The Miller’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (Book Analysis)

This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of The Miller’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer. It provides a thorough exploration of the tale’s plot, characters and main themes, as well as a useful introduction to the medieval genre of the fabliau. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time.

This clear and detailed 48-page reading guide is structured as follows:

• Biography of Geoffrey Chaucer
• Presentation of The Miller’s Tale
• Summary of The Miller’s Tale
• Character study
  • The Miller
  • John, the carpenter
  • Alisoun, the youthful wife
  • Nicholas, a scholar
  • Absolon, a clerk
• Analysis of The Miller’s Tale
  • Genre: fabliau
  • Religion
  • Secrecy

About The Miller’s Tale

The Miller’s Tale is one of the first stories in The Canterbury Tales. It consists of two parts, the Prologue and the Tale. In the Prologue, the Miller is introduced as a member of a group of travelers, who claims that he will tell a noble tale for his compatriots… but that he is very drunk, and may get some details wrong. His Tale centers on an elderly carpenter and his young, beautiful wife, Alisoun, who embarks on an affair with the scholar lodging with them while also rebuffing the advances of the local parish clerk. The carpenter’s jealousy forces Alisoun and the scholar to come up with increasingly imaginative schemes to escape his notice, which sets the stage for a series of amusing misadventures.

About Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was a courtier and diplomat in medieval England, who rose to occupy a relatively high position in the royal court in spite of his humble origins. He is best known as the author of The Canterbury Tales, a collection of fables presented as stories told by a group of pilgrims to entertain themselves on their journey. The Canterbury Tales are one of the oldest surviving examples of literature written in Middle English, and as such hold tremendous literary and cultural value. Indeed, Chaucer is credited with the popularization of new vocabulary, which was often borrowed from Greek, Latin or Arabic, and as such can be said to have shaped the development of the English language itself.