The Miller’s Tale
Chaucer made a variety of characters that starred in his The Canterbury Tales. Many of those characters proved to be immoral. The miller is just one of the numerous characters this specific adjective applies to. A miller is someone who grinds grain to make bread. He isn’t very high on the social ladder and wasn’t well liked. The miller tells a story about a student who makes a fool of a carpenter and commits adultery with the carpenter’s wife. One of the themes of the story is that if you try to control someone and lock them away then they will rebel and go against you.
Bread was an important staple during the Middle Ages. To make bread you would first need to go see a miller. A miller is someone who works in and operates a mill. The mills were usually located on feudal estates. The miller would then rent the mill from the estate lord for a year or so. A portion of the grain that the miller earned in that time would go towards paying the rent. “Millers also made their own bread, so they were paid either one twelfth or one sixteenth of the grain that they ground, depending on the quality of the grain” (Allyson Terry). Normal work days consisted of grinding grain, which the townspeople would bring them, into flour. Before they could grind the grain, they had to get all of their equipment ready. Most of it was high maintenance and had to be cleaned out constantly. Grain would get stuck in all the nooks and crannies and cleaning proved very tedious. Millers were considered peasants and located in the class just above servants in the secular world. They were usually disliked due to the fact many of them chose to steal grain from their customers.
In the story an old carpenter, John, marries a y...
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...off other people just like the miller bums off the extra grain he steals. It makes me dislike the miller because he isn’t working for the grain he is stealing. Yes he works, but he isn’t doing anything to earn the extra grain he is taking.
The miller played an important part in everyday medieval life. Although he helped make bread possible, the miller was a cheater and a thief. He was drunk and didn’t take any ownership of his words or actions. He was selfish and took things that weren’t his just because he felt he deserved them. The miller is many things but moral isn’t one of them.
Works Cited
Terry, Allyson, and Kacey Marton. "Millers." Rights and Responsibilities in Medieval Guilds. N.p., 11 Apr. 2003. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.
"The Miller’s Tale." The Canterbury Tales. Ed. Ronald L. Ecker and Eugene J. Crook. Hodge & Braddock, Oct. 1994. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
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.
Throughout each prologue of the first three tales, we can see a clear description of the social rank of each speaker. The Knight is clearly the person to start the Tale cycle, as he belongs to the highest class of all the Pilgrims. By following the Knight, the Miller usurps the Monk’s privilege to tell the next tale, and begins one of his own. The Miller is allowed by the Host to use the pretense of being drunk, and proceeds to tell a story which goes against social conventions by poking fun at the rules and regulations of a higher social class. The Reeve then follows the Miller’s Tale with one of his own. Osewold tries to "quit" the Miller’s Tale by telling the story concerning Symkyn. The progression from the Knight to the Miller to the Reeve, gives us a picture of three very different class-levels. Through their speech, however, the lower-class characters of the Miller and Reeve are allowed to comment and pass judgement on people without fear of the socially-constructed class system.
The Reeve which is Osewold does take offense at the Miller’s tale of a stupid carpenter and counters his tale of a dishonest Miller. Osewold speaks in the Millers churl’s terms to basically lay it on the line for him on basically how he feels about the Miller’s tale, but in a weird, friendly way. Osewold speaks “I pray to God his neck may break into pieces, he can well in my eye see a piece of straw, but in his own he can not see a large piece of timber” In Lines (3918-20). Basically, the Miller and the Reeve don’t like each other at all due to them working with each other as carpenters in the same mill. Osewold is basically, trying to explain that the Miller is a thief and a dishonest miller and not fully honest with the company. Plus, the Miller is drunk so it’s still going to look bad on him because of him still being dishonest with his
...nd Money In The Miller's Tale And The Reeve's Tale." Medieval Perspectives 3.1 (1988): 76-88. Web. 16 May 2013. [ILL]
Lambert, Tim. “EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.” localhistories.org. 2008. Web. 26 March 2011. .
