The Reeve can Play at That Game

"The Reeve's Tale" isn't as original as "The Miller's Tale" and arguably not as raunchy. The Reeve, who happens to also be a carpenter, gets revenge on the Miller for his tale about a cuckolded carpenter by telling one about a miller cuckolded even worse. It's not clear whether he interprets the Miller's Tale as a deliberate insult but his own tale is so full of gratuitous spite it's funny. The Miller's carpenter is a jealous idiot, the Reeve's miller is a jealous idiot and a malicious thief. When he skims grain off a couple young scholars, their revenge is to ravage both his wife and his virgin daughter.

The miller's wife goes to the wrong bed because one of the scholars, John, moves the cradle from the foot of her bed to the foot of his. According to Wikipedia, there's some debate about whether the other scholar, Aleyn, rapes the daughter or if they have consensual sex. Considering he jumps her before she knows what's happening, I'd call it rape, albeit a rape she ends up enjoying. Which is the sort of thing that only happens in porn usually. In this case, it fits perfectly with the Reeve's thoroughly malicious narrative take-down.

"The Miller's Tale" was intended to "quite" the Knight's, you could look at it as a kind of revenge. The revenge of the average, uneducated man against the refinement of a higher class. The Reeve may have had the same thought and gives this little monologue to his miller when he plots to steal grain from the scholars:

This miller smyled of hir nycetee,
And thoghte, ‘al this nis doon but for a wyle;
They wene that no man may hem bigyle;
But, by my thrift, yet shal I blere hir yë
For al the sleighte in hir philosophye.
The more queynte crekes that they make,
The more wol I stele whan I take.
In stede of flour, yet wol I yeve hem bren.
“The gretteste clerkes been noght the wysest men,”
As whylom to the wolf thus spak the mare;
Of al hir art I counte noght a tare.’

The Reeve, as a serf but also an official who serves to administrate a lord's lands, is both lower class enough to join the fray and upper class enough to do it not quite so deftly, or with as much good humour.

Flood Avoided

I guess "The Miller's Tale" is the best known of The Canterbury Tales. It's the one literature professors hope will draw some interest from a sleepy classroom, boasting, as it does, a fart joke. The tale is sometimes invoked as a defence of scatological or lowbrow humour. It does show how futile it is to get on your high horse about this stuff--people will laugh at what they laugh at, sometimes against their own moral preference.
Just how often students laugh when Nicholas lets one rip in Absolom's face is another matter. The comedy is robbed of its timing by an audience whose grasp of even their contemporary English grows weaker every year. The same obtuseness makes the setup difficult to grasp. Part of the comedy is in how smooth Nicholas usually is and how fussy Absolom is. Yet, there is a timelessness about these gags.
"The Miller's Tale" is a rebuff to "The Knight's Tale", not only of its arguments, but its very premise. It rejects the notion that human nature resembles what the Knight depicts in his tale. The Knight spoke of two men vowing undying love for a woman at a distance. The Miller speaks of two men immediately seeking to fulfill physical urges and nothing more. Nicholas and Absolom don't even care that Alisoun is married, implying they don't really care about marriage or vows.
Knocking the legs of moral presumption out from under the Knight inevitably pokes holes in his tale's ultimate statement about fate. Gods and dukes may control the fates of the two rivals and the woman but that's only because they choose to place themselves above the moral chaos of "The Miller's Tale".
But is chaos all it's cracked up to be? You might call me a snob that I don't tend to laugh at lowbrow humour. I do appreciate it, as I do "The Miller's Tale", as part of a portrait of humanity. God knows people could benefit from taking themselves less seriously nowadays.
Twitter Sonnet #1493
A glowing paper passed the shady pen.
Where nothing drinks the food was ever dry.
For pleasing signs we rent a printed hen.
Upon the egg we swore to never die.
The myst'ry book was waiting near the beer.
The optic glass beheld the cooler stoop.
For nature's truth the plastics clearly fear.
We gather fruits to sell the rusty coop.
The pretty coat was crazy like a cape.
The second drink was juice or soda salt.
The city's small beside the giant ape.
The pointy building housed a golden vault.
The southern town was taped to western shows.
The gaudy head was thick with glowing bows.

Death Amid the Temples and Lists

I'd been thinking about death since this morning because the big beautiful spider by my balcony finally died, her enormous web having quickly grown tattered. So it seemed appropriate coming to the end of "The Knight's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales this morning and Theseus' speech about death.

Lo the ook, that hath so long a norisshinge
From tyme that it first biginneth springe,
And hath so long a lyf, as we may see,
Yet at the laste wasted is the tree.

Considereth eek, how that the harde stoon
Under our feet, on which we trede and goon,
Yit wasteth it, as it lyth by the weye.
The brode river somtyme wexeth dreye.
The grete tounes see we wane and wende.
Than may ye see that al this thing hath ende.

Of man and womman seen we wel also,
That nedeth, in oon of thise termes two,
This is to seyn, in youthe or elles age,
He moot ben deed, the king as shal a page;
Som in his bed, som in the depe see,
Som in the large feeld, as men may se;
Ther helpeth noght, al goth that ilke weye.
Thanne may I seyn that al this thing moot deye.

This is part of grim, beautiful speech that caps off a story about two knights battling for the love a woman, Emelye, they've never spoken to. I'm sure I'm not the first one to point out this is a story in which almost no-one gets to make their own decisions. Only Theseus and the gods, really. Theseus' speech is about "the great mover", or God, and perhaps he thinks of himself as the "small mover", a Duke occupying a different part of the same hierarchy.

Palamon and Arcite are captured by Theseus and, trapped in Theseus' tower, fall in love with Emelye, seeing her in the garden below. And the two men who swore a bond of brotherhood with each other very quickly become bitter enemies over the right to wed Emelye. Every time either one tries to get what he wants, the effort ultimately proves in vain. Even getting out of prison seems to make them both miserable.

We don't hear from Emelye until much later and then it's to find out that she would rather be a virgin the rest of her life than know the company of man. Diana herself manifests to tell Emelye she can't have what she wants, either. Diana, Venus, Mars, and Saturn engage in indirect negotiation. Death is the grand finale of a life over which one has no control, a final, immutable twist of fate. Theseus says it's admirable, at least, for a man to die in his prime, though he says this of a man who died falling off a horse. I suppose one could say that, since he fell due to hellfire summoned by Saturn himself, it was a pretty remarkable demise. Cold comfort for a burned man.

But I suppose all that background negotiation was a fair mirror for how marriage often really works in many cultures, past and present. Political or financial realities play a big part. Princess Mako might be marrying a lawyer but most people would agree a lawyer is still a good catch, bank-wise. In that light, all the fanfare and drama Theseus deliberately builds around the contest between Palamon and Arcite--and which Chaucer describes in beautiful detail--is a really lovely thing to do. By such art Theseus enriches the necessities of life.

I trowe men wolde deme it necligence,
If I foryete to tellen the dispence
Of Theseus, that goth so bisily
To maken up the listes royally;
That swich a noble theatre as it was,
I dar wel seyn that in this world ther nas.