The Miller’s Prologue & Tale
The Prologue
The Prologue to The Miller’s Tale is the first prologue betweentales[1].
It shows that many ‘prologues’ also function as epilogues.
They are in fact linking devices[2]
- both signing off[3] the preceding[4] tale and introducing the next
- in the process they often serve to indicate the relationship between the two.
The Miller forces his tale on the pilgrims to answer the Knight’s.
When the Reeve replies to the Miller’s jibe[5] against carpenters with the third tale, a dialectical, non-hierarchical order of story-telling has been established.
The Miller promises to quyte (= answer) The Knight’s Tale
- just as[6]Absolon promises to quyte (= revenge) the fart[7].
But, why does the Miller feel the need to?
- The Knight’s Tale did not insult millers.
It is possible that the drunken Miller is the only pilgrim to realize that the ‘Knight’ is a mercenary telling a tale that is unsuitable[8] for his status
- so the Miller answers with a parody of The Knight’s Tale.
How Does the Miller Parody the Knight’s Tale
- A love triangle of two noblemen’s courtly love for an unattainable lady, is replaced by two clerks attempts[9] to seduce an accessible wife.
- The young woman in each is controlled by an older man.
- The difference between the clerks is that one is inside the house and the other is outside. For part of The Knight’s Tale, Palamon is inside (in prison), while Arcite is outside (in exile).
- Nicholas is much more a ‘man of action’ than either knight, those that should be their defining characteristic.
- The climactic battle in a tournament is replaced by a slapstick contest of flatulence and hot pokers. Notice the epic language used to describe it.
- The downfall of the conquering hero in his moment of triumph (a fatal downfall presented as tragedy for Arcite) is comically repeated in Nicholas’s branding with the coulter[10].
- The Knight’s tendency to move from narration into moralizing and comment is briefly copied by the Miller at lines 273 ff. and 503 to 505 (and ironically at lines 320 and 342).
Chaucer’s unique blend of low-brow[11]subject matter[12] and courtly style can be read[13] as a satire on literature in general and more specifically on romance with its strict rules about the nature of love.
A New Question
The Miller introduces the question of whether[14] it is possible to find a good woman and the role of the wife in a marriage.
The theme will be taken up[15] later by:
- The Wife of Bath’s Tale
- The Clerk’s Tale
- The Merchant’s Tale
- The Franklin’s Tale
- The Tale of Melibee (the Narrator’s second attempt)
The Miller argues that for every bad woman there are 1000 good ones
-provided[16] you don’t pry[17] too deeply into their private lives!
The idea of not prying too deeply is echoed in the Tale’s focus on “God’s privitee”.
EXAM TIP: any comparison between The Miller’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Taleis likely to[18] revolve around this question.
The Tale
The story starts in a very realistic Oxford that the Miller could indeed[19] know.
Yet it clearly contains elements of fabliau
- realism and fantasy are disconcertingly[20] juxtaposed.
Fabliaux were typically more realistic than romances
- and usually subverted the ideals of courtly literature.
Fabliaux, of which about 150 have survived, were typically about ridiculing
- the impiety of the clergy,
- the stupidity of cuckolded older husbands married to young wives
- the insatiable sexual appetite of women
- a decidedly un-courteous character trying to adopt stereotypically courteous manners.
It is the first of 5 fabliaux in The Canterbury Tales.
The other 4 are:
- the Reeve’s
- the Cook’s
- the Summoner’s and
- the Shipman’s
John the Carpenter is mentioned as regularly leaving the house
- why don’t Nicholas and Alison just[21] sleep together when he was out?
The answer can only be because of the sheer[22] pleasure in executing such a complex plot[23].
The Tale jumps disconcertingly between comedy and pathos.
- it becomes very difficult to decide what is light-hearted[24] fun and what is meaningful and moral.
The Tale can be seen as the deliberate confusion of eschatology[25] with scatology[26].
Contrastsbetween the Miller’s and the Knight’s Tales
- this is the contemporary, everyday world (not far away and/or long ago)
- the characters are bourgeois, peasants and clerks (not aristocrats)
- As a fabliau,The Miller’s Tale is fast-moving and all the action takes place over a couple of days (by contrast the pace of The Knight’s Tale was sedate and the action takes places over many years).
