Contents

• Geoffrey Chaucer: The Man and His Masterpiece• The Canterbury Tales – collection of tales• The General Prologue – generalities• The Knight• The Miller• The Nun’s Priest• The Pardoner

Geoffrey Chaucer• Chaucer was born around

1340, son of John, a wine merchant, and Agnes in the ward known as Vintry, in the City of London.

• We first hear of Chaucer himself (or, at least, of a Geoffrey Chaucer who is not likely to be anyone else) in 1357, when he received a suit of livery as member of the household of Edward III’s son Lionel.

• Chaucer was a member of the royal household (due to his marriage with Philippa Roet, the governess to the children of the King’s fourth son, John of Gaunt) and in 1368 he wrote the Book of the Duchess, as a memorial to John Gaunt’s wife.

• By the late 1380’s Chaucer had farmed out his customs duties to deputies, and retired to live on his estates in Kent, where he was appointed a Knight of the Shire and a Justice of the Peace.

• What should be remembered about Geoffrey Chaucer is that for most of his life he was what we would term a civil servant. At no time was he employed, or paid, as a poet. He died in 1400; he was buried in Westminster Abbey and that spot was only later designated Poet’s Corner.

Canterbury Cathedral

The Canterbury Tales• After the death of his wife (1387), Chaucer conceived the idea of

the Canterbury Tales and began work on the collection.• There had been collections of stories before, but Chaucer’s was

different because it was written in English.• He used his knowledge of French and Italian to enrich his own

vernacular.• The closest analogue to Chaucer’s tales was the Italian collection of

stories, the Decameron, written by Giovanni Boccaccio.• In his choice of a pilgrimage motif, Chaucer may have been

influenced by reading the bestseller of his day, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, which features the pilgrimage of an individual towards his own, and his people’s salvation.

• The pilgrims only tell one tale, and some pilgrims, for example the Ploughman and the Yeoman, do not tell stories at all. Obviously the work was unfinished at Chaucer’s death. The Host’s original statement is that the pilgrims will tell two stories each, one on the way to Canterbury and another on the way back.

• Chaucer has matched these subjects well to reflect the character of the person who tells them. He was able to do this because of his remarkable abilities of understanding the construction of poetry.

• The fabliau stories match the humble origins of their speakers and the nature of their contents. Individual tales easily stand alone, even if they also have obvious relations to others.

• Chaucer always uses genre in order to subvert it as in the brilliant Nun’s Priest’s Tale, where the simplest genre of all becomes the medium for arguably the most complex of all the Tales.

The General Prologue

• The poem begins with a brief description of English spring weather.

• Chaucer has used the pilgrimage motif to create a group which is more varied than any likely to unite the characters voluntarily for other reasons. He then isolates them from interaction with any but themselves.

• We are not in fact dealing with individuals, but with representative types: a Knight, a Reeve, a Wife etc.

• The General Prologue sets up a pattern followed by many of the Tales themselves, of a Prologue which introduces themes later elaborated while simultaneously guiding the audience’s reading.

The Knight• In The Canterbury Tales, the

Knight is a representative of those who belong to the very high social class of the nobility.

• Not only is the Knight a stellar battlefield athlete, he's also a genuinely nice guy. Chaucer tells us that he's never, in all his life, spoken a harsh word to anyone.

• On the pilgrimage, he's the peacemaker of the group, calling for reconciliation between the Host and the Pardoner when the Host takes offense at the Pardoner's attempt to sell fake relics to the pilgrims.

• Unlike with some of the other characters, we can be sure that this knight is exactly what Chaucer says he is because although he's got a really beautiful horse, he's wearing a tunic that is still stained with the blood of his last battle. He's literally walked straight off the battlefield and into The Canterbury Tales.

• His behavior – peacemaking, speaking like a gentleman, telling a polite romance – is probably meant to provide a point of contrast with the very different "low-born" behavior of characters like the Miller and the Reeve.

