A Comparison and Contrast between The Miller and The Merchant's Tales
By Lorena Costilla
need some feedback on my essay. So far i have this could you help me, please?
When comparing these two stories from the Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, the fabliau is the first to come out to our mind. Both stories are intended to please the lower classes and to criticize marriage and church in the fourteen century. Chaucer uses the drunken miller to represent the lower classes and their taste for indecent stories. On the other hand, the merchant is meant to criticize married life, as the character himself hates every minute he has spent with his wife. All in all, both tales share some basic similarities related with the fabliau, but, at the same time, it is their differences, which appeals more to the reader attention.
To begin with, the tale narrated by the miller is about John, an old carpenter, who is married to an eighteen-year-old girl named Allison. This carpenter is portrayed as a rich ignorant person of advanced age who feared to be cuckolded similar to the fabliau common theme. Allison is depicted through a physical description of her body, the same as a material object She is beautiful and wild. To correspond to the fabliau form, there is also Nicholas, the young astronomy student, which talent is to make love and wants to have sex with Allison. There is a four character in this story, Absolon, the clerk. Chaucer uses him to criticize church corruption, because he likes to give presents to young beautiful girls and song love songs to Allison.
The story develops when Nicholas convinces Allison to plot against her husband in order that they can have sex. The carpenter is convinced that a flood is coming and that if he wants to be safe he must sleep separated from his wife in hanging tubs. When the night of the plan comes, Allison and Nicholas go down together and have sex after John has fallen asleep. Then, Absolon, who is also infatuated with Allison ask her for a kiss and receives a fart in his face as reward. Being humiliated, Absolon takes revenge by burning Allison's bottom; however, it is the bottom of Nicholas that is burned. The carpenter hears Nicholas' screams and believes is the flood. But he realized of the events and is humiliated in front of his neighbors. He has been cuckolded. It is by this final scene that the fabliau is complete. From the teller to the tale, from the low class miller to the indecent and humorous story, Chaucer's fabliau shows not only an excellent handling of this style of writing and his idea of marriage in those days, but also his dissatisfaction with corrupted church members and there doing.
Unlike The Miller's, the merchant is not intended to tale a humorous story, but a warning to those who desire to marriage. Following the style of fabliau and similar to The Miller's Tale, the main character is an old rich man. However, his social class is different, he is a knight. Consequently, we are presented with a well-learned man. His name is January. In contrast to the carpenter from the miller's, the knight is not marry, but he desire to be so. May is the young wife under twenty and she is the same in most aspect to Allison, the carpenter's wife. She is chosen because of her tender and voluptuous body. The third character is the young squire Damian who is unhappy with wedding. As against the miller's fabliau, The Merchant's Tale has more characters, like Placebo and Justinus, the god Pluto and goddess Proserpine his wife. These minor characters give their views with exemplifications of the Bible or of philosophy on marriage. Placebo opinion is supporting the decision of marriage and uses Solomon words to support the decision, but only because was decide by his Lord January:'Do all things by advice... and then you'll have no reason to repent'(p381), whereas Justinus is against marriage and supported his opinion with Seneca philosophy:'it's always better to think things twice'. Pluto and Proserpine discuss about man and woman roles and virtues. They contribute with the reasons the merchant gives about getting married or not, but he does not make fun of his characters as expected.
The merchant's tale develops in similar way to the Miller's. The younger wife plots with the squire against January for meeting in the garden and have sex. However, The gods see these actions and interfere, the God Pluto allowed the blind January to recover his view to see his treacherous wife in action. In opposed to this, Proserpine gives the wife the power of word to convince January that he is mistaken. Finally, with this end, the merchant's tale differs from the miller's tale in the fact that is not a humorous tale, just indecent. In Miller's, Allison is treacherous and certainly not forgiven, the fool John is humiliated in front of the neighbors for trusted in the premonition that Nicholas give, and Nicholas himself ends in pain. Whereas, May gets January continues trusting in her and Damian has the opportunity to continue plotting to have sex with the clever May. This end shows that some truth of the high social class, anyone receives a punishment for their actions nor public humiliation.
Concluding, by comparing these two tales of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, we see that he mastered both the humorous fabliau style as well in the less humorous but alike indecent merchant's tale and by the stricken differences between the two of them he represented the conventions of the time.
Please any help is welcome
Lorena
I suggest you run the piece through a spell check program such as Word or the Mozilla web browser, and run through the piece one more time to check for other errors. I made comments on some instances of errors, but put in bold other instances of them for you to correct. Your content is very good, and once you make these mechanical corrections, you will have a very good piece. Nice work.
thanks very much could you check if this part i change the conclusion and if my my bibliography is ok.Last question Do you think my work fullfills the MLA standart for papers.
Concluding, by comparing these two stories of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, It is clear they were intended to entertain the audience with obscene pranks as well as the less comic but alike indecent stories plus a negative treatment of women. However, the differences that exist on both remark Chaucer's views of the conventions of his time.
Bibliography
- Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Miller's Tale," The Canterbury Tales.
- Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Merchant's Tale," The Canterbury Tales.
- David Daiches. A Critical History of English Literature. 2nd edition volume I, 1960
- Dictionary online.
answers.com/topic/fabliau Accessed3rd Nov. 2008
- Wikipedia online, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%27s_Tale Accessed 2008
- Wikipedia online, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant%27s_Prologue_and_Tale Accessed 2008
-Essay Forum
essayforum.com/1_3176_0.html Accessed 2nd & 3rd Nov. 2008
thanks
Good evening.
Make sure you are capitalizing only proper nouns and the first words of sentences. Your bib, if using MLA citation, should be a "Works Cited" page, and doesn't quite conform to all of the MLA requirements. For examples, search for "MLA examples" in your internet search engine. There are many great guides out there that can help you fine tune this page.
Best of luck!
