The Canterbury Tales begin with The Knight’s Tale; which chronicles the tragic love triangle of Palamon, Arcite and Emilye. The following tale, which is told by the Miller, is also a love triangle, and is in many ways similar to the Knight’s tale. However, the Miller’s tale sharply contrasts the Knight’s, almost parodying it. The Knight’s tale is a tragic of nobility, heritage and focuses heavily on mythology and astrology, whereas The Miller’s tale is a comedy, focusing on the common-man and his less civilized, and bawdy lifestyle. The two stories mirror one another in many ways, but are presented from completely different sides of the spectrum. When the two tales are looked at closely, it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that they occur back-to-back to one another as there is a stark contrast between the two.
The stories core elements are love, specifically focusing on love at first sight. The Knight tells of Palamon and Arcite, two prisoners of war, who fall for Emelye. Palamon and Arcite, who as cousins were once as close as sworn brothers, turn on one another after merely catching a glimpse of Emelye. Palamon’s love for her is so strong, that he breaks out of captivity in an attempt to find her, putting himself in great danger. Arcite, who was freed from prison by the favor of Perotheus under the condition he never return to Athens, takes his love to extremes as well, disguising himself as Philostrate, and taking up work as a page in Emelye’s chamber, just to be near her. This all culminates in the mass battle in which the winner between Arcite and Palamon will receive Emelye’s hand in marriage. The Knight’s account of love is pure and virtuous, with no hint of anything but true love.
The Miller does not share these quali...
... middle of paper ...
... they go about it however is entirely different. The Knight’s tale focuses on Athens, a city of nobility and great heritage. The characters are heavily affected by mythological gods such as Venus, Mars, Diana and Saturn. Two competitors take part in an epic and honorable battle of two-hundred men to win the heart of a woman. The story tragically ends with the death of a well respected man. The Miller’s tale, told from the perspective of an everyday man, in the Oxford Village. It features no hero’s or valiant warriors, but a common student and his landlord. There is no battle, but rather slapstick humor involving nothing more than a burned posterior and a broken arm. The story does not end romantically, and instead features a man laughed into humiliation. While the two stories have very similar story arcs, their themes and plots are what make them differ so heavily.
The Miller is hardly a likeable character. His negative depictions of love and John, the old and supposedly more learned husband, upset a few members of his audience. His tale juxtaposed with "The Knight's Tale" gives the reader valuable insight into the viewpoints of the era. The Knight still believes in honor and love at first sight whereas the Miller resorts to dishonesty every chance he gets. The General Prologue tells us that the Miller is lecherous, dishonest, clever, and eloquent. If you read the General Prologue carefully enough, the outline and themes of "The Miller's Tale" should not surprise you in the least.
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales was originally a frame story including thirty people, later to become thirty-one. Does filthy reading make a great tale? A morally sound story is one that is clean, has an easily discovered moral and a moral that teaches a good lesson. The Miller’s Tale is quite a tale to tell, this tale does lack of being morally sound, it is entertaining and it fits The Host’s personality.
Since the Miller's Tale is a parody of the Knight's Tale there is great wit when it comes to the role that Alisoun plays. Emelye on the other hand, is constructed in a more serious and respectful way. Emelye of the Knight's Tale has two men madly in love with her- Arcite and Palamon. These two men are imprisoned for life and can only imagine the idea of loving and having Emelye as a wife. Palamon upon seeing Emelye cries,
Some say women can get the worst out of a man, but in The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1485, proves it. The tales were originally written as a collection of twenty four tales, but has been narrowed down to three short tales for high school readers. The three tales consist of “The Miller”, “The Knight”, and “The Wife of Bath” along with their respective prologues. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer shows the weak but strong role of women throughout the “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” to contrast different human characteristics and stereotypes on the spectrum of people.
Within the larger context, the tales can be divided into groups. These ‘fragments’ are each cohesive, not in the least because of their treatment of a single overarching question or issue, as is examined in detail by structuralist critic Jerome Mandel, in Building the Fragments of the Canterbury Tales. Using Mandel’s premise as a beginning, one can further conjecture a structural similarity between the fragments; for the immediate purposes, a similarity between Fragments I (beginning with the Knight’s Tale) and III (beginning with the Wife’s Tale) is worth noting, in which an opening tale poses a serious question and partially addresses it, and a pair of lighter tales follows, each playing off the other to further examine the question. As the fragments progress, moreover, the questions as they arise encompass the previous question. Thus, the Wife of Bath’s Tale serves an important didactic purpose in encompassing the Knight’s, and heightening the level of the dialogue as Alice, the Wife of Bath, exams the validity of the question the knight poses in its entirety.
