The Miller Parodies of the Knight's Tale
The miller parodies the Knight’s Tale in several different ways. He
cleverly achieves this through his description of the characters, the
style in which the story is told and the way in which the characters
conduct themselves in the tale.
The style in which the miller begins his tale is similar to the style
in which the Knight begins his tale. The style used is fairy tale
like, as the miller starts his story with-‘once upon a time.’ The
miller did this deliberately to mock and parody the Knight’s Tale.
The Knight’s scrupulous idealism presents a stark contrast to the
miller’s coarse parody of idealistic and romantic valour. Similarly
framed by a love triangle, the miller employs the same structure as
the Knight. The Knight’s tale involves Arcite and Palamon who are
cousins who both fall in love with Emily. Likewise, the miller’s tale
involves a love triangle which is between Alison, Nicholas who is an
astrology student and Absolon who is a parish clerk.
The suitors in the two tales articulate their love
characteristically. Arcite pines away in prison for Emily, ‘before me,
sorweful, wrecched creature, out of this prisoun help that we may
scapen and if so be my destynee be shapen by eterne word to dyen
inprisoun.’ This suggests that he would rather die than not be near
Emily. Similarly, Nick speaks like a courtly lover when he woos
Alison. He states ‘lemman, love me al atones, or I wol dyen, also God
me save!’ He is saying that Alison must love him immediately or else
he will die. Here, the miller is mocking the courtly love procedure.
Unlike Arcite and Palamon who woo Emily over a...
... middle of paper ...
... simile which is clearly chosen to stress
her sexual attractiveness.
However, Emily is portrayed as meek, fresh, pure and gentle. She is
fairer than the ‘lylie upon his stalke grene’ and ‘fressher than the
may with floures newe.’ This accentuates her purity and innocnece.
Equally, Alison is compared to a flower-‘primerole.’ Primrose is a
flower that ripens early in Spring. This connote that Alison is fully
developed yet of a young age.
Alison is clothed in silk, which is an expensive material that is not
commonly worn by carpenter’s wives. Silk was used for the embroidery
on Alison’s smock, headband and for the tassels on her purse. These
references to the richest and smoothest materials hint at the
attractive body underneath.
All in all, the miller is very successful in parodying the Knight’s
tale.
The Miller tells his tale momentarily to amuse and and embarrass (the Reeve and his own cameo appearance), while the Knight tells a story strong on "sentence" or meaning. The two different motives reveal the fundamental differences between the two men: the noble Knight can still believe in a higher beautiful world, while the Miller cannot accept it ever existed.
“I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” ( Tragedy and the Common Man). Arthur Miller follows his Millerian conventions of tragedy in the writing of The Crucible. Often literature uses tragedy to display a depressing theme represented by the tragic hero.
In 1953, Arthur Miller wrote his famous play The Crucible, in response to a fear of Communism that had developed in the United States during that decade. The "Red Scare", as it was later called by historians was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose paranoia of a communist takeover spread through the nation like a wildfire. Men and women alike fell victim to McCarthy's pointed finger and as a result of this hysteria, were mostly deported from the country, their careers and lives ruined.
Context: This part of the text is included at the beginning of the drama, telling the audience about Salem and its people. The author explains how a theocracy would lead to a tragedy like the Salem witch-hunts. This is the initial setting and is based on the principle that some people should be included and some excluded from society, according to their religious beliefs and their actions. This is basically the idea that religious passion, taken to extremes, results in tragedy. Miller is saying that even today extremes end up bad- communism, like strict puritans, was restrictive and extreme. It only made people suffer.
Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" should be tragic, because a lot of horrible things happen to the characters. The carpenter's wife is disloyal to him, sleeping with others and making fun of him with Nicholas. Also, he is depicted as a fool. However, readers get a humorous feeling from the story, rather than feeling sorry for the carpenter's unfair life. Chaucer makes the whole story come across as comic rather than tragic. This humor is created by the Miller's narration, the use of irony, the cartoon-like characters, and the twists of plot. These elements combine to produce an emotional distance which enhances the comic effect.
