This introduction to the first three sections of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales focuses on structures, social classes, characterisation and ethics.

The text referred to throughout is Nevill Coghill’s translation of The Canterbury Tales into modern English (London: Penguin, 2003).

 I The General Prologue

Opening Reverdie

In these classes we happen to be studying Chaucer in late March and early April, at about the same time of year that the pilgrims set out for Canterbury. In Australia, these days mark the beginning of autumn, but in England it’s the beginning of spring. The turning of the year to spring still matters in the northern hemisphere, even though most Europeans now live in crowded and polluted cities, detached from nature. In England in the Middle Ages, by contrast, a much smaller population lived close to the soil, to vegetation and to animals. People looked forward to the awakening of trees, plants and flowers, the mating of birds and animals, and the joyfulness of warm breezes. Roads clogged with frozen mud over winter became passable. People would begin to move around, to trade goods, to plant crops, to see to their business and family affairs, to begin new ventures, and to go on pilgrimage. Spring was a time of celebration, of new life, new love and new hope. That’s why a whole body of poetry and poetic conventions developed around the theme of spring. Conventional descriptions of spring were called reverdie, meaning “re-greening” (vert is French for “green”).

No poet captures springtime’s happiness, freshness, hopefulness and sense of renewal better than Chaucer does in the reverdie that opens The Canterbury Tales.

The Pilgrims’ Portraits

Chaucer says that there were twenty-nine pilgrims and himself. The Prologue describes twenty-seven, and in addition mentions three priests and a nun who attend the Prioress.

Chaucer the Pilgrim and Chaucer the Poet

Chaucer joins the pilgrimage as first person narrator, but it’s important to distinguish Chaucer the Pilgrim-Narrator from Chaucer the Poet. The attitude of the narrator to most of the pilgrims he describes is one of naive admiration, but often this admiration exists side-by-side with facts about the pilgrim which are anything but admirable. The contradiction between the admiring tone and the facts produces irony. For example, Chaucer tells us that Friar Hubert, despite his vow of chastity, seduced young girls. When the girls became pregnant the Friar paid their dowries so that other men would marry them. After telling us this, Chaucer the pilgrim adds, goggle-eyed with admiration: “He was a noble pillar to his Order” (Coghill 8). You can see that this line is heavily ironic.

Order of Portraits 

The portraits are ordered roughly according to class, beginning with upper-class pilgrims and descending the social ladder to working-class pilgrims. They pilgrims are also grouped as religious or secular—a division that embodies the notion of three “estates”: people who pray (first estate, the clergy); people who defend the realm by fighting for it (second estate, the nobility and gentry); and people who labour to produce food and other necessities (third estate, the peasantry and later also townsfolk—merchants and tradespeople). Medieval England was a rural economy that measured wealth by land ownership, but in the late fourteenth century it was gradually shifting towards a mixed urban and rural money economy that persisted until the nineteenth-century industrial revolution. The Canterbury pilgrims therefore also form groups according to whether their occupations are rural or urban. In the late fourteenth-century towns were growing, and York and London were sizable cities. Town and city tradesmen and merchants organised themselves into guilds, a mixture of benevolent societies (like Rotary, Lions) and unions. There were very many more trades than are known today, and Chaucer’s pilgrims are only a small representative sample. Finally, a moral ranking of the pilgrims cuts across the social and religious hierarchies and the groupings of place.

Christian values—the core teachings of medieval Catholic Christianity—are the foundation for an implicit moral ranking of the Canterbury pilgrims. Chaucer judges his pilgrims, especially the professional church people (ecclesiastics) according to their sincerity in living up to the central Christian message of love of God and neighbour (Matthew 22. 37-40). He even quotes this key Biblical passage in the description of the Plowman (Coghill’s edition, p. 17). Chaucer sets this value of love, caritas, against its opposite, cupiditas, meaning greed, avarice, the selfish desire for money, covetousness—the many-headed beast of insatiable desires described by Plato in The Republic, Book 11). To put it more simply, the pilgrims are judged morally on whether they serve God or gold, whether they choose God or Mammon (Matthew 6.24). These ideas surface continually throughout the General Prologue’s portraits.

