Romance as a genre has two basic plots: the adventure plot and the love plot. In these plots, there is usually an individual hero who is on a quest. The hero, usually a knight, encounters one or more others. The two most important others are the public other and the private other. The public other competes with the outside worlds, such as: enemies, animals, monsters, strange environments and adverse conditions. The private other involves attraction, love and sex. The public other connects with the adventure plot and the private other connects with the love plot.
While romances are usually written for an “aristocratic audience” (Morgan, 500) the fabliau is not: “The fabliaux are the product of a bourgeois culture and the intended audience of the fabliaux is bourgeois audience” (Morgan, 499). Fabliau is a short comic tale in verse, where simple but obscure language is used. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight is a medieval romance. In this story, there are idealized characters like knights and lady’s, there is an individual hero on a quest and the style of the text is alliterative and complex. The factors that make Sir Gawain and The Green Knight a romance is why labeling Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale as a romance is incorrect, the genre that belongs to this story is fabliau. The Miller’s Tale is a fabliau, because in comparison with the idealized characters as knights and lady’s in a romance the characters are real people, they have ordinary jobs and do not belong to a royal