... is not greedy at all because he doesn’t show off the fact that he is rich. He is loyal to his lord and a working-hard business man which is free from sloth, lust and gluttony. He is a perfect example of the human who lives their life best, not committing deadly sins unlike the pardoner. He disgusts of the miller in the book who is being very gluttony and lust. He warns the miller that he will be punished as in his tale says “He who does evil should not expect good.” He analyzes the miller in the book to the miller in the tale, Symkym; greed will bring disaster to him and will punish him by the fate. These completely different characters share the same theme for different reasons and purposes which tells the reader that the standard of morality is same to various people and they should not commit the sins which certainly will be punished in some way in the future.
...mainly to be something characters use and abuse in order to get what they want. Absolon forgoes piety for attention when he takes a role in the local miracle play in hopes of attracting Alisoun. Nicholas uses the Biblical story of Noah and the flood, and a false piety, to set John up so he can frolic with Alisoun undisturbed. And then, of course, there's the whole obscene religious allegory and symbolism in the story: the huge "Goddes pryvetee," or genitals, John hangs from his roof; the fart of thunder and cry of water that could allegorize Noah's flood; and the way in which Nicholas's God-role and John's fall play on the Fall of Man. As is true with love, the only character who seems to truly have faith in this tale (John) suffers for it in the end, appearing highly ridiculous. All of this adds up to a highly irreligious take on religion in "The Miller's Tale."
The roles of women are seen as not as important as the role in which men play. Focussing on the roles of a lustful temptress and a trophy wife in the Miller’s Tale, the roles of a hostess and monster in Beowulf, and the role of being passive and a sex symbol in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight of which the roles women had to be condemned to play in society at the time of these two text.
Geoffrey Chaucer put in an extravagant amount of dedication and hard work into his poems, his originality of his work is seen in every piece of his poems, especially in “The Miller’s Tale.” As today, where mockery, deception, and obscenity lives in the world, gripping onto those who are relentless, these three key concepts are clearly depicted through the actions and words of the characters presented in “The Miller 's
In John Stuart Mill’s literature (575-580), he describes a system of ethics which he dubs as Utilitarianism. Mill’s Utilitarianism is unique because it is a Consequentialist theory – it focuses on the consequences of things, rather than individual processes involved. In other words, Mill argues that, for an action to be morally correct, it must solely contribute towards benefitting the greater good and maximizing humanity’s happiness. I argue that this ethical theory is flawed and cannot be used as a standard to gauge the morality of our actions because, since Utilitarianism is so entrenched on the outcomes that are produced, it has the potential to sanction clearly wrong actions, so long as they promote the general welfare. In this critique,
Arthur Miller states in his essay, "Tragedy and the Common Man," " . . . we are often held to be below tragedy--or tragedy below us . . . (tragedy is) fit only for the highly placed . . . and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied." However, Miller believes " . . . the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were" (1021). It is this belief that causes Miller to use a common man, Willie Loman, as the subject of his tragedy, Death of a Salesman. Miller redefines the tragic hero to fit a more modern age, and the product of this redefinition is Willie.
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.
The Knight’s Tale and The Miller’s Tale are both told by pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. Although the two stories are set in the same time period and have a similar theme, they each have a distinctive tone. The Knight tells a romantic story that reflects his higher social class during the era in which he lives. The Miller tells a story in which lust, not love, is the guiding motive for the characters. The Miller is in fact drunk when he tells his story, so the Miller’s Tale contains lots of dirty jokes and complicated tricks. The Miller’s tale mirrors the Knight’s tale in a lot of ways. Both of the stories contain a love triangle.
During the Middle Ages using the method of courtly love was very common. It was defined as a way of worshiping a woman to get their attention and love in a noble way by doing heroic deeds or just by giving the women gifts. Back then the most known courtly lovers were the knights for being known as very chivalrous and noble men. In “the Miller’s Tale”, the use of courtly love is the complete opposite of what it usually is. The story telling the story, in other words the miller makes a complete parody of courtly love and what it stands for, he makes it seem very vulgar by the way he talks about the characters in a very sexual manner and the deeds that the characters do throughout the story. I think this story was made for that purpose, to make a fool of what courtly love really is, because in reality the miller thinks that courtly love is just a waste of time and thinks it’s just foolishness to believe that love is really like that.