Whan That May — Lucas Blogs About The Canterbury Tales: Part 2

Oh, you thought I would use a different picture for this month?

The Intro

Welcome back to Whan That Month — Lucas Blogs About The Canterbury Tales. As you might have guessed, this is my new monthly feature about my plan to read Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in a year or less. Last month I covered the General Prologue and The Knight's Tale. What's coming up this month? I'm glad you asked.

I did not.

Oh, Hypothetical Reader, I didn't think you'd want to involved yourself in something you've described as my "fascination with this medieval bullshit."

I don't.

So this digression is a waste of time.

Yup!

This month we're covering what I like to call The Canterbury Tales of Ribaldry (Chaucer even says they both spoke of "harlotrye"! That's right, we're gettin' a little spicy this month, because immediately following The Knight's Tale, Chaucer segues into:

The Miller's Prologue

Well, the Knight's finished his tale of Palamoun and Arcite, and it's a big hit especially — quelle surprise — with the "genils." Harry Bailly is so impressed with the Knight's tale that he immediately abandons the whole drawing-straws thing and asks the Monk if he knows a tale to "quite" (repay) the Knight's. That's when the belligerently drunken Miller (whose name is Robin) sees his chance and insists that he knows just such a tale. This is also a story about two men vying for the affections of a woman, who happens to be a carpenter's wife. This revelation doesn't sit well with the Reeve, Osewold, who is a carpenter by trade. The Miller insists it's all in good fun, and that he certainly doesn't intend to imply that the Reeve bears any resemblance to the cuckolded carpenter in the tale he's about to tell. Which, wouldn't you know it, is—

The Miller's Tale

So, in Oxenford, there's an older carpenter named John who is extremely jealous regarding his young, beautiful wife, Alisoun. And maybe he should be because when his lodger, a clerk named Nicholas puts the moves on her, she's is quite receptive. And Nicholas isn't the only clerk vying for her affections, she's also caught the eye of Absolon, a local parish clerk who's comically vain about his hair and singing voice. Alisoun isn't so keen on Absolon. Anyway, Nicholas and Alisoun concoct a convoluted scheme to cuckold John which involves convincing him that the world is about to be washed away by a repeat of Noe's flood (quick question, is my insistence on spelling proper nouns the way Chaucer does distracting?). In any case, the plan goes off without a hitch until Absolon shows up to woo Alisoun with his guitar, with the upshot that she tricks him into kissing her ass before farting in his face. The whole thing resolves in a very slapstick-y manner when Nicholas tries to play the same trick on Absolon—who's wised up and returned with a red hot ploughshare—and wakes up John by screaming out for water to salve his scalded ass. This of course, results in the revelation that John was not only a cuckold, but had fallen for an outlandish story about a repeat of the flood. A good time is had by all! Well, maybe not all. I mean, John and Alisoun's neighbors all know that he's a gullible cuckold and she's an adulteress. And Nicholas has been scalded on the ass. And Absolon was the recipient of a face fart. But the neighbors have a good time laughing about it.

How'd Lucas Like The Miller's Tale?

This is one of the stories that I read for that Chaucer class back in college, and it's easy to see why a professor would pick it. It's not too long, it's broadly comedic, and one of the characters is a college student. #relatable, amirite?

In all seriousness, this is one holds up pretty well today. Except for the fact that Nicholas first makes a move on Alisoun by grabbing her crotch (well, maybe that holds up a little too well). In any case, it's a raunchy sex comedy with fart jokes, and while the language used to describe these things isn't always the same (for example: swived means screwed), the basic idea comes across. I also think there's comedic value to be mined from the fact that Nicholas and Alisoun's deception is so needlessly elaborate. At one point John is even gone on business and instead of just swiving each other then, they concoct this flood scheme.

Speaking of Alisoun, I couldn't help but notice how much more present she is in this tale than Emelye is in The Knight's Tale. One of the reasons that this story seems so good natured is that she's as into Nicholas as he is into her. She's also an enthusiastic prank-puller who doesn't suffer fools gladly and owns her sexuality. After all, she's the one who has the idea to trick Absolon into kissing her ass after he consistently doesn't get the hint that she isn't interested. And sure, she's set up to be as much an object of ridicule as any of the other characters, but she's kind of The Miller's Tale MVP.

