There is no doubt that immoral people can arise from all walks of life, big, small, rich, poor and everything in between – any of them can be victim of vices. of the human spirit. When sex and money mix, a potentially dangerous (but exciting, at least to an outside observer) spectacle can occur. But what happens when this bomb explodes? Geoffrey Chaucer is certainly a master at depicting the profane and seedy side of human nature, but as he demonstrates throughout The Shipman's Tale of The Canterbury Tales, sometimes a quiet whisper can be as powerful as a loud explosion . The Shipman's Tale doesn't need a big showdown or public burning to make statements about the morality of human desires and the pursuit of them. Instead, a discussion between a married couple in bed along with an interesting twist on a marriage vow culminates a story that has much to say about the nature of debt – monetary and otherwise – and about the marriage of sex and money. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Shipman's Tale is a tale that lacks plot but is full of details. The story of an unfaithful wife and her distraught husband deceived by her lover is not new; in fact, speculation about Chaucer's sources will be discussed later. However, it is in the telling of the story – the details given and left out, the attitude towards infidelity, the attribution of blame or lack thereof – that propels the Shipman's Tale into the realm of scientific studies. The Shipman categorizes the importance of details in the story in a way unfamiliar to listeners eager for bawdy tales. There are long descriptions of the merchant's generosity towards his friends, especially the monk – how he frequently entertains them at his home, gives them gifts, etc. However, the scandalous extramarital affairs (which, for technical reasons, turn the merchant's wife into a prostitute) make as much noise as a grocery list. Instead, the plot does not seem to be intended for the excitement of illicit affairs and "wykked wyves", but rather to convey extensive puns and double entenders. Some studies of Chaucer have characterized the Shipman's Tale as pure fabliaux – that is, following the formula of debauched trickster tales popular in France where either a cunning trick is successful or a frequent trickster receives whatever punishment is due. due. Peter Nicholson, however, argues that Shipman's Tale cannot be strictly fablial for the same reasons that the story itself is subject to academic scrutiny. The fact that the debauchery affair was "almost drowned out by details of the characters' lives completely foreign to the plot" draws the audience's attention away from the affair itself and towards the other details of the affair. history, like the abundance of descriptions of the friendship between the monk and the merchant. (Nicholson 583) For example, there are six lines in total that deal with the actual affair (lines 313-319) plus two lines earlier that mention lustful kissing (lines 202-203). Even in the text between these two passages, there are twenty-four lines (lines 224-248) of the husband lecturing his wife about business and money, and a thirty-five line conversation (lines 257 -292) in which the merchant and the monk discuss their friendship and the monk asks for money. Even in the brief taboo scenes, Chaucer does not seduce the voyeuristic audience; he adopts a method reminiscent of a Greek tragedian describing the off-stage death of a minor character. The critical matter of the plot isalmost an afterthought. One of the most striking aspects of this story, says Nicholson, is "the structure in which the commercialization of sexual relationships, and not the conventional triumph of one character over another, seems to be the major point." (Nicholson 583) No character at the end of the story is painted as being “right” or “wrong” – the storyteller seems reluctant to blame anyone. Another reason to guard against a strict Fabliaux label is the extensive puns and double meanings, says Nicholson, which are not present in the typical Fabliaux model. For example, the discussion between the monk and the merchant just before the merchant's departure for Flaundres gives rise to a series of increasingly crude double meanings, made more amusing by two facts: on the one hand, the conversation is entirely serious fact; second, the husband is oblivious to the meaning beyond the surface. One such example is that Daun John tells the merchant that he needs to borrow money "for some things that I look at the most" (line 278) when he actually plans to use the money for bartering with the merchant's wife for sex. As the buyer of the monastery, it is perfectly reasonable for Daun John to purchase quantities of livestock; however, Chaucer here refers to the purchase of satisfaction for animal desires (Daun John's lust and his wife's greed). The merchant, of course, has no idea and happily lends him some money before leaving town. These animalistic desires and animal imagery in general constitute one of the four major areas of imagery described by Janet Richardson in The Facade of Bawdry: Image Patterns. in Chaucer's Shipman's Tale. The four “image groups” (Richardson 304) are animals, food, commerce, and sex. It is through the interaction of these four spheres that we arrive at the overarching theme identified by Nicholson, namely the commercialization of sex. Richardson takes a slightly broader approach in his interpretation of the ultimate theme: commerce is the ultimate image to which the other three relate, because the story focuses so heavily on the materialism that permeates the world of the bourgeoisie. It is the connections between these different sets of images that highlight the delicacies of a tale that, at first glance, may seem bland. Although Richardson has drawn many connections from the text, I would like to focus on one in particular, and that is the interaction between the image lexicon of sex and the image lexicon of commerce. As Richardson notes on page 306, the "cosynage" (but not blood) between the merchant and the monk is well documented throughout the narrative; he is given many more lines than the main plot points (i.e. the adultery scene). Clearly, this relationship is something Chaucer wishes to use as support for his commentary. The goals of the two men differ: the merchant desires money and material wealth; and the monk desires sex, particularly sex with his friend's wife. Their wife offers them both the same deal: sex in exchange for the money she owes. Without the traditional fablial ending in which a certain morality, however questionable, is displayed, these two men remain in the reader's palate as moral equals. The monk essentially represents the animal and lustful nature of the human spirit and the merchant represents the greedy and materialistic side of the human spirit. Since they are in identical situations, Chaucer equates lust and greed – commerce and sex. The assimilation of commerce and sex seems out of place in the bourgeois world of the merchant and his wife. They have. 1965: 303-313.