s social prominence was solely built on the worth of his commercial estate. The merchant becomes convinced that the most ideal way to rise within the social order of his day and age could be rightly facilitated by establishing an enduring relationship with the monk to achieve his ends, if that even meant conjuring blood ties to cement the illusory kinship sentiment he aroused between him and Sir John the monk.

Naturally, the merchant and Sir John the monk had their respective strikingly differences with respect to the constituent individual personality definitions. Whilst the author makes his readers believe that the monk is a very generous, outgoing and socially receptive person, the merchant is represented on the extreme end as being a frugal character, with a reputation for denying his beautiful wife the full latitude of his financial empire.

Judging by the wording of the story line, one is inclined to believe that author Geoffrey Chaucer has some acquaintance with trade and commerce, taking cognizance of the fact that he is on record to have manipulated technical terms within the area of trade and commerce to fine tune the direction of the entire story, manifested in the presentation of such literary devices such as the plot, themes, diction and imagery (Pp 296). As an illustration, the author poignantly expresses how the merchant’s wife and Sir John engage in the process of negotiating the former’s request for the cash of 100 francs. Moreover, the contractual terms entered and agreed by both characters through out the story is also riddled by the extensive use of legal terminologies to describe how they swore and kept the oaths between themselves. Suffice to re-iterate that at the core of trade and commercial activities is the role of law to referee all participating parties. It explains why the author early in the novel uses the legal term “queinte termes of lawe” (1189) to usher in the prologue to reiterate a definitively related facet of the plot. Still within the context of the plot, it is seen that Chaucer relies on the medieval practice of husbands taking responsibility for the debts of their wives.

In addition to the above, it also becomes evident as the story progresses that the influence of trade and commerce on how the author wants his story to be understood is repeatedly seen in the recurrent role of “money” and “payment” even in the most unlikely of places, talking about the relationship between the merchant and his wife. The frequency with which the use of money appears in the story to some extent makes the reliance on double-entry bookkeeping as a financial principle inevitable. It should also be noted that the role of money in the relationship also extended to the merchant’s wife and Sir John the monk.

How is double-entry bookkeeping related in this sense to the Shipman’s Tale? Note that the general equation in the story is connected by money and sex even between the merchant and his mistress. Such a relationship shares a striking similarity with a double-entry bookkeeping process by the fact that as part of the process of maintaining order in accounts, income flows should be independently recorded only to be reconciled at the payment mode. Similarly, the relationships expressed in the story are distinctively separated and maintains independence only to be brought together by the payment mode.

Among other things one of the major themes highlighted in the Shipman’s Tale has to do with social disposition and power within human societies. Both Sir John and the merchant are considered men of high social disposition though with an acknowledged level of variation. In other words, both men indeed wield considerable influence and power but in relation to each other, the former is ranked higher than the latter. They also express marked differences in the sources of their power and influences, where as the former is conferred with power and authority by the established political forces in the St. Denys catchment area, the latter earned his power thanks to the enormous pool of his estate. Let it also be noted that where as the monk exerted public influence and prestige stemming from his knighthood, the merchant on the hand exhibited a similar amount of influence and control not within the wider public domain but narrowly within the people around him and his household. For this reason, the merchant sees that associating with the monk will provide the leeway by which his power will receive a proxy-public extension.

Geoffrey Chaucer introduces the team of power and position in the opening elements of his story when states that “Once there was a merchant in St. Denys who was rich and was highly respected as wise” (“A marchant whilom dwelled at Seint Denys, / That riche was, for which men helde hym wys.”). It is also understandable within this sense bearing in mind that whilst the merchant is described as shrewd and frugal by his wife, his attitude towards his friend and alleged brother, Sir John the monk, is an entirely different ballgame. Whilst he hesitates to spend on his beautiful wife, he reportedly willingly offered money to the monk when he requested to borrow the 100 francs. The reason for the differences in the attitude of the merchant to the monk and his beautiful wife is glaringly clear—his insatiable affinity for power and social aggrandizement drives his limits to unimaginable heights.