The miller’s anger is illustrated to the audience when he is illustrated as a man of large stature, and intimidating. Chaucer continues to vividly describe the miller to the reader by writing that, he wins all the wrestling shows, carries weapons, and uses words to fuel his anger, and takes his anger out on others. All of these traits that the miller has illustrate to the audience that he is an intimidating character that is full of anger and demonstrates it well in the way that Chaucer describes him. The Canterbury Tales are important to study now days, because the audience can learn from the bad traits that that each character has and portrays.
The structure Geoffrey Chaucer chose for his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, of utilizing a melange of narrative voices to tell separate tales allows him to explore and comment on subjects in a multitude of ways. Because of this structure of separate tales, the reader must regard as extremely significant when tales structurally overlap, for while the reader may find it difficult to render an accurate interpretation through one tale, comparing tales enables him to lessen the ambiguity of Chaucer’s meaning. The Clerk’s Tale and The Merchant’s Tale both take on the institution of marriage, but comment on it in entirely different manner, but both contain an indictment of patriarchal narcissism and conceit.
In the Middle Ages, when The Canterbury Tales was written, society became captivated by love and the thought of courtly and debonair love was the governing part of all relationships and commanded how love should be conducted. These principles changed literature completely and created a new genre dedicated to brave, valorous knights embarking on noble quests with the intention of some reward, whether that be their life, lover, or any other want. The Canterbury Tales, written in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer, accurately portrays and depicts this type of genre. Containing a collection of stories within the main novel, only one of those stories, entitled “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, truly outlines the 14th century community beliefs on courtly love.
Chaucer’s book The Canterbury Tales presents a frame story written at the end of the 14th century. It narrates the story of a group of pilgrims who participate in a story-telling contest that they made up to entertain each other while they travel to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Because of this, some of the tales become particularly attractive for they are written within a frame of parody which, as a style that mocks genre, is usually achieved by the deliberate exaggeration of some aspects of it for comic effect. Chaucer uses parody to highlight some aspects of the medieval society that presented in an exaggerated manner, not only do they amuse the readers, but also makes them reflect on them. He uses the individual parody of each tale to create a satirical book in which the behaviours of its characters paint an ironic and critical portrait of the English society at that time. Thus, the tales turn satirical, ironic, earthy, bawdy, and comical. When analysing the Knight’s and the Miller’s tale, one can realise how Chaucer mocks the courtly love convention, and other social codes of behaviour typical of the medieval times.
Arrathoon, Leigh A. "The Miller's Tale," Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction. Ed. Leigh A. Arrathoon, Rochester, Michigan: Solaris Press, Inc. 1986. 241-318
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.
By the end of eleventh century, Western Europe had experienced a powerful cultural revival. The flourish of New towns provided a place for exchange of commerce and flow of knowledge and ideas. Universities, which replaced monasteries as centers of learning, poured urbanized knowledge into society. New technological advances and economics transformations provided the means for building magnificent architectures. These developments were representative of the mental and behavioral transformations that the medieval world underwent and the new relationships that were brought about between men, women and society in the twelfth century. As in technology, science, and scholasticism, Literature was also reborn with a new theme.3
...not change the style of the tale, referring to the tone and language used, but also the way that he appoints this overrated thing that love posses. As in “The Miller’s Tale” does not exist the courtesy or any other important value for society, Chaucer tries to express his own opinion about courtly love through the tale of the Miller saying that this not happen in everywhere or part of the society, demonstrating that the ideals of being a knight is very far away of the convention of what he thinks is valuable to society.
"The Miller's Tale" is characterized as a fabliau because it follows certain requisites. Just like any other true fabliau, "The Miller's Tale" focuses on the vulgar or lower class. The main character, a carpenter, and his new wife are simple individuals and are certainly not well educated. The old man's tenant, a student from Oxford named Nicholas, is well educated but has very little money and therefore his social class is no higher than the carpenter's. Similar to the social status of the characters, their involvement with each other fits the classic fabliau standard. The old carpenter, a gullible man blinded by his love for his young wife, is humiliated and duped by the young student. Nicholas, whose chief talent was "making love in secret," seduced the old man's wife right under his nose. Though the carpenter had been faithful and follows Nicholas' plan only to save his wife, he is later scorned, abandoned, and humiliated by her and the rest of the town. This unjust conclusion follows the fabliau's tendency to scorn conventional morality and favor the most skilled and cunning instead. The wife, who was...
In the Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Reeve’s Tale describes how two college boys met the Miller and decide to set him straight. In the prologue of the tale, the Reeve, named Oswald, reflects on the Miller’s tale. Oswald seems to be the only person who is not amused by the Miller’s tale, and therefore, decides to expand on these feelings in his own tale.