Chaucer's Miller's Tale as Low Tragedy

I found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts...because it is the only thing that can make it stop hurting. ---Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in Strange Land

Chaucer's The Miller's Tale has been scrutinized in hundreds of ways throughout the centuries in many different ways. Every time it has been looked at it has been taken at its face value as a comedy due to the tone of the miller and it's stature as a fabliaux. I am going to take a different view of the piece, a view from the other side of the fence as it were. I am going to view it as a tragedy.

The source of my argument originates in Robert Heinlein novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. The main character, Valentine Michael Smith, is the lone survivor of the first mission to Mars. An infant at the time of the disaster, he is raised by the native Martians to be a Martian himself. Due to his upbringing, and lack of contact with his own kind, he lacks any knowledge of basic human nature. The Martians then hand over the hero to the second mission, where he returns to his own kind. Over many months of exposure to humans, he cannot get over one small thing, humor and what makes things funny. His thesis, which I have used as the header, is that comedy and humor is really a psychological coping mechanism that shields our minds from the terrible things in our world. By the end of the novel, he earns the distinction of being a human by finally learning to laugh.

Can this theory be applied to The Miller's Tale? Yes it can. Just a simple glance at the story shows deception in several areas, adultery, assault, revenge and public humiliation. Individually, these things are bad enough and can be played for high drama, for example, Shakespeare made a career ou...

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...e. But if it hurts so much to endure it, like Heinlein says, why do we go to it, or even expose other people to such depraved things? I personally don't have an answer.

The injuring of other people should be distasteful to us, but is played for laughs. It always has and always will be. Not that I didn't find this poem funny, as a matter of fact, I got a headache from laughing at it so hard. To take an alternate view did show me how mentally screwed we as a species can be. Will there ever be an end to humor like this; humor that has reprehensible people in situations that have them paying the price of their vice at the end of the tale? I hope not, I like it. The next time a tale has such depravity, violence, and mental cruelty, remember the words of Mel Brooks, "Tragedy is when I cut my thumb. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die!"