- it is concerned with[27]basic human functions: sex, excretion, urination, flatulence (not ideals and idealized love)
- it starts with marriage and focuses on physical love/sex (The KT sublimates love)
- it is concerned with cunning[28] and folly[29] (not virtue and evil)
- it is not interested in the meaning of life (whereas[30]The KTis constantly seeking[31] the providential ordering of the universe)
- it focuses on the folly[32] of the age (whereas[33]The KTcelebrates the wisdom of the age)
- it opposed all pretensions to authority
- it contains an element of burlesque or parody of courtly values or language
- it is funny and expresses carnal irreverence (not courtly politeness[34])
- it is non-sententious (not highly moral)
- the language is largely[35]Germanic with a much higher incidence short and/or monosyllabic words and of alliterating pairs (morne milk, stille as stoon, wilde and wood, clepe ne crye.
Lines are short and syntactically simple, so the narrative pace is fast.
There are remarkably[36]few abstract nouns.
- Whereas[37] in The Knight’s Tale the two protagonists are imprisoned both literally and by love, in The Miller’s Tale Alison is ‘caged’, married to a much older husband.
The Miller
The miller plays the bagpipes[38]
- this instrument was associated with drunken village revelries
- the Devil was also sometimes illustrated playing the bagpipes.
His wide mouth and nostrils suggest lechery and gluttony.
- The comparison of his mouth to a furnace suggests a hellmouth in a Morality Play.
His red hair indicates a choleric temper (governed by the planet Mars).
Nicholas
In miracle plays, St. Nicholas was the mysterious guest who thwarted[39] the evil intentions of the host and returned good for evil.
- the Miller’s Nicholas inverts these values.
‘Hende’ is applied to Nicholas 11 time
- becoming the equivalent of a heroic fixed epithet.
However, its sense varies from the archaic ‘noble’, ‘courteous’ to the more suggestive ‘handy’, ‘good with his hands’.
- compare modern ‘handsome’ and ‘handy’.
Nicholas is also feminized by the text (he is as “meek[40] as a maid[41]” and as “sweet as liquorice”
- he is like a mayden meke for to see (94) and
- as sweete as is the roote / Of lycorys (98-99).
In the end he is attacked with a poker in the arse
- this is a violent image of being sodomized.
Earlier in the same century King Edward II was murdered in 1327 supposedly using a red-hot[42] poker inserted anally.[43]
Predicting the Weather
Nicholas presents himself as a weather forecaster[44]
- it is therefore[45] amusingly appropriate that his farts[46] sound like thunder.
Nicholas is able to hoodwink[47] his host because he can supposedly predict the weather.
This reflects contemporary interests.
- Across Europe university scholars tried to predict the weather using astrology during the Middle Ages.
- From 1347-55 William Merle, a clergyman, kept the world’s first weather diary. He proved that “farmers’ rules” (i.e. weather[48] folklore) was more accurate[49] than the universities’ forecasts[50].
- Even so, the idea that the weather could be predicted was still being ridiculed by many until the 1850s.
Predicting the Future
The Tale contains a thematic discussion of[51] the relative merits of accepting one’s God-given lot[52] in life as against succumbing to the temptation of trying to predict the future.
- remember that almost all the Pilgrims resist the conformity expected by mediaeval society.
Nicholas not only tries to predict the future but he also uses his reputation as an astrologer to manufacture this own future.
- in the end, of course, this brings about his own downfall[53].
John initially embraces his own ignorance of God’s schemes[54]
- He tells a tale of the man who by looking too much at the stars falls into a pit[55] (ll. 351-52).
- however, he converts to the advantages of prediction when Nicholas promises to save his life.
So, coupled with the Miller’s argument that husbands are happy if they don’t pry into their wives’ ‘private’ lives,
- The Miller’s Prologueand Tale seem to be arguing that ignorance is bliss[56].
Absolon, Absolon!
The rich but silly Absolon also serves as a foil[57] to the crafty[58] but poor Nicholas.
- he is better at appearing refined – and he tries harder – than John, but it is a provincial refinement.
Absolon acts like a courtly lover towards a common woman who is characterized by animal instincts.