Lovers of Life

However, as fictional fellow pilgrim, narrator and poet, Chaucer also has an accepting and even a celebratory attitude towards pilgrims who are true to themselves in a human way: people who have been brave enough in life to fulfill their own natures, people whom we would regard as middle-class successes. Examples of such pilgrims are the Wife of Bath (town-dweller) and the Franklin (rural dweller). Both of these energy-filled pilgrims are “larger than life”; they have a real joy in living. Inner truthfulness, integrity, wholeness, singleness (to use four words for the same quality) is Chaucer’s universal criterion in assessing of his pilgrims. Some pilgrims achieve integrity by being true to themselves. Others achieve it by being true to their vocations or Christian ideals. The failures among the pilgrims are those who are divided inwardly, because cupiditas detaches them both from themselves and from the ideals they outwardly profess.

Model Pilgrims

Chaucer applies the criterion of integrity to his military group, Knight, Squire and Yeoman, who persevere bravely in the dangerous and arduous lives of fighters.

In addition, Chaucer provides unforgettable portraits of three pilgrims who strive wholeheartedly to live up to their Christian and/or scholarly ideals. These are the Oxford Scholar (in Middle English the “Clerk…of Oxenforde”), who sacrifices bodily and material comfort to his love of learning and teaching, who prays faithfully for his patrons (financial backers), and who loves to talk about morality and ethics. Although the Clerk is truly a philosopher according to Plato’s definition, he lacks the philosopher’s stone by which alchemists sought to transform base metal into gold. Chaucer’s admiration for learning often surfaces in the Prologue portraits, but nowhere more clearly than in his portrait of the Clerk.

The remaining idealised figures, the poor Parson and his brother the Plowman, strive to attain the more centrally Christian ideal of caritas. This pair is the moral anchor, the measure for evaluating the other pilgrims, both secular and religious. They embody Christ, both in their essential charity and humility and in their humble social positions. The Parson’s portrait in particular plays with the God-gold dichotomy, by pairing opposites like “poor” and “rich,” “gold” and “iron,” “shepherd” and “mercenary.”

We can note here that many pilgrims also take on a symbolic function. They represent their social roles as iconic or emblematic figures—the Parson is the ideal priest—the exemplary member of the first estate—while the Plowman is the ideal labourer, the exemplary member of the third estate. As the provider of food he is the foundation that upholds the whole social edifice rising above him.

By contrast with Chaucer’s presentation of these brothers, other portraits in the Prologue uncover mismatches in other pilgrims between outward appearance and inner reality. The narrator especially exposes those pilgrims who pretend to follow a sacred vocation, but who pervert it into a means for fulfilling their own desires, a way of gratifying cupiditas. Some Prologue portraits satirise hypocrisy in the first estate, the clergy, especially when it takes the form of a vicious exploitation of people’s faith and an undermining of what medieval Christians held most sacred. (Note the precise meaning of “hypocrisy”—a false pretence to virtue or goodness. This has been the target of satirists throughout the ages.)

The Three Ecclesiastics

The three upper ecclesiastics (professional church people) follow a moral gradation downwards from the Prioress, who unconsciously skews her vocation towards ladylike pretensions and sentimentality; to the exuberant “manly” Monk, whose main interests in life are hunting and eating—not the prayer, work and study prescribed by his vocation; to the Friar, who is corrupt and lustful, and accepts it without guilt. Physically attractive and well dressed, and a melodious singer to his harp, the Friar seduces women of all ages, his goal being sex or money or both. He sells absolution (the Church’s formal forgiveness of sins) and light penances to sinners who donate large sums to his order. As a debasement of the model provided by St Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order of Friars, Chaucer’s Friar has nothing to do with lepers or the poor, but is well acquainted with taverns and barmaids. Irony and satire in the portraits of the upper ecclesiastics compounds to produce social satire, a comment on the corruption that in this period–the late 1400s–was widespread in the Church.

The Five Rogues

The last five pilgrims described, following immediately upon the idealised portraits of the Parson and Plowman, are out-and-out rogues. The first is the Miller, who rides at the head of the cavalcade of pilgrims, playing drunkenly on his bagpipes. The Miller is both recognisable—we see or hear about men like him every day—and, as the leader of the pilgrimage, an iconic figure. What is Chaucer’s point when he makes the drunken rowdy Miller lead the pilgrimage?

