Fabliau Parody Of The Knight's Tale

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales offers a multilevel examination of class dynamics in Medieval Society. Chaucer’s pretense of a pilgrimage allows him to unite individuals from disparate social standings as they travel towards the Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett. Despite their common purpose and destination, the unity of the travelling band is still segregated according to class. Both Chaucer the narrator and the Host clearly respect the social hierarchy: the narrator’s portraits and the Host’s order of the storytelling are arranged by rank. However, the socially removed setting of the pilgrimage allows divisive class lines to blur as the Miller interrupts the prescribed social order to quyte the Knight’s tale.
His tale, responds to and matches the Knight’s romance with an unconventional fabliau parody of the Knight’s romantic tale. In particular, his characterization of Absalon acts as a critique of the Knight’s lovelorn characters. Nicholas and Alisoun’s frankly sexual relationship simultaneously thwarts the pretenses of wooing and calls into question the realism of Arcite and Palamon pining for a woman they’ve never met. The Miller’s fabliau parody also justifies quyting by privileging cunningness over the immorality of revenge and his own tale can be seen as a playful attempt to quyte the Knight’s tale by displaying his own cleverness. Chaucer’s readers would also recognize that the Miller is successfully quyting the Knight’s tale in that he is conducting himself according to his rank. The Miller’s use of vulgarity and obscenity is both a resistance to and refuge from, courtly culture’s ideals of romance. Thus the Miller’s lewd tale is not only appropriate for his low-class status, but his emphasis on the crude aspects of seduction quytes the Knight’s tale by transforming his idyllic tale of courtly love into an object of