The Shipman's Tale
The Shipman's Tale is part of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
Summary
A merchant's wife tells the visiting monk Dan John that she needs money. The monk borrows the required sum from her husband and gives it to her in connection with their sexual encounter.
When the merchant later asks for repayment, the monk says he has already returned the money to the wife. She tells her husband she has spent it on clothing and proposes to repay him in bed.
The merchant does not receive the same money back. The joke depends on the movement of money between people and on incompatible accounts of what counts as a gift, a loan and repayment.
Source
Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website: synopsis, context and link to the text.
Terms of exchange and apparent kinship
In the opening conversation, Dan John tells the wife that his claimed kinship with the merchant is a pretext for closer acquaintance. See Harvard's interlinear opening, lines 148–154. The retrieved page supplies lines 1–157; it should not be mistaken for the complete tale. The contextual page gives an outline of the whole plot.
For comparison, draw a simple record of the transfers: who supplies money, who receives it, and which person calls it a loan, gift or repayment. Then keep the money's movement separate from the language used to describe the relationship.
- The Franklin's Tale provides a contrasting sequence in which obligations are released.
- Metaphor in Economics explores figurative descriptions of transactions in another setting.
- Metaphor, Context and Speaker Meaning helps examine what a term such as kinship accomplishes in a particular conversation.