The Miller’s Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

A bawdy romp from the Canterbury Tales

The Miller’s Tale is one of the best known and best loved of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, due to its “naughty” nature and the tight and pacey narration.

The Miller is the second pilgrim to tell a tale. The first of the pilgrims to do so was the Knight, who told a very long tale based on the medieval tradition of courtly love, according to which women are placed on a virtual pedestal and worshipped from afar. In the current case, the woman does not even know that she is the object of devotion for seven years!

The tale is full of long descriptions, speeches and prayers, with all the conventions of knightly chivalry being incorporated in a classical environment, with a few Graeco-Roman gods being thrown in for good measure.

And then the Miller makes his presence felt. What a contrast of mood! We suddenly turn from this gracious, probably elderly, knight, who is full of courtesy and good manners, to a man who is definitely from the working class, with no social graces at all, and who is roaring drunk into the bargain.

The host, who is keeping the pilgrims in line and making sure that they fulfil their bargain of each telling at least one tale, then turns to the Monk for the next story, but is rudely…