The Miller Parodies of the Knight's Tale
The miller parodies the Knight’s Tale in several different ways. He
cleverly achieves this through his description of the characters, the
style in which the story is told and the way in which the characters
conduct themselves in the tale.
The style in which the miller begins his tale is similar to the style
in which the Knight begins his tale. The style used is fairy tale
like, as the miller starts his story with-‘once upon a time.’ The
miller did this deliberately to mock and parody the Knight’s Tale.
The Knight’s scrupulous idealism presents a stark contrast to the
miller’s coarse parody of idealistic and romantic valour. Similarly
framed by a love triangle, the miller employs the same structure as
the Knight. The Knight’s tale involves Arcite and Palamon who are
cousins who both fall in love with Emily. Likewise, the miller’s tale
involves a love triangle which is between Alison, Nicholas who is an
astrology student and Absolon who is a parish clerk.
The suitors in the two tales articulate their love
characteristically. Arcite pines away in prison for Emily, ‘before me,
sorweful, wrecched creature, out of this prisoun help that we may
scapen and if so be my destynee be shapen by eterne word to dyen
inprisoun.’ This suggests that he would rather die than not be near
Emily. Similarly, Nick speaks like a courtly lover when he woos
Alison. He states ‘lemman, love me al atones, or I wol dyen, also God
me save!’ He is saying that Alison must love him immediately or else
he will die. Here, the miller is mocking the courtly love procedure.
Unlike Arcite and Palamon who woo Emily over a...
... middle of paper ...
... simile which is clearly chosen to stress
her sexual attractiveness.
However, Emily is portrayed as meek, fresh, pure and gentle. She is
fairer than the ‘lylie upon his stalke grene’ and ‘fressher than the
may with floures newe.’ This accentuates her purity and innocnece.
Equally, Alison is compared to a flower-‘primerole.’ Primrose is a
flower that ripens early in Spring. This connote that Alison is fully
developed yet of a young age.
Alison is clothed in silk, which is an expensive material that is not
commonly worn by carpenter’s wives. Silk was used for the embroidery
on Alison’s smock, headband and for the tassels on her purse. These
references to the richest and smoothest materials hint at the
attractive body underneath.
All in all, the miller is very successful in parodying the Knight’s
tale.
This passage displays a tone of the men’s respect and sense of protection toward Emily, which is very different from the other women’s reaction to her death. It also shows the reader that Emily was honorable in the eyes of the men of the town. We have seen this need to protect women throughout history, but in recent years there has been a great decline and it is sad.
In 1953, Arthur Miller wrote his famous play The Crucible, in response to a fear of Communism that had developed in the United States during that decade. The "Red Scare", as it was later called by historians was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose paranoia of a communist takeover spread through the nation like a wildfire. Men and women alike fell victim to McCarthy's pointed finger and as a result of this hysteria, were mostly deported from the country, their careers and lives ruined.
Context: This part of the text is included at the beginning of the drama, telling the audience about Salem and its people. The author explains how a theocracy would lead to a tragedy like the Salem witch-hunts. This is the initial setting and is based on the principle that some people should be included and some excluded from society, according to their religious beliefs and their actions. This is basically the idea that religious passion, taken to extremes, results in tragedy. Miller is saying that even today extremes end up bad- communism, like strict puritans, was restrictive and extreme. It only made people suffer.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are filled with many entertaining tales from a variety of characters of different social classes and background. The first two tales told, by the knight and the miller, articulate very different perspectives of medieval life. Primarily, The tales of both the knight and the miller bring strikingly different views on the idea of female agency, and as we will discover, Chaucer himself leaves hints that he supports the more involved, independent Alison, over the paper-thin character of Emily.
Did you know that 34% of the total population of homeless people are under the age of 24? In 2014 a survey was conducted where they found that most of the homeless youth was with their family, but 45,205 of them were by themselves. In America alone, there are more than 3.5 million people that have experienced homelessness. The Crucible by Arthur Miller has many similarities and differences to the homeless people in America. The witches in The Crucible were being treated poorly because of false accusations without any proof. Homeless people are treated poorly because society was once known to pretend to be homeless to get extra money, giving them a bad reputation. Society stands up for the homeless than they did for the witches in The Crucible.
Arthur Miller is a famous play writer who also wrote a couple of novels. His works were extremely popular around world war two, and still are famous today. He was born on October 17, 1915 in New York (Gale database). After a long and successful writing career he died on February 10, 2005 in Roxbury, Connecticut (Gale database). Miller went to the University of Michigan in 1934 to achieve a degree in Journalism (Gale database). Miller first started writing when he was at The University of Michigan. In 1947 his first play “All my Sons” opened on Broadway. After his opening on Broadway, Miller’s work began to spread and it started to become famous. Miller’s next work “Death of a salesman” won him the Pulitzer Price. Then Miller started studying the Salem witchcraft trials and decided to write a play on it, and it was the right decision because it brought him major fame. The thoughts that Miller had about the reasons why he wrote the play is what brought him the fame. Miller was a big family man which was why he won father of the year in 1949 (Gale database). He had had two kids with his college sweetheart from Michigan. Her name was Mary Salttery. Miller and Mary divorced, and then he married Marilyn Monroe in 1956, but it was a quick marriage that ended when they divorced in 1961 (Gale database). The three works that Miller wrote that are listed above are not the only plays he wrote, but they were the most popular of his works, and they were the three plays that brought him most of his fame. Miller’s way of writing had a way of moving people, and his plays brought his writing to life which made his work even more real and impacting to his readers. Miller is an outstanding play writer that has many interesting ways of writing that...