The Knight’s Tale• The Knight’s Tale is the longest one

and it was written independently of the rest of the Canterbury Tales, at a much earlier date. It is based on a free adaption of Boccaccio’s Il Teseida, itself a retelling of the story from the Thebiad of the Roman writer Statius.

• The story may be deemed to question the validity of courtly love and knightly ideals. Chivalry is a code of conflict and the young men only seem to come to life when they have something to fight over.

Plot Summary

• The time is that of classical legend, as Theseus returns from conquering the Amazons and encounters a group of women, bewailing the overthrow of their city, Thebes, and the death of their husbands, including king Cappaneus. The widowed queen begs Theseus to revenge them, which he duly does, laying the city waste.

• From here the focus shifts onto how two kinsmen, Arcite and Palamon, fall in love with the same woman named Emelye, whom they first see out of their prison window. Emelye is the niece of King Theseus.

• Arcite gains his freedom but is banished from Athens. He comes back in a disguise since he cannot bear to live away from Emelye. In the meanwhile Palamon breaks out of prison and coincidentally meets Arcite in a forest grove. Here Theseus discovers them fighting a bloody duel. Theseus puts an end to their fight and organizes a contest to resolve their quarrel about Emelye.

• Before the contest Arcite prays to Mars for victory while Palamon prays to Venus for the sole possession of Emelye. This creates uproar in heaven and finally both the wishes are granted. Arcite emerges victorious in the joust but falls from his horse and dies and eventually Palamon marries Emelye.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deRyhTuny3w

• Chaucer’s story appears to be one of romance, but is more concerned with rulership, society and the relationship between humanity and the cosmos.

• The young knights Palamon and Arcite , described as fighting over Emelye like two dogs over a bone, appear not only unchivalrous, but unreasonable.

• Emelye is reduced to an object; the only occasion on which she appears as a person is in the temple of Diane. Her petition is more complicated: if she cannot remain married, the at least let the one who loves her most win her.

Short Analysis

• The philosophical elements are an integral part of its balance. These elements focus on the distinctions between Fortune, Destiny and Providence. In the final book, the changeability of Fortune and the unmoving cruelty of Destiny are replaced by the stability of the First Mover, who governs all thing for the good of all (Providence).

• The Knight’s Tale can be assessed primarily as a paradigm of a good story in a contest of tales: the text from which all the other Tales take their cue.

• The Knight ends his tale ‘And God save al this faire compaignye!’, this makes his audience into a noble group, a description they reciprocate by calling the tale ‘a noble storie’, one worth remembering.

• The general prologue to The Canterbury Tales describes the Miller, Robyn, as a stout and evil churl fond of wrestling. In the Miller's Prologue, the pilgrims have just heard and enjoyed The Knight's Tale, a classical story of courtly love, and the host asks the Monk to "quite" ("follow" or "repay") with a tale of his own. However, the Miller insists on going next.

• The Miller's Tale (Middle English: The Miller's Tale) is the second of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1380s–1390s), told by the drunken miller Robyn to "quite" (requite) The Knight's Tale. The Miller's Prologue is the first "quite" that occurs in the tales (to "quite" someone is to make repayment for a service, the service here being the telling of stories).

The Miller – General Prologue

•The Miller's Tale is the story of a carpenter, his lovely wife, and the two clerks (students) who are eager to get her into bed. The carpenter, John, lives in Oxford with his much younger wife, Alisoun, who is something of a local beauty. To make a bit of extra money, John rents out a room in his house to a poor but clever scholar named Nicholas, who has taken a liking to Alisoun. Another scholar in the town, Absolon the parish clerk, also has his eye on Alisoun.

• The Miller's Tale begins the trend in which succeeding tellers "quite" the previous one with their story. In a way the Miller requites the "Knight's Tale", and is himself directly requited with "The Reeve's Tale", in which the Reeve follows Robyn's insulting story about a carpenter with his own tale disparaging a miller.

