Maybe I just
don’t get offended as easily as I think I do, but I’m??? Not??? Offended???
Let’s go through the possible things with which one might take offense:
-Claiming God
told you something He didn’t: I suspect people do this all the time in real
life, and I’m a million times more concerned about that than about what one horny little clerk does in one story. As
for what said horny clerk (Nicholas) uses it for, well, he could’ve come up
with a different plan, but this is the one he went with. Honestly, I found the
setup to the story’s later antics a little dull.
-Mooning: Meh? The
miller is telling this story. For those of you who haven’t read the general
prologue, he tends toward lewd stories anyway. He’d probably be great at Cards
Against Humanity if he understood Modern English and all the cultural
references.
“Who is Michelle
Obama and what is it about his armes?”
“This card has
too many words. I cannot understand them alle.”
Anyway, I’m
actually glad that the hair on Alison’s rear end is portrayed as normal. People
have body hair! Who would’ve guessed?
-Accidental
butt-kissing: It was an ACCIDENT on that dork Absolon’s part. What part of
“Abak he stirte, and thoghte it was amis, / For wel he wiste a womman hath no
berd; / He felte a thing al rough and long y-herd, / And seyde, ‘Fy! Allas,
what have I do?’” do you not understand (3736-3739)?
-Farting: Meh? I
would just repeat what I said about mooning. Sure, it’s not the kind of thing you
want to read while eating, but . . . meh?
-Adultery: To the
students taking ENGL222, or whichever other class might read this:
As for us, we’re
more than halfway through ENGL284. We have read so many stories about people
cheating on their spouses and courting people who are already married that I’d
be surprised if anyone isn’t at least a little desensitized to such tales.
One more thing:
Would you agree that, out of everyone in this story, the carpenter John is most
similar in social status to the miller? Why do you think he told a story in
which a guy like him is so blindingly trusting of his horny clerk friend? Why
not make a fool of the educated clerk? My guess is the miller is making a bit
of fun of his upper-class and better-educated travel companions. Sure, Nicholas
might be clever, but he is committing adultery (which they all would have
claimed to disapprove of) and he gets his butt burned with a hot poker. Then
there’s Absolon, who’s just a doof throughout this entire story (though burning
Nicholas’s butt with a hot poker was a quality move there).
Considering all
this, would you want to hear more stories from the miller? I might, just as
along as I’m not eating while listening!
Chaucer,
Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales.
Edited by V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
2005.
I pledge that I
have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this assignment.
Miranda A.
Barrientos
