Chaucer's A-Z Quotes

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales a window to a time long lost opens for us to peer through. In the age of chivalry, there were knights, and guildsmen's honor and religion were held highly except for when friends killed each other or cheated on their 19-year-old wives with someone younger. So overall it was a great time. Throughout the novel, the reader follows a pilgrimage to pay respects to the late Saint Thomas Becket, who was murdered for being Catholic. His shrine is in Canterbury so the pilgrims meet at The Tabard Inn and prepare for the winding journey to Canterbury. Amongst the talking and merriment, the pub owner comes to investigate the source of the chatter. He sees the pilgrims and happily proposes a game to avoid boredom.

The Miller’s Tale and The Prologue all tie neatly into the overall makeup of the character we’ve come to know as the Miller. In the prologue, Chaucer shows the Miller with bagpipes, which according to ____ in Chaucer's A-Z were (reference here) an instrument that often represented passion and drunkenness among other unsavory things. The Miller’s short stature, red hair, and rough skin all paint him as a pretty gruff and immature character. Especially since the scientific community at the time associated Red hair and acne with a quick temper However, in the text Chaucer then goes on to describe The Miller as wiley and smart enough to cheat his clients and the other pilgrims out of things. In his Prologue, Chaucer tells us that The Miller has a gilded thumb; this is undoubtedly symbolism about how he cheats people out of their grain and money when they come to him for his services. The tale he tells amplifies all of these qualities since The Miller's Tale is about cheating, lying, stealing and violence. In the Miller’s Tale we also see Adultery when Allisoun is cheating on her husband in his bed. The Miller added the part about it happening in Allisoun and her husband's bed to introduce the shock factor and outshine the other previously told tales and hopefully win him the storytelling contest. This is why The Miller claimed he was too drunk to go first in the contest. This gave him an Opportunity to gauge the types of tales told by the others so he could tell a more outrageous tale than anyone who'd gone before him. Although he is in a lower social standing, Miller’s cunning ability shows throughout the story since most people tend to underestimate