Alison in the Miller's Tale and May of the Merchant's Tale are similar in several ways. Both are young women who have married men much older than themselves. They both become involved with young, manipulative men. They also conspire to and do cuckold their husbands. This is not what marriage is about and it is demonstrated in both tales. What makes the Miller's Tale bawdy comedy and the Merchant's tale bitter satire is in the characterization. In the Miller's tale we are giving stereotyped characters. The principals are cardboard cut-outs sent into farcical motion. The Merchant's Tale gives us much more background and detail of the character's lives. The reader is more involved and can feel their situations. Here we will focus on the two women of each tale and how they demonstrate this difference.
“He is a storyteller, a man with a marvelous memory, a simple man with a capacity for wonder, concerned with people and ideas” (The Paris Review). He is Arthur Miller. Born on October 17, 1915, Miller entered the world in Harlem, New York City. At age nineteen Miller wrote his first play. His passion for playwrights led him into the theater world inevitably leading him to meeting and marrying his second wife, Marilyn Monroe. Miller wrote the play, The Crucible, as an allegory of McCarthyism. Unlike most of his plays, The Crucible, was a dramatized historical play. In a interview, Miller stated that, with this play he “ was completely freed by the period [he] was writing about [...] It was a different diction,
Though Chaucer showed multiple tales of various characters in The Canterbury Tales, the Miller’s and Wife of Bath’s tale surpassed them all on their concept of marriage and love. Both allow the reader to understand where they are coming from and their perception. While one does not seem to believe too much in love, the other does. However, both clearly believe that women control the game of love in their own respective ways.
The devil is defined as being a spirit or power of evil. In the play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, numerous citizens of Salem Village are prosecuted and convicted for having made contact with the devil. While historically, the Salem Witch Trials were an effect of greed and vengeance and are said to be false, the devil was indeed present in the town of Salem; he takes the shape of a young girl named Abigail Williams. Abigail depicts her evil spirit and coalition with the devil though her deception of anyone willing to listen, her irrational behavior, and her immoral actions, which directly defy the Puritan church.
Arthur Miller, in his plays, deals with the injustice of society's moral values and the characters who are vulnerable to its cruelty. A good majority of these plays were very successful and earned numerous awards. According to Brooks Atkinson, a critic for the New York Times, Miller's play Death of a Salesman was successful because the play "is so simple in style and so inevitable in theme that it scarcely seems like a thing that has been written and acted. For Mr. Miller has looked with compassion into the hearts of some ordinary Americans and quietly transferred their hopes and anguish to the theater" (Babusci 1261). This play, in 1949, received the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Antoinette Perry Award, the Donaldson Award, and the Theater Club Award (A Brief Chronology of Arthur Miller's Life and Works, http://www.ibiblio.org/...). Miller has said that he could not have written The Crucible at any other time for it is said that a play cannot be successful unless it speaks to its own time; hence McCarthyism was widespread when this play was written. Everyone was afraid of Communists, just like everyone was afraid of witches during The Crucible. This play won the Antoinette Perry Award and the Donaldson Award (Bloom, Modern Critical Interpretations: Arthur Miller's The Crucible 55). His play All My Sons was concerned with a man, Joe Keller, selling defective cylinder heads to the Air Force during World War II, causing the death of twenty-one pilots, one of whom was his elder son. The play focuses around this act and the consequences that arise from it. The play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. All of Miller's plays focus on one central idea, this idea being ...
“Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay for a house. You finally own it, and there’s no one to live in it.” This line was from the 1949 play Death of a Salesman. In his early years Miller wrote plays, but none of them were produced. Death of a Salesman was not his first success, but was still widely admired. He grew to become one of the century’s greatest American dramatists. However this title was not easily achieved. After growing up in Harlem and working the Brooklyn Navy Yard to becoming a Pulitzer Prize winner, Arthur Miller is held with high respect. Miller had a lifelong dream. That dream was to become a famous playwright. With a lot of hard times and struggles, he reached his goal.
Arthur Miller states in his essay, "Tragedy and the Common Man," " . . . we are often held to be below tragedy--or tragedy below us . . . (tragedy is) fit only for the highly placed . . . and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied." However, Miller believes " . . . the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were" (1021). It is this belief that causes Miller to use a common man, Willie Loman, as the subject of his tragedy, Death of a Salesman. Miller redefines the tragic hero to fit a more modern age, and the product of this redefinition is Willie.
Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" should be tragic, because a lot of horrible things happen to the characters. The carpenter's wife is disloyal to him, sleeping with others and making fun of him with Nicholas. Also, he is depicted as a fool. However, readers get a humorous feeling from the story, rather than feeling sorry for the carpenter's unfair life. Chaucer makes the whole story come across as comic rather than tragic. This humor is created by the Miller's narration, the use of irony, the cartoon-like characters, and the twists of plot. These elements combine to produce an emotional distance which enhances the comic effect.
During the Middle Ages using the method of courtly love was very common. It was defined as a way of worshiping a woman to get their attention and love in a noble way by doing heroic deeds or just by giving the women gifts. Back then the most known courtly lovers were the knights for being known as very chivalrous and noble men. In “the Miller’s Tale”, the use of courtly love is the complete opposite of what it usually is. The story telling the story, in other words the miller makes a complete parody of courtly love and what it stands for, he makes it seem very vulgar by the way he talks about the characters in a very sexual manner and the deeds that the characters do throughout the story. I think this story was made for that purpose, to make a fool of what courtly love really is, because in reality the miller thinks that courtly love is just a waste of time and thinks it’s just foolishness to believe that love is really like that.