- he has been schooled in the arts of courtly love but inappropriately becomes lovesick over a woman who is wholly un-courteous.
- he is effeminate in a robustly plebeian story.
His squeamishness about farting[59] is more appropriate to a prioress.
- as an incense-swinger he is used to sweet smells.
He carries out most of his wooing through intermediaries.
- This is in keeping with the tradition of fine amour
but it is also a convenient cover for his disinclination to get physical with Alison.
- Alison prefers the physical advances of Nicholas.
Chaucer changes the story so that it is Alison – not one of her lovers – who receives the misdirected kiss.
- Notice that in courtly love the kiss was the moment of spiritual exaltation.
Absolon abhors physical contact with her.
While Nicholas uses the language of romance for his own nefarious purposes,
- Absalon lives the lifestyle of the romantic hero, and is as imprisoned by it as the Palamon and Arcite.
Nicholas feigns[60] madness to achieve his sexual objectives
- Absalon (and Arcite) suffer the similar real symptoms (those of lovesickness: insomnia, lack of appetite, perspiration, etc.).
Absolon’s Transformation
If there is any moral argument to the tale,
- it centres on shocking Absolon back to his senses.
Notice Absolon’s devilish transformation at the end of the tale
- into a blackened devil carrying a flaming[61] iron.
- his actions provoke ‘the fall’.
Something interesting happens at the end of The Miller’s Tale:
- Absolon, upset[62] over Alison’s crude prank[63] and determined to ‘quyte’ it, begins to view himself in competition with her, rather than[64] with Nicholas.
This argument is strengthened is we see Absolon’s poker attack as symbolic buggery[65] towards (‘feminized’) Nicholas.
This shifting focus of rivalry also leads to[66] a lost object of affection:
- when Alison is a rival, she can no longer be a ‘prize’.
John
John is nouveau riche and ignorant.
The fact that John is arguably the most severely punished in the story suggests Chaucer’s censorship of the senex amans (= old man who marries a ‘trophy wife’).
- Chaucer argues (l. 120) that a man should wedde his similitude (i.e. marry a woman of similar age and class).
Nicholas’s two tricks converge: his rear end is on fire, so he wants water, but he has told the carpenter that there is going to be a massive flood, so the carpenter takes the cry for water as a warning.
- Notice that Nicholas planned to cuckold John, not to hurt him.
It is John’s extreme gullibility[67] that leads to[68] his broken arm, the destruction of his home and his public humiliation.
Alisons
Alison is constantly compared to animals
- this suggests that she is incapable of controlling her lust[69] and so is less to blame[70] for her actions than the male[71] characters.
- moreover, she tends to be compared to prey animals – she is the quarry[72]rather than[73] the perpetrator.
In The Knight’s Tale we are told that Emily sings like an angel
- by contrast, Alison sings like a swallow[74].
Notice how the mechanics of the Tale itself hinge on[75]
- a series of non-verbal sounds (Absolon’s twice knocking at the window)
- bodily noises (e.g. farts) and
- one-word exclamations (Alison’s cry of “Tehee!”, Nicholas’ cry of “Water!”).
Notice that the wife – who goes unpunished (and is the only protagonist not to suffer a wound of some sort) – is called Alison.
Alison – the Wife of Bath – also finds her most congenial partner in the form of an Oxford student.
Moreover, in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue Jankin has lodgings with yet another Alison, an intimate friend of the Wife of Bath.
So, Alison can be viewed as ‘everywoman’.
However, Chaucer also suggests that women are the great equalizers
- both the learned clerks and the stupid carpenter make fools of themselves over the same woman.
The Descriptio Personae
Alison is described physically from head-to-toe in the way recommended in Classical and mediaeval manuals of rhetorical style.
- for example, the description of the beautiful girl in the first elegy by Maximian (6th Century. A friend of Boethius who also wrote about senex amans).
However, a wench[76] like Alison is not a fitting subject for such a descriptio
- indeed[77], she is described in comparison to a swallow[78], a kid goat[79], a calf[80] and a colt[81], as well as to several types of thirst-quenching drinks.
In fact, Alison is not described literally from head to toe
- Our first physical view of Alison is the apron – or ceynt – that hangs below her waist.
From there the get a detailed description of various items of clothing that she wears on her loins[82] and backside[83].