The second rogue is the Manciple, a steward who works at the Inns of Court in London, a college for training lawyers. He profits nicely from the kickbacks to him paid by the suppliers of food and other goods to the college.

The Reeve has a more substantial place in society as estate manager for a lord. He has enriched himself by knowing his business and by shady deals. He lives in a pleasant dwelling on the lord’s estate. He dresses somewhat like a priest, and is old, thin and bad tempered (choleric). One deeply disturbing line, sending a shiver down the spine, but softened in Coghill’s translation, notes that the lord’s tenants “were adrad of him as of the deeth” (line 605); Coghill: “Feared like the plague he was, by those beneath” (p. 19). The Reeve brings up the rear of the pilgrimage, emphasising his solitude and symbolising perhaps the old age that is the final stage of this life’s pilgrimage.

The last two portraits in the order of Chaucer’s account (as opposed to the order of riding) are the friends, the Summoner and the Pardoner. They are minor Church officials but neither is formally in holy orders.That Chaucer describes these two figures last is a sign that he regards them as the most corrupt of all the pilgrims. This is because their actions exploit people’s aspirations to live a good life, to find salvation, to develop a relationship with God. They intervene between people’s spiritual striving and God.

The Summoner’s job is to summon people for sins such as adultery to be tried in the ecclesiastical (Archdeacon’s) courts. In the late Middle Ages a church legal system operated alongside secular justice. The Summoner makes a rich living by threatening sinners with excommunication or trial unless they pay him off with bribes. The Pardoner is a more sinister figure. He cynically sells false relics of saints, as good luck charms or “miraculous” cures for diseases. He also sells indulgences formally approved by the Pope in Rome; each indulgence guarantees so many years off a penitent’s time in purgatory after death. Both the Summoner and the Pardoner pervert the central doctrine of Christ’s forgiveness of sins into a commercial enterprise. Consumed with cupiditas the Summoner and his companion the Pardoner balance the brothers,the Parson and the Plowman, who exemplify caritas. Chaucer’s pilgrims embody the full moral range.

Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, most people mistakenly believed that the body was an accurate reflection of the soul: good people were expected to look good; deformed or ugly people were considered morally evil. Chaucer’s portraits of the Summoner and the Pardoner reflect this misconception, in that both are physically repulsive. The Summoner has incurable acne and bad breath from eating garlic, leeks and onions. The Pardoner is fashionably dressed but pop-eyed; his thin long yellow hair hangs in rats’ tails. Chaucer also casts doubt on his masculinity, implying that he is impotent (a eunuch) or a hermaphrodite—“a gelding or a mare”. For Chaucer and his readers the Pardoner’s sexual ambiguity was an outward sign of his evil nature. For us, of course, it is a reminder of the limitations and ignorance of the medieval world view.

Tales Told

The pilgrims agree to tell four tales each, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back. The teller of the best tale will win a dinner at the Tabard Inn paid for on their return by the other pilgrims. However, in the Tales as preserved in the authoritative manuscripts, no pilgrim except the poet-narrator himself tells more than one story; seven tell none at all; and two tales are unfinished. Chaucer clearly didn’t complete his grand design—perhaps he wasn’t all that determined to do so. He left a body of enthralling Tales that he left for many generations of readers to enjoy. Among them are sexy comedies, noble stories, heart-breaking tragedies, and grim exposures of human weaknesses, delusions and vices. They offer a wealth of insight into experience, ethics, and philosophy. Readers also have the fascination of matching the tales to the portraits in the Prologue, and of interpreting the personality clashes that occur among the pilgrims as the pilgrimage unfolds.

II The Knight’s Tale

We would expect a knight to tell a courtly tale, and Chaucer’s Knight doesn’t disappoint us. All the characters in The Knight’s Tale are “noble,” both in rank and in character, and through them the Knight explores the problem of unmerited suffering. The Knight’s exalted view of humanity in his Tale contrasts strongly, both with the Chaucerian realism of the Prologue and with the earthy, farcical and fantastical Miller’s Tale that follows. As usual in medieval art, The Knight’s Tale re-imagines the classical culture of ancient Greece as the fourteenth-century world that Chaucer knew. Chaucer created The Knight’s Tale by freely adapting a poem, the Teseida, written about 1340 by the Italian poet, Giovanni Boccaccio. Both the poem and its source exemplify the continuing influence of classical culture, which after 1500 was to undergo a major resurgence in England in the Renaissance.

