THE MILLER’S
TALE
DAN CALLAHAN, NICK CHRISTAIN
ALEX JANKOWSKI, SEAN QUINN
Miller Hosey
Honors English 12 Period 6/7
10/31/11
GENRE TYPE/DESCRIPTION
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Satires
Mockery
Verbal Irony
Elegies
Fantasy fiction
Poetry
Translations
Allegories
Parodies
SUMMARY
• The Miller interrupts the group
– “The prologue to the Miller's Tale locates the Miller initially in terms of physical
positioning, introducing him as someone who drunkenly cuts in front of the
Monk”(Lomperis)
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Tale begins with John and Nicolas
John married to Alison; Nicolas falls in love with her
Absolon
The lie told by Nicolas; Alison and Nicolas’ intentions
Absolon comes to Alison for a kiss
Absolon takes revenge
John and the bathtub
“This tale is done, and God save the company!”
SETTING
• Oxford- one of the cities in England
• Mainly illustrated in and around the Carpenter’s
house
• Known for the university nearby
• Story told over one and a half weeks(Friday to Monday)
• Friday- beginning of the tale
• Saturday- “And so it chanced that on a Saturday, this
carpenter departed to Osney (Page 11 Line 291-2)
• Sunday-And ate and slept, or did what pleased him best,
till Sunday when the sun had gone to rest (Page 11 Line
313-4)
• Next Sunday- “That now come Monday next, at nine of
night, shall fall a rain so wildly mad as would” (Page 14
Line 408-9)
CHARACTERS
John the Carpenter
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Craft and Wife=all he had
Gullible
Poor (Page 4, Line 82)
Old (Page 5, Line 117)
Protective
Thought of as “crazy” in the end
“The carpenter about whom the Miller tells
directly points to St. Joseph of the Holy Family
(Rowland)
• Also related to Noah (wife not part of his boat)
Absalom
• Good appearance (Page 8, Lines 206-216)
• Womanizer… not really
• Went to bars (strange) (Page 8, Line 226)
• Golden curly hair
• Did not like farting (foreshadow)
(Page 8, Line 230)
• Brands Nicolas
“Plays the part of courtly lover by repeating the Song of
Songs” (Lomperis)
Nicolas
• Wealthy, friendly
• Wants Alison
• Astrologist (Page 4 Line 84)
• Branded by Absalom
• Beguiles John and town
(Page 12, Line 385-88) and (Page 24, Line 738)
“Nicolas as the Evil one and Alison as Eve”
(Lomperis)
Alison
• Beautiful (Page 6 Line 127)
• Attraction of all the men
• “Representation of the “prize” serves to mock
and subvert the Knight’s chivalric culture”
(Patterson)
• Helps deceive John
• Kissed in the arse (Page 21, Line 626)
Minor (but essential) Characters
Robyn- servant knave of John
“Chaucer has the Miller place in his tale a young
servant of his own name, Robyn” (Eyler)
• Shows the strength, but not “smarts” with the
door hinge (Page 12 Line 361)
Dan Jarvis
• Blacksmith
• No importance
• Gives Absalom the hot poker
SYMBOLS?
SYMBOLS
General Symbols
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Springtime
Clothing
Physiognomy
Specific Examples from The Millers Tale
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Kneading Trough, Tub, and Kimelin
Imagery: Animals
Allegory: The Fall of Man
The Hot Poker
MOTIFS
MOTIFS
• Romance
– Alison causes men to fall in love with her
– Whole plot based upon love
• Blindness
– All characters blind to the obvious
• Absolom with Alison
– “Absolon seems to indulge a kind of unattached flurry that anticipates his failures to
locate himself in real perceptual fields”(Gallacher)
• John with the flood
– “It is easy for an educated scholar (Nicolas) to play on the superstition of a medieval
carpenter." (Rumsey)
• Nicolas and Alison short minded
• Dirty Humor
– Why does Chaucer use dirty humor in the plot(Farts, buttocks jokes)?
• Looks down upon character’s actions
THEMES?
THEMES
• The desire for sex is the ultimate goal.
– Youthful and old acceptable sexual pairing?
– Difference between sex and love
• Love versus Lust
– What does love really mean?
