K-I-S-S-I-N-G: Transforming Obscenity in Children's Adaptations of Chaucer's Merchant's Tale

Despite containing an infamous arboreal sex scene, Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale makes several appearances in children’s adaptations of the Canterbury Tales. This article explores how children’s adapters working from the early nineteenth century to the present have reframed the tale’s sexual, erotic, and social obscenity for young readers. Adapters’ treatments of the tale’s sexual elements, particularly the pear tree scene, reflect changes in both Chaucerian reception and children’s literature across the past two centuries. Evidenced by intriguing responses to the youth of the tale’s shrew-cum-heroine May, these children’s adaptations also provide a valuable lens through which to scrutinize Chaucer’s own text and its manuscript tradition. If the Merchant’s Tale grapples with the conflicted pleasures of obscenity, its transformations into children’s literature suggest that obscenity, erotic and otherwise, is also tenacious.