Specifically, The Knight’s Tale exemplifies the medieval courtly view of love (usually known by its French names, fin amour or amour courtois). Under the code of courtly love, which was widespread in European literature and culture for centuries both before and after Chaucer, the knight falls deeply but hopelessly in love with a woman who outranks him (Sir Lancelot, for example, with Queen Guenevere). The courtly lover stays awake night after night in love-longing. He yearns to catch even a glimpse of his lady; he stops eating, grows pale, serves her from a distance, often for years, with little or no acknowledgment–perhaps a glance, perhaps a smile, at the very most a kiss. He strives to prove his worthiness by brave and noble deeds in her honour.

The Knight’s Tale nevertheless also reflects the teller’s status as a battle-hardened veteran. Thus, the Tale encompasses tragedy within its genre of courtly chivalric romance. As an unconsciously Neo-Platonic text it explores issues of earthly and divine justice and judgment. The Knight’s Tale passionately seeks an explanation for the apparently senseless suffering and sheer bad luck that happen to good people. In seeking metaphysical causes for the pain of human life, considering in turn:

• the blind goddess Fortune,
• the malignant classical Roman gods,
• the divine will of the Christian God,
• predestination—the determinism produced by God’s universal foreknowledge.

The Knight also considers how humans look for ways to reconcile themselves, both with tragedy itself and with sorrow as a shadow that haunts most lives. (You’ll remember that Plato suggests that the wise man’s proper response to tragedy is rational stoicism.)

Structure of The Knight’s Tale

Gradually but inexorably, The Knight’s Tale builds the conflict between Palamon and Arcite, the rival lovers of Emily, towards a massed battle and a tragic resolution.

PART I: War and Love

1. The conquests of Duke Theseus of Athens: Scythia (Amazons, whose queen is Theseus’ wife Hippolyta) and Thebes;
2. Fortune turns her wheel: the imprisonment in Athens of Theban friends and cousins, Arcite and Palamon: their rivalry over the Queen’s sister, Emily; Arcite’s release and exile to Thebes.

PART II: Conflicts

1. Arcite returns to Athens and, disguised as Philostrate, becomes Theseus’s servant.
2. Palamon escapes after seven years’ imprisonment.
3. Fortune turns her wheel again: the cousins meet outside Athens and plan to fight.
4. Battle begins, but Theseus intervenes and arranges a tournament in a year’s time, to settle whether Arcite or Palamon will wed Emily.

PART III: Preparations for Battle

1. Theseus builds the battle stadium, including temples to Venus, Mars and Diana
2. Palamon, aided by Lycurgus, King of Thrace, and Arcite, aided by the Indian king, Emetrius, arrive, each with a company of a hundred knights.
3. Early on the day appointed for battle, Palamon sacrifices to Venus, who grants his prayer for triumph in love. Emily prays to Diana, who denies her prayer for a life of chastity untroubled by childbirth. Arcite sacrifices to Mars, who grants his prayer for victory in war.
4. The old god Saturn, lord of human miseries, promises to resolve the conflict between Venus and Mars.

PART IV: The Tale’s Resolution

1. After Theseus sets the rules of combat, the two forces meet in battle
2. Lycurgus captures Palamon; Arcite is proclaimed the victor and the winner of Emily, but at the moment of triumph, a Fury sent by Pluto at Saturn’s behest startles his horse; Arcite is hurt, but it is believed not fatally. After a feast the courtly company disperses home.
3. Arcite dies in Emily’s arms, lamenting his lost love, but bequeathing Emily to Palamon.
4. Arcite’s funeral rites; years of mourning and sad reflection follow.
5. After a speech which seeks to reconcile his listeners with the divine ordering of human life, Theseus advises Emily and Palamon to marry, and thereby share in “the chain of love” that binds the universe.

The Knight’s Tale: Themes

1. Human Justice and Judgment: Theseus as Philosopher King

This theme centres on the actions and character of Theseus, who is often in the position of judge, and who approximates to Plato’s philosopher king. Theseus behaves chivalrously and mercifully by responding to the pleas of the Theban women to be allowed to bury their husbands’ bodies. He defeats the tyrant Creon in fair, knightly battle. Yet is his decision to imprison Arcite and Palamon perpetually, without hope of ransom, just, or is it merely expedient? How far can this decision be justified as a wise political decision, ensuring the safety of Athens?

