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

This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of The Reeve’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 46-page reading guide is structured as follows:

• Biography of Geoffrey Chaucer
• Presentation of The Reeve’s Tale
• Summary of The Reeve’s Tale
• Character study
  • The Reeve
  • Symkyn, the miller
  • The miller’s wife
  • Malyne, the miller’s daughter
  • John and Aleyn, two students
• Analysis of The Reeve’s Tale
  • Genre: fabliau
  • From words to action
  • Measure for measure

About The Reeve’s Tale

The Reeve’s Tale is the third story in The Canterbury Tales. It is narrated by the Reeve Osewald, who interprets the preceding The Miller’s Tale as a personal attack on carpenters (and therefore on him, as he was formerly a carpenter), and so retaliates with a tale in which an unscrupulous miller is humiliated by two students. The tale is notable as the first recorded instance of a writer recording another dialect in speech, with the students’ marked northern accents.

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 popularisation 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.