The Miller’s Tale

A summary of Geoffrey Chaucer’s, “The Miller’s Tale,” being for the benefit of my English 220 buddy…

True to Chaucer’s form, less concerned with courtly love-style romantic poetry opting instead to amuse his audience of courtly lovers with parodies of peasants and rowdy rubes or the sexcapades of serfs, “The Miller’s Tale” is a crunked countering of the Knight’s idealistic tale of perfect love. Despite being set in (then) contemporary late-fourteenth century England this tale does not address the traditional and sanctioned themes of poems such as courtly love, bravery, valour and virtue. It is neither a heroic nor epic tale set in the mystical past. Rather,”The Miller’s Tale,” is solely concerned with characters of low birth and questionable morals. This particular portion of The Canterbury Tales is t herefore categorized as a fabliau, a genre typified by its blatant disregard for the rules of the Church and subsidiary institutions (marriage, in particular) as the characters seek love (that is, to make it) with another character from the inevitable triangle. Such stories are, unsurprisingly, completely riddled with folly and frequently feature the nigh-clichéd fabliau devices of the allegedly impending Second Flood and the misdirected kiss. Having been working as a customs control officer at the time of writing these stories, Chaucer would indeed have been familiar with not only the key demographic for these racy little romps but would have been intimately familiar with their devices, evidenced by the fact that this tale (for those of you who didn’t read it… class?) happens to contain both.

“The Miller’s Tale,” like the rest of poetry of the time, was meant for presentation at the court and communal listening. Part of the humour of this piece, then, is that beyond the double-entendres and explicitly erotic scenes lies the poor audience, burdened with responding to the outrageous actions, trying at once to avoid seeming slow while at the same time refraining from snickering at the omnipresent euphemism of ejaculation. (I can hardly blame them though – remember John Donne’s “The Flea?” I nearly died laughing!) To make things painfully obvious, Carmel, this is where you jot down in your notes that what our professor referred to the “text as a mirror” as a concept applicable to everything we’ve read thus far. …Except maybe “Dream of the Rood”… I never read that.

As for the examination of dubious passages, much class time was dedicated to identifying the detailed-yet-ambiguous desc ription of Alison. We are told of her figure, “As any wezele hir body gent and smal,” (3234 f.) so we discussed the dual connotations of the small little animal that is sensuously slithery, a soft little creature commonly associated with cunning. The case for reading Alison as less than perfect (vanity’s a sin, right?) is strengthened when we are told, “Ful smale ypulled … hire browes two,” (3245 f.) and then a couple lines later when her apron is described lines 3238-3240:

Whit was hir smok, and broyden al bigoore
And eek biynde, on hir coler aboute,With coal-black silk, within and also without.

These three short lines tell us a few things about Alison. She is wearing a white frock, appropriate for an allegedly honest wife, but her neckwear is streaked with black. The black that covers her collar both outside and in is of silk, which is not particularly appropriate for a woman of her status. The embroidery, then,tells us both that she is perhaps greedy, ambitious, and/or dissatisfied, and that she is not as pure as she would at first appear to be. Her purse also illustrates both her character and how she is viewed: leather purse we are told Alison is carrying is described to soud an awful lot like a vagina.

Social conventions aside, it’s really quite logical for Chaucer to have ha dAlison described right down to the cooch because it sets up the symbolism of Alison’s value lying in her loins. Her complexion being described as “Ful brighter was the shynyng of hir hewe / Than in the Tour the noble yforged newe,” (3255 f.) fully equates her value as a human being with that of a newly minted gold coin. Just as her husband bought her from her parents, her dowry proportionate to how valuable John considered her for her ability to supply him with heirs.