In Part II, when Theseus finds Palamon and Arcite fighting, at first, in his anger at Arcite’s deception and Palamon’s escape, he decrees death, but again responds to women’s pleas, in this case those of Queen Hippolyta and Emily. With the rule of reason restored, Theseus pardons the lovers after their undertaking never to attack him or his lands, and sets up a battle to resolve the love issue: “And God in wisdom deal my soul its due/As I shall prove an even judge and true” (p. 53).

Finally, following the tragedy of Arcite’s death, Theseus advocates a philosophy of acceptance, of making the best of misfortune, and of moving on. Theseus’s decisions shape the Tale, and the Knight seems to see him as a model for a chivalrous and just ruler, a man in many respects like himself.

    2.  War

Warfare in the Middle Ages was as tragic, treacherous and ugly as warfare has always been throughout history. The second estate of nobles and gentry, whose main duty in life was to fight, lightened the burden by introducing to warfare elements of chivalric idealism (noble conduct) and sport (jousting, tournaments or practice battles). However these elements were more prominent in poetry, story and the visual arts like painting and manuscript illumination than they were in reality. For a work often categorised as a chivalric romance, The Knight’s Tale is honest about the horrors of war. It seems to reflect the Knight’s disillusionment as a seasoned warrior who has survived many battles.

The Tale opens with the horrors of war, seen in the suffering of the Theban widows; King Creon’s desecration of his enemies’ bodies; the pillagers (looters) who ransack the dead and wounded Thebans defeated by Theseus; and the huge pile of bodies that conceals the still-living Palamon and Arcite. When these cousins and former sworn brothers fight in Part II, the Knight uses similes of lion and tiger—“They fought till they were ankle-deep in blood” (p. 47).

The splendour of chivalric ritual and an optimistic sporting tone—two devices that medieval knights used to soften warfare—emerge for the first time in the descriptions of the beautiful trappings and armour of Palamon’s and Arcite’s fighters, as they come together in Part III, before the final battle. Even here, however, the animal comparisons (gryphon and lion) and the hounds, eagles, lions and leopards that accompany the warring teams suggest the sub-human and ferocious nature of war. In addition, the repeated references to gold in the descriptions of the fighters’ accoutrements recall the exposure in the Prologue of gold’s corrupting power.

However, The Knight’s Tale’s recoiling from war’s horrors is most obvious in its many references to Mars, the god of war. Chief of these is the description of Mars’ iron temple (pp. 56-57), in which personification and scenes of slaughter, rape and madness painted on the walls link war with Dread, stealthy murder, suicide, Death, Mischance and Conquest. The prominence given to Mischance (Accident) is significant when we remember Arcite’s fate. At the foot of Mars’ grim statue stands a wolf; “he had a man to eat.” Clues and suggestions in the later descriptions of Lycurgus and Emetrius transform them into embodiments of the god of war. What other references to Mars can you find in The Knight’s Tale?

3.  Love

In The Knight’s Tale Arcite and Palamon are lovers according to the code of amour courtois already described. In addition, the Tale refers to the “love debates” (demandes d’amour) which entertained courts in France during the twelfth century. The question that the Knight poses to his listeners at the end of Part I typifies the issues posed in such debates: “You lovers, here’s a question I would offer,/ Arcite or Palamon, which had most to suffer?…” (p. 39).

However, The Knight’s Tale deepens the conventions of courtly love so as to express a tragic theme. The Knight describes Palamon’s and Arcite’s torturing love for Emily at the beginning in terms of stabbing, striking and wounding (pp. 32-33). This love instantly overturns the cousins’ deep friendship as “sworn brothers.” Their friendship is remade only when the dying Arcite entrusts Emily to Palamon, after he knows he has lost her himself.

The Knight sums up the compulsive power of human love in his description of the victims at the temple of Venus—“that goddess who enslaves the earth” (p. 55).

Chaucer further draws on the conventions of courtly love, as well as on the even older oral and literary traditions linking springtime (reverdie) with new love, in his portrayal of Emily. Simply by walking in the garden one early morning in May (p. 31), Emily unknowingly inspires Palamon’s and Arcite’s agonising, undying love. Under courtly love conventions, the lady is beautiful, chaste and cruel. Chaucer, however, challenges this tradition by emphasising Emily’s compassionate nature. When, after seven years, she at last discovers Palamon’s and Arcite’s love for her, she and her sister Hippolyta plead with Theseus to spare the cousins’ lives (p. 50).