1. CUNNING AND CLEVERNESS THEME

The Miller's Tale is the story of a cunning clerk (student), constantly referred to as "hende" (clever) Nicholas, who tricks a not-so-bright carpenter in order to get the carpenter's wife into bed. With this plot the main use of cleverness in the story seems to be to seduce and beguile. The same is true of the various talents the characters possess: Nicholas uses his reputation for prophecy to play his trick, while Nicholas's romantic rival Absolon attempts to use his various musical gifts to seduce Alisoun.

THEMES

2. SEX THEME

The Miller's Tale is all about sex: who's having it, who's not, how they're managing to have it, and the consequences of it. With the contrast in age between John and Alisoun, the tale raises the question of whether the youthful and the old are an acceptable sexual pairing. And with the very different courting styles of Nicholas and Absolon, it explores the techniques a lover might use to obtain his desires.

Alisoun cheats on John. Alisoun tricks Absolon into believing she's going to give him a kiss. Absolon tells Alisoun all he wants is a kiss. And in the most elaborate ruse in "The Miller's Tale," Nicholas and Alisoun convince John that a flood is coming and he'd better spend the night hanging from his rafters in a tub. All of the lies and deceit in "The Miller's Tale" happen because somebody wants sex, raising the question of whether it's even possible to come by sex honestly. The only character who doesn't deceive anyone is the somewhat dense carpenter, John, who is also the character most lied to and deceived.

3. LIES AND DECEIT

4.LOVE THEMEThe character who most often speaks of love in The Miller's Tale is Absolon, who parrots the language of medieval courtly romance in his courtship of Alisoun. Yet what Absolon really wants is sex, which raises the question of whether love in this tale ever really means love in our modern sense of the term. The character in the tale who most fully engages in our conception of love is John: he is truly sad at the thought of Alisoun's death and goes to great pains to save her. Yet his efforts and devotion to her seem foolish given Alisoun's betrayal of him. All in all, the view of love we get in "The Miller's Tale" is decidedly cynical: love is either misguided, or not love at all, but lust.

5.FOOLISHNESS AND FOLLY THEME

John and Absolon are the characters in The Miller's Tale who appear the most foolish, which raises some interesting questions. John is an unlearned tradesman, but Absolon is an educated parish clerk. Both characters appear foolish in large part because of their devotion to Alisoun. It seems that, in

The Miller's Tale at least, women are the great equalizers when it comes to foolishness and folly. Even Nicholas has his moment of appearing foolish when, in his effort to impress Alisoun, he sticks his butt out the window and gets branded by Absolon's hot poker. In both Absolon and Nicholas's cases, they appear foolish because of the posturing they indulge in. John's case is sadder because his foolishness results out of a true but misguided devotion to his wife. 6.MADNESS THEME

Two characters are perceived as insane in the course of The Miller's Tale. The first, Nicholas, pretends to be insane to get John's attention, while the second, John, is "holden wood" (held to be mad) by the townspeople when Nicholas and Alisoun paint him that way. The fact that neither of these characters is truly insane emphasizes the way madness may just be in the eye of the beholder.

7.COMPETITION THEME

The Miller's Tale portrays one of the most classic competitions in literature: the love triangle in which two men compete for the affections of one woman. The woman is the "prize" to be won, which in "The Miller's Tale" accords with a characterization of Alisoun that objectifies her. Yet something interesting happens to this competition by the end of "The Miller's Tale": Absolon, upset over Alisoun's crude prank and determined to "quyte" it, begins to view himself in competition with her, rather than with Nicholas. This shifting focus of rivalry also leads to a lost object of affection: when Alisoun is a rival, she can no longer be a "prize."

8.RELIGION THEME

Religion in The Miller's Tale seems 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.

JOHN John the carpenter, while admittedly short on brains, is probably the most

sympathetic of the four major characters in "The Miller's Tale." After all, he's the only one who doesn't cheat or trick somebody. Ironically, though, he's also the one who suffers most in the course of the tale, being cheated on by his wife, tricked into spending the night cramped in tub hanging from the rafters of his house, taking a nasty tumble that likely breaks a few bones, and – as if all that weren't enough – being humiliated in front of the entire town.

