GEOFFREY CHAUCER

The Prologue and The Millers Tale

The General Prologue

Hierarchy exclusion Pilgrims- communitas Pilgrims- in between types and individuals; their self-fashioning via interaction (dialogues, small prologues, tales) Plurality of types plurality of discourses ( sermons, joyous sermons, fabliaux, allegoric tales, chivalric stories, moral tracts, romances)

Genenral Prologue 2
The frame structure of Boccacios Decameron Great variety of characters (see exclusion above), hierarchy and disruption of hierarchy Estate SATIRE- see the portriats of the Nun Prioress, the Monk, the Miller

The general prologue- the Miller

The Miller was a chap of sixteen stone, A great stout fellow big in brawn and bone His beard , like any sow or fox, was red And broad as well, as though it were a spade; And its very tip, his nose displayed A wart on which there stood a tuft of hair Red as the bristles in an old sows ear. His nostrils were as black as they were wide, He had a sword and buckler at his side, His mighty mouth was like a furnace door He was a master-hand at stealing grain.

THE MILLERS TALE

CARNIVAL TRADITION
Inversion : women, the body, carnival and uprisings The tradition of the Lord/Lady Misrule The carnivalesque body- the Grotesque References to images of adoration of Christ and the Holy Virgin and their inversion; the symbolics of the window

STRONG WOMEN (ON TOP)

Alison lecherous, yet stands for spring and natural laws; gets away with it The Wife of Bath description in misogynistic terms ; her desire for mastery; the mergent individual, Griselda- the perfect wife ( a model of submission); her martyrdom a source of power; Christ/Job figure