Chaucer further departs from courtly convention, which usually views courtly ladies’ beauty from the lover’s outside perspective, without reference to their inner lives, by revealing Emily’s true feelings about marriage. This occurs in Part III, when she prays to Diana, goddess of chastity, that she may “walk the woodlands wild,/And not … be a wife or be with child.” Emily also prays wisely for amity between Arcite and Palamon, but if she must marry one of them, she prays that her husband will be “him that shall desire me most” (p. 65). When Arcite dies, Emily joins in the universal mourning.

  4.  Human Suffering: How Caused?

The Knight’s Tale’s theme of human justice and judgment deepens into a questioning of divine or universal justice and judgment. The Knight is uncompromising in revealing the cruel torments suffered by innocent humans. Suffering is embodied in image after verbal image—the Theban widows, the pile of Theban bodies produced by Creon’s defeat, the perpetual imprisonment imposed on Palamon and Arcite, their torment at being away from Emily, their battles, and finally, Arcite’s fall at the moment of his triumph. Aegeus, Theseus’s father, sums up the theme of suffering by referring to the external context in which the Knight is telling his tale: “This world is but a thoroughfare of woe/ And we are pilgrims passing to and fro” (p. 70). The fearsome tower imprisoning Arcite and Palamon further embodies the theme of suffering. It reappears in Theseus’s metaphor, when he points out that in death Arcite now is “free,/ Of the foul prison of this life” (p. 85).

The Knight’s depiction of the Roman gods reinforces his exploration of undeserved suffering. The Knight’s Tale in fact embodies the despairing cry of the blinded Gloucester in Shakespeare’s King Lear: “As flies to the wanton boys are we to the gods—they kill us for their sport!” By depicting Venus and Mars as cruel gods who make arbitrary decisions on the basis of sacrifices like Arcite’s offering of his hair, The Knight’s Tale suggests that both love and war are tormenting of their very nature. (You may remember that Socrates refutes this same view of the gods, as indifferent to justice and subject to bribery, which is found in Homer.) Diana, huntress and goddess of chastity and child-birth, is also seen as cruel to humans. The Knight recalls how Diana arbitrarily punished her nymph Callisto, after Jupiter (Zeus) had taken Callisto’s virginity, by metamorphosing her into a bear. He also remembers how Diana changed Actaeon into a stag, so that he was torn to pieces by his hunting hounds after he had chanced upon Diana bathing naked (p. 58). In her temple Diana’s statue stands above that of a woman in perpetual child-birth, calling piteously for aid (p. 59).

The Roman gods are innately heartless; and they also torment humans by enigmatic or deceptive signs. For example, Mercury promises Arcite in a dream that if he returns to Athens, “There shall be an end to woe” (p. 40)—a promise that is literally true, but not in the sense that Arcite is led to understand it—death is the promised end to Arcite’s woe. Later, Mars’ promise of “Victory” is equally deceptive, since Arcite’s victory is made bitter by his death by accident. Finally, Diana’s fire signs too are true but indecipherable. Palamon’s fire flickers but rekindles—he loses the battle but wins Emily; Arcite’s goes out, and “from the faggot’s tip there ran a flood/Of many drops that had the look of blood” (65). Arcite wins the battle but loses Emily.

In addition, The Knight’s Tale often refers to the goddess Fortune, e.g., the Theban women: “Fortune and her treacherous wheel/ That suffers no estate on earth to feel/ Secure…” (p. 28). Images of Fortune (Latin Fortuna) and her inexorably turning wheel pervade medieval painting and literature. Fortune was the goddess understood to rule life beneath the moon, the changing realm of earth; her wheel brought fulfilment and inevitable downfall to all.

Finally, the god who most embodies human misery and the seemingly meaningless unpredictability of life is the grandfather god, Saturn. Saturn boasts of his malevolent acts against humanity, including imprisonment, rebellion, accident, murder, sickness, plague and treachery (pp. 68-69). Saturn’s enormous malignant power manifests at last in the tragic accident that resolves the conflicts between both gods—Mars and Venus—and men—Arcite and Palamon. In The Knight’s Tale Saturn is central both to plot and theme.