– Love is either misguided or not love at all
• Lies and deceit versus reality and the truth
– There is a “large contrast between what is real or truthful and
what one character tells another” (Gallacher).
– Cheating, tricks
• All for sex
• Competition for an ultimate prize leads to the corruption of
morals.
– Love triangle = two men compete for a woman
– Woman = “prize”
FIGURATIVE LANUAGE
• Some about setting
– “Dark was the night as pitch, aye dark as coal” (623).
• “Chaucer uses strong similes and metaphors to
describe his well developed characters”(Sexton)
– The carpenter
• “This carpenter had recently married a wife whom he loved
more than he loved his life” (113-115)
• “He was old, And deemed himself as like to be cuckold”
(117-118).
– Cuckold = husband to an unfaithful wife
– Nicolas
• “he was sly and meek as and virgin passing by” (93-94).
– Sly=cunning/secret meek=patient/tame
• “Nicholas had just then let fly a fart as loud as it had been a
thunderclap” (698-699)
Figurative Language cont.
– Absalom
• “Curled was his hair, shining like gold” (206).
• Says to Alison: “I have such love-longing that like a
turtle-dove’s my true yearning” (597-598).
• Says to Alison: “I can eat no more than can a maid”
(599).
– Alison
• “Fair was this youthful wife, and therewithal as weasel’s
was her body slim and small” (125-126).
• “And songs came shrilling from her pretty head as from
a swallow’s sitting on a shed” (149-150).
• Shrilling – loud pitched and piercing sound
• “Her forehead shone as bright as does the May” (202).
ALLUSIONS
Saint Benedict and Paul
• Benedict
patron saint
of education and
Students
(Page 8, Line 210)
Paul
influenced
the spread of
religion and Catholicism
(Page 12, Line 375)
Absalom
• Alluded to throughout the tale
• “peaceful”- contradiction
• “Noted for his personal beauty
And extraordinary profusion of the hair
In his head” (Sam)
Noah
• “Noah’s Ark”
• (Page 14, Line 426)
• “essential to the central action is the story of
Noah and the Flood, which dramatists treated
as one of the most important prefigurations in
the cycle” (Eyler)
Pontius Pilate
• (Page 1, Line 16)
• “The expression “Pilate voys” points to
the fact that voice, not body is the
importance of this narration” (Lomperis)
• Man who crucified Jesus
• Prefect of the Roman province
Judea
• Strong Leader
• People Listened to him- connects him
To the narrator
(Page 3, Line 78)
Mystery Plays
Medieval plays
Forms of the Biblical Texts
Called “games” or miracles”
“game was equivalent for dramatic
performance to support his claim
that a proclamation admonishing an
audience to keep quiet and not
interrupt the “game” was a
fragment of the Mystery Play
(Rowland)
St. Joseph
• Husband of the virgin Mary
• Carpenter
• Relates to John
“Like St. Joseph, he too was aged, married to a
young wife, and fearful of being cuckolded”
(Rowland)
Cato
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More than one wife
Roman statesmen
Changed the Romans
Orator
(Page 5 Line 119)
St. Thomas
• One of Jesus’ disciples
• Disbelieved Jesus’ resurrection
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CONNECTION OF TALE TO NARRATOR
• Portrayed as a rough and not classy character in prologue
– Drunk while telling story
– Good story teller
• Uses many similes and metaphors
easy to follow along
• Knights tale was about romance and heroism
– Miller’s Tale follows The Knight’s Tale
– mocking
– “Nicholas and Absalom’s actions mock the heroism the knight
displays” (Patterson)
• “The Miller’s Tale is an example of a fabliau, a short humorous
narrative genre that creates tension between bourgeois and working
class” (Schwartz)
– Shows contrasts just as the Miller and the Knight would show through
characters and real issues
– Low class = good story tellers
HUMOR
Characterizes Absolon's kiss, thus, not only as a
shameful kiss, but a shameful kiss of a woman
(Lomperis)
“…it constructs Absolon from a
mass of assumptions about
sexuality and gender,
masculinity and bodily
functions “(Walker)
MORAL/LESSON OF THE STORY
Young
Love 