Hello ladies and gents,
I'm going to take a stab at this, even though I don't know exactly what is proper for this blog and what is not. I finished reading through the "Miller's Tale" and "Reeve's Tale" and was struck by how well each of the three tales we have read so far (including the "Knight's Tale", that is) fit inside what are rather cliché story-types. We have already discussed in class that the "Knight's Tale" follows the template of the romance: war, love, kill the guy, get the girl, yada yada yada. And this is a template that reoccurs again and again, even in our culture (cue A Knight's Tale [2001], which you must see if you have not done so before). We can contemplate the various reasons for the popularity of the romance, but few would argue that various forms of the romance, particularly thanks to Disney, return to enrich (or haunt?) our lives again and again.
Now, what I found remarkable is that the "Miller's Tale" and "Reeve's Tale" also exhibit the basic features of story-types that are practically ever-present in mainstream culture, especially in film. The "Miller's Tale" can certainly be read as an early, vulgar, slapstick comedy. Early because, well, Chaucer is old; vulgar because, let's be frank, farts; slapstick because, SPLAT, the ol' carpenter just fell off the roof (and in a tub, no less). There are so many modern movies, most of which I don't particularly enjoy, that could be fit into this category. The rogue gets the girl and the more innocent, stupid characters are the laughing stock of the audience, who, like the listening pilgrims, know they can laugh at the story, but know also that it would be socially irresponsible to laugh at such events if they actually happened.
Finally, there is the "Reeve's Tale," which is nothing less and nothing more than a story of revenge (interestingly, shared in order enact revenge). Here, too, there are many modern adaptions of the "revenge" template. One, which I find especially dreadful, is the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo, a film that excludes all the ambiguities and complexities of the original story to make it a rote "eye for an eye" narrative.
I wonder whether the rest of you also noticed how "normal" these stories appear. Normal, that is, in form, although perhaps not in content. They reveal that some of the forms in which we still communicate/tell stories, by which we are still entertained, and, therefore, which we still internalize, have at least existed since Chaucer's time. I am curious whether it is The Canterbury Tales, though, that really cemented these forms in the public's mind. Granted, there are examples of revenge stories from before, too, but often they have more to do with sustaining honor than being a response of pure ire (Think of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon literature. Here thanes and kings tend to be protecting their own established honor or that of their kingdom. The reeve and his characters are hardly thinking of honor in the way in which they enact revenge: e.g., rape doesn't usually make one seem an upstanding fellow). Christopher Cannon articulates the same query when he considers that "simply having so many copies of the same work in circulation tends to homogenize taste" (38). Do we have Chaucer to thank, in part, for these three forms of narrative that are still so popular today, or is there a better explanation?
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