The Tale nevertheless concludes with Theseus’s attempt to relativise human suffering by evoking the standard medieval cosmology of the concentric spheres. Theseus thereby seeks to contain human agony and the tormenting classical gods within an Aristotelian universe governed by the outermost sphere of the First Mover, and bound together in “that fairest chain of love” (p. 83). The Mover’s decree and foreknowledge, argues Theseus, make decline and death inevitable for everything and for all people in “this wretched world.” Rebellion against the divine decree can only be a foolish rejection of “what is.” Following tragedy, humans are left with the single option of praising Jupiter, “the Cause of all,” for his grace, and of moving forward to embrace the temporary bliss that is on offer. For Theseus this means the wedding of Palamon and Emily. Theseus’s logic is not entirely convincing, and the consolation that he offers is limited. Furthermore, while we concur with the Knight’s final blessing on the wedded pair, praying that they may share in the love through which God harmonises the universe, we may also feel that a shadow of grief hangs over the Knight’s closing assertion, that Palamon espoused Emily “with every bliss and melody” (p. 86).

III The Miller’s Tale

How the Miller Comes to Tell His Tale

The pilgrims respond to The Knight’s Tale with gratitude and reverence, calling it “noble.” The Host invites the high-ranking Monk to tell the next tale, but the drunken Miller intervenes, claiming that he’ll tell another “noble” story to requite the Knight. When the Miller mentions that his tale is about an old carpenter, his wife and a student, Oswald the Reeve is offended, because he knows what the story is likely to be about, and he himself is a carpenter. Coming after The Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, another brilliant farce, is Oswald’s revenge: it deals with a pair of students who seduce the wife and daughter of a cheating miller.

Genre: Fabliau

The Miller’s Tale is one of the best surviving examples of the medieval French and Italian genre of fabliau (plural fabliaux), defined as un conte à rire en vers, or a comic tale in verse. The Decameron, a collection of tales by the Italian poet Boccaccio which provided Chaucer with a structural model for The Canterbury Tales, likewise contains fabliaux. Fabliau plots focus on the lower part of the body, especially excretion, farting and illicit or adulterous sex. They often express the anti-feminism (misogyny, or hatred and contempt for women) that was entrenched in medieval culture. The Miller’s Tale is like other fabliaux, except perhaps in its ambivalent acceptance of, and even implied admiration for, the carpenter’s young wife, Alison.

Love triangles, but not love or empathy, abound in fabliaux. However, the love triangle in The Miller’s Tale can also be understood as the Miller’s attempt to copy and requite The Knight’s Tale. In some respects it is a parody (burlesque or comic copy) of The Knight’s Tale. Chaucer thereby follows a pattern sometimes found in medieval drama, by juxtaposing the noble or sacred with the profane. In addition to John, her old carpenter husband, Alison is like Emily in having two suitors. She favours hende Nicholas, a student who is “handy” or “gallant” (Coghill) in more ways than one (p. 89). Alison’s other suitor is Absalon, a dandified parish clerk. Ian Donaldson’s essay, “Idiom of Popular Poetry in The Miller’s Tale” in his book, Speaking of Chaucer (London: Athlone, 1969, pp. 12-29) considers how Chaucer plays with the conventions of both popular lyrics and courtly love poetry in his descriptions of Alison and her suitors.

The “Marriage Debate” in The Canterbury Tales

The Miller’s Tale is also noteworthy because it opens the so-called marriage debate in The Canterbury Tales. (We might question, however, whether in fact this debate doesn’t begin with The Knight’s Tale’s exploration of Emily’s reluctance to marry, and in its account, shadowed by grief, of her wedding to Palamon.) At any rate, as well as The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer’s tales about marriage certainly include The Nun’s Priest’s Tale and The Merchant’s Tale–see further lectures on this site. The tales of the marriage debate focus on sovereignty—whether the husband or the wife or neither should rule—but they also ask other questions, such as: Should old men marry young women? Can wives ever be trusted? Are they ever faithful? What makes for a wise choice of spouse? How happy are married couples likely to be? and finally, Is marriage ever a good idea?