3.CHARACTERS

ALISOUN Alisoun, John's wife, Nicholas's lover, and a reputed local beauty, is the only character in "The Miller's Tale" who goes apparently unpunished at its conclusion. In her portrait at the beginning of the tale, the narrator is satirizing a medieval literary device called a blazon. This is a section of a romance or short poem in which the poet describes a woman's body by comparing parts of it with other objects. A typical blazon might compare a woman's eyes to the stars, her hair to golden flax. Alison's blazon compares the parts of her body to decidedly less glamorous things: her body is like a weasel's, her song like a barn-swallow's, her spirit like young colt's

NICHOLAS

Nicholas is the poor young scholar who rents a room in John's house. He sets his sights on Alisoun and fairly quickly manages to get her into bed. Nicholas is the mover and shaker behind most of the action in the tale: it's he who seduces Alisoun and tricks John into sleeping in a tub so he can spend the night with her. Nicholas takes a hot poker to the butt when his rival Absalom shows up at Alisoun's window intent on revenge. Based on Nicholas's prior behavior, it's tempting to say he had it coming.

ABSOLON

Like Nicholas's portrait, Absolon's makes him seem somewhat effeminate: he has curly golden hair, which he carefully parts down the middle, and he wears a blue tunic over red hose "fetisly," or prettily, laced.The impression of femininity in Absolon's portrait is not quite as strong as it is in Nicholas's, though. Instead, the most important thing about Absolon is that he's extremely tidy and fastidious and pays great attention to his personal grooming. He always makes sure that his hair is combed nicely, his breath smells sweet, and his shirt is free from wrinkles.

• http://youtu.be/86Y62CIF3II

The Nun’s Priest Tale

• The Nun's Priest's Tale is told by the nun's priest, who is traveling with another pilgrim, the Prioress. It's a beast fable, which is a medieval genre that's basically responsible for the

talking animal films that plague us today. People in the middle ages were into these things called bestiaries, which shouldn't be confused with bestiality, although it is a similar root word - bestiaries means animal, beast. Bestiaries described animals

and assigned particular traits and symbolism to them

• In the Canterbury Tales, the Nun's Priest is called upon to tell a fun story, because the Monk has just told a real downer. So, he tells a beast fable about an old poor widow who lived with two daughters and three pigs, and they lived in a thrifty way, not wasting any food or eating too much at one meal. They also had a rooster called Chauntecleer. He is like the most beautiful rooster ever. He's better at crowing than everyone else, he looks great, and he's got seven wives. His favorite wife's name is Pertelote. Interestingly, Chaucer describes her as a faire damoysele even though she's a chicken. She's very anthropomorphized.

• He also parodies epic poetry by utilizing apostrophes, or formal, imploring addresses: “O false mordrour, lurkynge in thy den!”, and “O Chauntecleer, acursed be that morwe / That thou into the yerd flaugh fro the bemes!”. If we read the story as an allegory, Chauntecleer’s story is a tale of how we are all easily swayed, flattering tongue of the devil, represented by the fox. Other scholars have read the tale as the story of Adam and Eve’s (and consequently all humankind’s) fall from grace told through the veil of a fable.

• Chauntecleer and Pertelote argue over the correct interpretation of dreams, each citing literary authorities to back up their claims. Pertelote says that bad dreams are simply a physical reaction and that Chauntecleer should just take some medicine to set his humors in order.

• Chauntecleer cites many different textual sources to prove to Pertelote that dreams are matters that should be taken seriously. He uses complex literary allusions to make his point. However, in the end, Chauntecleer doesn’t follow his own advice, foolishly abandoning his own wisdom for the sake of his wife.

• The Nun’s Priest uses mock-Homeric similes in his comparison of the hens to the Trojans’ wives. In one of the only direct allusions to current events, Chaucer compares the barnyard to the 1381 peasant’s revolt in England, lead by Jack Straw.

• Usually, the clever fox defeats the rooster in this type of beast fable, but here, Chauntecleer tricks the fox at his own game. The moral of the story, says the Nun’s Priest, is to never trust flatterers––perhaps a subtle jab at some of his fellow pilgrims.