Also 

But the real question is how exactly this story is meant to repay The Knight's Tale? It could be a response to the fact that Palamoun and Arcite's love for Elemye comes across as somewhat bloodless and idealized while the attraction between Nicholas and Alisoun is explicitly sexual. It could be that it's a story of two men pursuing an unobtainable woman. But while Palamoun and Arcite see their imprisonment as an insurmountable barrier, Nicholas and Absolon see Alisoun's marriage as a minor inconvenience. Or the repayment could just be in following up a story that caters primarily to the tastes of the upper classes with a story that is well-received by the entire company (excepting the Reeve—see below). In any case, by following The Knight's Tale with The Miller's Tale, Chaucer establishes that The Canterbury Tales will comprise all sorts of stories, highbrow, lowbrow, middlebrow, all the brows. 

The Reeve's Prologue

The fall out of the Miller's Tale is that all the pilgrims are laughing and in a good mood, except for Oswald the Reeve who decides that he needs to level the playing field by telling a tale about a miller being cuckolded, which turns out to be—

The Reeve's Tale

That's right. So near the university at Cantebrigge, there's this miller named Simekin and he bears a striking resemblance to Robin, (you know, like the Miller in the frame narrative). He shortchanges his customers by keeping a larger share of the flour he mills for them and he plays the bagpipes and carries a sword and is really good at wrestling. So anyway, there are two clerks John and Alain who know that he's been cheating the school every time he mills their grain, so they tell the manciple that they'll take the school's grain to Simekin and make absolutely sure that he won't cheat them. Their plan? To fein interest in the milling process and insist that Simekin allow them to watch it. Which he does, before briefly slipping away and untying their Horse. So, while they're busy trying to get the horse back, Simekin steals some of the school's flour and has his wife and daughter bake a loaf of bread. By the time that John and Alain have recovered the horse, it's so late that they're forced to stay in the Miller's spare bed (at an extortionate rate, of course). John and Alain are so frustrated that they let Simekin hoodwink them, that Alain sneaks into Simekin's daughter's bed and rapes her. Meanwhile, John tricks Simekin's wife into getting into bed with him and rapes her. The next morning, Simekin's daughter tells Alain about the bread and when Simekin discovers what's happened, John and Alain beat him with staves.

How'd Lucas Like The Reeve's Tale?

So, The Reeve's Tale is sort of like a joyless, mean-spirited version of The Miller's Tale. From the fact that Simekin is a thinly veiled caricature of Robin to the fact that the story doesn't just end with Simekin outsmarted and humiliated, but beaten as well. Not to spoil The Cook's Prologue, but it is perhaps telling that while The Miller's Tale is enjoyed by most of the pilgrims, the only person who says anything good about it is the Cook, and possibly only because he's about to tell a story about the danger of renting out rooms.

The Reeve doesn't say John or Alain are attracted to Simekin's wife or daughter, they just want to extract sex as an exchange for the value of their stolen flour. I'll be honest, this one's pretty off-putting. And you might say that sexual mores were different in the Middle Ages, but seriously, I don't think there's any other way to interpret what John and Alain do as anything but rape, even if afterwards Simekin's wife and daughter profess to have enjoyed it. There's also the fact that the antics aren't particularly funny. The closest the story comes to funny business is the image of two Cambridge students unsuccessfully chasing a horse around a field all afternoon.

Really, the only good thing I have to say about The Reeve's Tale is something I wouldn't have noticed without the gloss, that John and Alain have Northern accents. It was kinda fun to see the differences in regional dialect that existed in Middle English, even if the story was kind of a stinker.

The Cook's Prologue

So, we come back to our pilgrims to find that Roger Hogge, the Cook, is quite amused by the Reeve's tale and after some jovial ribbing with Harry Bailly, he says he has story to tell of an innkeeper, that story being—

The Cook's Tale

All right, so famously, this story is unfinished, the Cook spends about a page describing an apprentice innkeeper who liked whoring, revelling, and gambling, then the story cuts off after he says that this guy's wife kept up a shop for the sake of appearances but actually made her living by prostitution. End of Tale.

How'd Lucas Like The Cook's Tale

There's not actually a lot to say about The Cook's Tale. I mean, it seems like it'll be in better humor than The Reeve's Tale, but it almost seems like Chaucer never finished it because he realized that he'd just started a third consecutive tale about someone in a specific profession being cuckolded and thought that it might start to get repetitive. That's all I have to say on this one.

All right, those were the Canterbury Tales of Ribaldry. It's also the end of the First Fragment. Next month I'll actually be covering something I've never read before, because the next prologue and tale are those of the Man of Law. Until next month.

Links:

So, one thing I learned about Chaucer recently is that he settled a charge of rape against Cecily Chaumpaigne in 1380. There's apparently some ambiguity in how the term "raptus" was used in English law at the time (referring to either rape or abduction). Not trying to cancel Chaucer or anything, but it does seem relevant to the way consent is depicted in these particular tales.