Brilliance of The Miller’s Tale as Comedy and Farce

In addition to the subtle humour of Chaucer’s poetic language—a feature difficult to demonstrate from a translation—The Miller’s Tale derives its comic brilliance from two features: economy and appropriateness in characterisation and timing in the plot.

Characterisation

Virtually everything that the Miller tells us about his characters supports the unfolding of the comic plot: characterisation ensures that fitting punishments befall the men in the Tale, but the beautiful, lively Alison escapes unscathed.

The student-lodger Nicholas is sexually attractive—a real stud. The state of his heart is irrelevant to the Tale, but the Miller invites us to admire Nicholas’s imagination and acting ability in implementing his fantastic plot for bringing himself and Alison together. He emphasises Nicholas’s sweet-smelling body, his pleasant singing to the harp, and his interest in astrology, indicated by the astrolabe (medieval prototype for the sextant) that he keeps in his room. In his eagerness to go to bed with Alison, Nicholas deploys his creative intelligence as a seducer and trickster. In the end he overreaches himself, and receives a poetically just and painful punishment.

The Miller has no sympathy for the husband, John, who in the story stands for the Miller’s enemy, the Reeve: at his age, John should have had more sense than to marry an eighteen-year-old wife. As a jealous husband who keeps Alison “narwe in cage,” John is cruel and comically absurd. The Tale’s farcical dénouement imposes a punishment on John of a broken arm and ridicule; his neighbours in Oxford are convinced that he’s mad.

The description of Alison (pp. 90-91) is a comic masterpiece. The Miller revels in her sexiness, comparing her with skittish young animals that have soft or smooth fur: weasel, wether, kid, calf, colt. He also describes her elaborate dress and grooming. The description is naively enthusiastic—even Alison’s plucked eyebrows are “blissful”—but some features bring the description down to earth. For example, in the original (as opposed to Coghill’s translation) the word “wench” is a shattering anticlimax: “There nys no man so wys that koude thenche/ So gay a popelote or swich a wenche” (lines 3253-54).

Another comic masterpiece is the Miller’s description of Absalon (p. 92), who is a parody (i.e. a send-up or distorted comic imitation) of courtly lovers like Palamon and Arcite. Whereas, as we have seen in The Knight’s Tale, true lovers suffer for years, longing for fulfillment, Absalon seeks immediate sexual gratification from any young woman who crosses his path. Fancying himself as a courtly lover, he dresses and acts the part, and croons love-songs by night in a falsetto voice under Alison’s window. The Miller’s (Chaucer’s?) reminders of Absalon’s middle-class status nevertheless undermine his aspirations to courtliness, which, as we have seen, implies gentility or noble rank. Absalon’s meticulousness in dress and grooming, his fastidiousness, and especially his squeamishness about farting, are the foundation of the unfolding comic plot. The Miller elaborates these features by describing Absalon’s preparations for a kiss from Alison—his chewing of liquorice to sweeten his breath, his singing at her window, “As any lambkin hungering for the teat.” After Absalon’s misdirected kiss, Alison’s famous giggle, “Teehee!” crowns the joke.

The Plot

Driven by John’s possessive jealousy, Nicholas’ imaginative plotting and Absalon’s vanity, The Miller’s Tale plot builds into an ever-more fantastic creation through a series of deceptions. By convincing John that a second Noah’s flood is imminent, Nicholas induces the deceived husband to spend the night in a tub suspended up under the roof. At the very moment when, stricken on the bottom by Absalon’s hot coulter (plough share), Nicholas cries out in anguish for “Water!”, the plot edifice literally collapses, as John (whom the reader has forgotten by now) cuts the ropes that secure his tub to the rafters and drops to the floor. With wondrous timing, the multiple complications instantaneously unravel, in a shattering demonstration of cause and effect.

Conclusion

I hope that this survey has introduced you to some of the imaginative wealth of Chaucer’s Prologue, The Knight’s Tale and The Miller’s Tale. I hope that you will have realised that the medieval people of Chaucer’s imagination are not so very different from people today—that they have a similar concern with personal and cosmic justice; that they suffer tragedy and succumb to love and lust. I hope that Chaucer’s thoughts about ethics, war, suffering, God, marriage and sex will seem interesting enough for you to want to explore his writings further for yourselves. Above all, I hope that you will have understood that the impulse behind The Canterbury Tales is a delight in story-telling for its own sake.