The narrator briefly describes her face, then goes back down to her waist with a description of her girdle[84].
Incidentally, the descriptio evolved into the blazon of Renaissance poetry (about which, much more in December).
Wordplay
The most famous moment of wordplay is:
As clerkes ben ful subtile and full queynte (= clever, cunning)
And prively he caughte hire by the queynte (= cunt)
[For clerks are very subtle and very clever;
And intimately he caught her by her crotch[85],]
- There was repeated punning on the same word in relation to Emily (The Knight’s Tale, ll. 1463-78)
Another pun is when we are told that Nicholas is as sweet as the root of lycorys (= liquorice[86]) – a homophone of likerous (= lascivious, lecherous)
Sources[87]
Based on a basic fabliau model about a love triangle.
10 analogous tales have survived in German, Italian, Flemish and English.
Probably the primary source was the Flemish fabliauDits van Heilan van Beersele.
- it contains arse-kissing, a fake flood, limbs being broken and
- a prostitute who is visited by three lovers: a miller, a priest and a smith[88].
Chaucer reduces the number of lovers to two, turning[89] the third into the husband;
- The miller becomes the narrator and the smith becomes a minor character.
Fabliaux were told by aristocrats to ridicule their social inferiors.
The miller is not one of these noblemen, indeed he has stepped straight out of[90] a fabliau himself.
- in fact, in that the Tale ridicules courtly values, Chaucer has inverted the genre.
The two rival lovers are now two sorts[91] of clerk
- educated commoners were a threat[92] to aristocratic control and so were to be despised[93] and ridiculed.
There are also elements of meta-literature here.
The Miller’s Tale is not unique in drawing amusement from literal arse-kissing
- The French fabliau De Bérangier au lonc cul also focuses on it as an act of humiliation.
Blasphemy
Religion in The Miller’s Tale is something characters use and abuse in order to get what they want.
- for instance[94], attempting to[95] see the future was a type of hubris, a sin[96] against God.
Pretending to see[97] God’s plan for sexual gain was probably even worse.
Absolon forgoes[98] piety for attention when he takes a role in the local miracle play in hopes of attracting Alison.
Nicholas uses the Biblical story of Noah and the flood (echoing the Noah’s flood scene of Mystery Plays), and a false piety, to set John up[99] so that he can have sex with Alison undisturbed.
- In the medieval view, God caused Noah’s flood because men had become carnal. Therefore, to use the flood to commit adultery is ironic.
- The carpenter’s guild was responsible for the Noah scenes.
- Nicholas is also taking advantage of his host’s ignorance: at Genesis 9:11 God promises that there will be no second flood.
(A Lollard would have known this!)
There’s the whole obscene religious allegory and symbolism in the story:
the huge[100]Goddes pryvetee, or genitals, John hangs[101] from his roof.
(a kneading trough is an elongated oval ended thing, a tub and a kymelyn (= brewer’s tub) are two round things – together hanging[102] from the roof they would clearly suggest giant male genitalia.)
Notice the blasphemous references to the cuckolded carpenter (St. Joseph).
The Miller says he will tell
...“a legende and a lyf
Bothe of a carpenter and of his wyf”
- This is a reference to the story of Joseph and Mary.
‘Legends and lives’ were the stuff of Miracle Plays about the saints.
John’s name links him to St. John the Divine, who described the Apocalypse.
- John’s physical fall could be taken to echo the Fall of Man.
Madness
Nicholas pretends to be mad to fool John.
John is taken to be mad at the end of the story, which impedes him explaining how he has been tricked[103].
Madness is not a reality but a weapon[104] used by the clever and the powerful against the stupid and the vulnerable.
Notice how Chaucer emphasizes the problematic of truth in literature:
- a fictional Narrator report on (but disowns) the words of a drunken Miller, who is reporting the words of his characters.
Bibliography
- The Miller’s Prologue and Tale by Pamela M. King [York Notes Advanced, 1988]
- The Canterbury Tales by Helen Cooper [Oxford Guide to Chaucer, 1989]
- Medieval Literature by Carole Maddern [York Notes Companions, 2010]
- Companion to British Poetry before 1600 by Michelle M. Sauer [Facts on File, 2008]
Internet