Forbes, Shannon. "'To Alisoun Now Wol I Tellen Al My Love-Longing': Chaucer's Treatment of the Courtly Love Discourse in the Miller's Tale." Women's Studies 36.1 (2007): 1-14. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 May 2013
“He is a storyteller, a man with a marvelous memory, a simple man with a capacity for wonder, concerned with people and ideas” (The Paris Review). He is Arthur Miller. Born on October 17, 1915, Miller entered the world in Harlem, New York City. At age nineteen Miller wrote his first play. His passion for playwrights led him into the theater world inevitably leading him to meeting and marrying his second wife, Marilyn Monroe. Miller wrote the play, The Crucible, as an allegory of McCarthyism. Unlike most of his plays, The Crucible, was a dramatized historical play. In a interview, Miller stated that, with this play he “ was completely freed by the period [he] was writing about [...] It was a different diction,
Arthur Miller, in his plays, deals with the injustice of society's moral values and the characters who are vulnerable to its cruelty. A good majority of these plays were very successful and earned numerous awards. According to Brooks Atkinson, a critic for the New York Times, Miller's play Death of a Salesman was successful because the play "is so simple in style and so inevitable in theme that it scarcely seems like a thing that has been written and acted. For Mr. Miller has looked with compassion into the hearts of some ordinary Americans and quietly transferred their hopes and anguish to the theater" (Babusci 1261). This play, in 1949, received the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Antoinette Perry Award, the Donaldson Award, and the Theater Club Award (A Brief Chronology of Arthur Miller's Life and Works, http://www.ibiblio.org/...). Miller has said that he could not have written The Crucible at any other time for it is said that a play cannot be successful unless it speaks to its own time; hence McCarthyism was widespread when this play was written. Everyone was afraid of Communists, just like everyone was afraid of witches during The Crucible. This play won the Antoinette Perry Award and the Donaldson Award (Bloom, Modern Critical Interpretations: Arthur Miller's The Crucible 55). His play All My Sons was concerned with a man, Joe Keller, selling defective cylinder heads to the Air Force during World War II, causing the death of twenty-one pilots, one of whom was his elder son. The play focuses around this act and the consequences that arise from it. The play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. All of Miller's plays focus on one central idea, this idea being ...
Although both authors claim their stories are true, and thereby that their characters are realistic, there seems to be a gap between the authors' claims and the "reality" of the characterization. This question is closely connected to the fact that both novels belong to the earliest English novels. There was no fixed tradition that the authors worked in; instead the novel was in the process of being established. The question arises whether the two works lack a certain roundness in their narrators.
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s book “The Canterbury Tales” love and death play a large role in inner mechanisms of the storyline. A point where love is tremendously visible is with Palamon and Arcite. They both share an unrequited love for a woman who in their eyes is a goddess, Emily. She is only seen as an object of love and desire, although she doesn’t feel the same. They both have a love for her which is a problem considering she does not want to marry either. Death is also seen very much in “The Wife of Bath” where love almost leads to death. In “The Knight's Tale” the focus is more on the relation between love and death. A relationship between love and death is as follows.
Throughout literature, relationships can often be found between the author of a story and the story that he writes. In Geoffrey Chaucer's frame story, Canterbury Tales, many of the characters make this idea evident with the tales that they tell. A distinct relationship can be made between the character of the Pardoner and the tale that he tells.
In “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, Emily Geierson is a woman that faces many difficulties throughout her lifetime. Emily Geierson was once a cheerful and bright lady who turned mysterious and dark through a serious of tragic events. The lost of the two men, whom she loved, left Emily devastated and in denial. Faulkner used these difficulties to define Emily’s fascinating character that is revealed throughout the short story. William Faulkner uses characterization in “A Rose for Emily”, to illustrate Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted woman.
Though Chaucer showed multiple tales of various characters in The Canterbury Tales, the Miller’s and Wife of Bath’s tale surpassed them all on their concept of marriage and love. Both allow the reader to understand where they are coming from and their perception. While one does not seem to believe too much in love, the other does. However, both clearly believe that women control the game of love in their own respective ways.
However, the nature of this love is different in each story. In “Araby”, it is an innocent, pure, platonic feeling that completely changes the life of the character exerting an enormous influence on his psychological state. The boy has lost interest in everyday life. He cannot concentrate on his studying; he does not play with his friends; he can think about nothing else except for his beloved. For him, the lady is like a symbol of blissful happiness, a goddess; his love to her is sacred: “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand” (108).It explains the strong feeling of the boy for the girl. With Eveline, the situation is different. It is difficult to say for sure whether she indeed loves Frank or not. She thinks about him only as about a person who will help her to achieve her aim. She does not feel any tenderness, any passion to him –any of those feelings that are associated with real love. For her, the young man is a means, although she does not consciously treat him like that. She praises his virtues seeing that Frank is “kind, manly, open-hearted” (3), that he is interesting as a personality; she is proud to be his beloved. Still, it seems that Eveline is not in love with him. She admits that “it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him” (3). She is simply pleased to have a
Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal girl with aspirations of growing up and finding a mate that she could soon marry and start a family, but this was all impossible because of her father. The father believed that, “none of the younger man were quite good enough for Miss Emily,” because of this Miss Emily was alone. Emily was in her father’s shadow for a very long time. She lived her li...