• Though it is also worth noting that there is a moral of not trusting women or wives, either, that the Nun's Priest does not explicitly mention here.

The Nun's Priest's Tale Summary.mp4

So ...

• Pertelote's name translates from the French as "one who confuses someone's fate". Does she deserve this name?

• The “cock and fox” story is much older than Chaucer, but he reshapes his source material in a highly original way by setting his fable into the frame of a widow’s small farm.

The General Prologue: The Pardoner

• A Pardoner is someone who travels about the countryside selling official church pardons. These were probably actual pieces of paper with a bishop's signature on them, entitling the bearer to forgiveness for their sins. It seems that this Pardoner also does a secondary trade in relics, or pieces of clothing, bones, and other objects once belonging to long-departed saints.

• Theoretically, the person pardoned had been duly confessed and had performed appropriate penance, but the system was easily abused and simple payment often took place of any spiritual endeavour.

• The Pardoner's portrait throws into question not only the character himself, but also the practices upon which he relies to make a living. The portrait explores what happens when spiritual goods begin to be profit-earning commodities like any other, and question the effect of this trade upon the souls of those who practice it.

• Chaucer tells us that, among his relics, he's carrying a jar full of pigs' bones, and that, with them, he's able to cheat a poor parson out of two months' salary. The Pardoner is good at preaching, but in his prologue he tells the pilgrims he only does it to win money, berating the people for their sinfulness so they'll be more likely to buy what he is selling.

• After his tale, the Pardoner tries to sell these relics to the other pilgrims, angering the Host suggesting that he would rather cut off the Pardoner’s testicles, thus questioning their authenticity.

Short summary• The Host asks the Pardoner to tell a tale of happiness or jokes. The

Pardoner agrees, but says that first he will stop at a tavern by the roadside to eat cake and drink beer. The nobles in the company, afraid that the Pardoner's ingestion of alcohol will cause him to tell an R-rated tale, object and ask the Pardoner to speak about virtue and not sex.

• The story itself relates how three drunken men set out in search of death after their friend has been killed by the plague. On their way they encounter an extremely old man who directs them to an oak tree at the end of the lane and tells them that he had last seen death there. The men hurry to the spot and instead find eight bushels of gold. They decide to keep the treasure for themselves. However they grow greedy and kill themselves through trickery.

The Pardoner’s Tale• The Pardoner’s Tale is a small story that illustrates a moral theme,

inviting a moral response from its audience. They were used in sermons, and so this one is particularly suitable for the pardoner, who makes his living by preaching.

• The theme is the desire for money, root of all evil. Although the Pardoner attacks avarice, drunkenness and gluttony, he loves food, drink and money.

• Much scholarly criticism has centered upon the question of the Pardoner’s gender. He is described by Chaucer as ‘a geldyng mare’, leaving open the question that he may be an eunuch, or a homosexual.

• The Pardoner describes selecting texts which can be worked up into harangues on the evil of wealth and the virtues of donations, declares that those who have committed some terrible sin and not confessed it will be incapable of walking up to give alms.

• Duplicity is the hallmark of Chaucer’s pardoner, as his double-dealings extend from his fraudulent relics into the creative premise of his Tale.

• Almost everything is two things at once: he addresses two audiences (the envisaged one – ‘the lewed people’ and the pilgrims – lordynges’); his Tale is both pseudo-homily and entry in a story-telling contest; the old man in the Tale is likewise double as he seems to be a figure both of Death and of a man who cannot die, but who shows the three revellers where to find Death themselves.

• In the character of the Pardoner, Chaucer may be alerting the audience to the nature of their relationship with him, the writer. The Pardoner’s revelations about himself and his relationship with his audiences are very uncomfortable for the pilgrims. He holds up before them their own superstitions, greed and credulity, thus he believes the story will affect the pilgrims in such a way that they will buy their pardons.

• The Tale is extremely seductive and makes the audience forget what they have just been told about how false the Pardoner actually is.

• The Pardoner may have assumed his role so completely that he is the part he plays, a suggestion which would be in accord with his physical incompleteness.