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CANTERBURY TALES THE MERCHANT’S TALE Chaucer has let January become the character he is partially down to the fact of his age. We know January is highly sexually driven without a doubt. Yet Chaucer leads us to believe that this is down to his personality and character rather than his age being used as a justifiable tool; so what if the man is 60 he still wants to have sex right? We are told that January has a sexual appetite and regularly feeds with mostly a selection of middle aged women, so when he acquires himself a young and "untouched" girl as a wife we are taken aback. At this point Chaucer casts age into the conundrum and we begin to see just how January thinks and more precisely what he desires. Justinus and placebo's scene with January for me is more like him talking to himself and there being an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. (This scene is very resemblant of Dr Faustus in which the Good Angel and Evil Angel appear to Faustus.) Placebo is the "devil" and the free thinking conscienceless side of January whilst Justinus is the angel who shows morals and ethics. This is almost an externalization of his mind frame, revealing both halves of his thought. Chaucer has used this scene well to show us exactly the knight's thoughts. As the characters tell him what they think, inversely it is really what he thinks. (He chooses to ignore Justinus and by listening to Placebo he listens to what he wants and desires.) The recklessness for January is his great lack of realism. Not only is it portrayed by the way he expects to have a young wife at the age of 60, but by the way he thinks that he "still has it" and that his age has not affected his status with women. This is one of the seven sins that Chaucer uses in all of the Canterbury tales; vanity. This is reinforced by the way he refuses to listen to Justinus. Although he is a bachelor right unto the point where he meets May and marries her, we have been given little or no real background to his life, his age and his masochistic ways. The total expectation of a "young and fair" wife is surely meant to be interpreted as arrogance. Yet the way January voices his expectation, one casts asides their views of his arrogance and surprisingly adopt one of empathy towards him.