![]() The Miller's Tale is Chaucer's finest fabliaux indeed, it is the best of all the fabliaux in English or French. ![]() (Students reading this text for the first time may find an interlinear translation helpful.) The neighbors rush in, and all are convinced old John is mad. Nicholas puts his backside out, Absolon strikes it with the red-hot coulter, Nicholas yells for water the carpenter awakes and thinks the flood has come, cuts lose his tub and falls and breaks his arm. He gets a hot coulter (plow blade) from Gervase, the smith, and returns to ask for another kiss. She promises him a kiss and puts her backside out the window. They are interrupted by Absolon, who has come to woo Alisoun at the window. John goes to sleep, Alisoun and Nicholas go back to the bedroom. When the flood is due, all three climb up into the tubs. ![]() Nicholas tricks John into thinking that Noah's flood is coming again John rigs up three kneading tubs, in which he, Nicholas, and Alisoun can float until the waters recede. Absolon, the parish clerk and village dandy, also lusts for Alisoun, but he woos her in vain, for Nicholas is there first. He has a boarder, the clerk Nicholas, who makes advances to Alisoun she quickly agrees and they determine to consummate the affair. John, a rich old carpenter of Oxford has a young wife, the eighteen-year-old Alisoun, whom he guards carefully, for he is very jealous. ![]() And therwithal he brought us out of towne. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |