MIllers tale
Courtly Love in Chaucer and Marie de France In his The Miller's Tale Chaucer presents a side of the courtly love tradition never seen before. His characters are average middle class workers rather than elite nobility. There is an interesting comparison between the Miller's characters and those in two of Marie de France's lais that share very close plot lines. Instead of being idealized Chaucer's characters are gritty. Instead of being involved in "courtly love" there is some evidence that the relationship between Alison and Nicholas is one of lust. Chaucer's use of the lower class makes the absurdity of what they are doing stand out. In the lais of Marie de France, Guigemare and Yonec, are built on the same archetype which is the same as Chaucer's Miller's tale uses. Marie's lais can give provide a set of "ground rules" for this archetype. The two lais share several similar elements. They both contain the same three central characters, who possesses fundamental similarities, the same beginning plot line and several of the same themes. The first character shared by the two lais is the story's villain, the aged husband. He is a powerful lord who is much older than his wife. Because he is conscious of this fact, he worries constant
When he awakens to hear Absalom singing to his wife he does nothing. Chaucer's lovers are dirty, animal like and raucous. 49) Obviously fidelity is important, but not forced fidelity. He says: "People should marry according to their condition,/ for youth and age are often at odds. But in Alison's refusal there is no apparent support for her actions shortly thereafter. " He is described as being afflicted by love, and says he will die without it. At no point in Guigemare or Yonec do you get the feeling that the women will refuse either of their lovers. But instead, of being punished they get away with their affair. 155) Alison seems quite adamantly opposed to becoming Nicholas' lover here, as opposed to the wife in Yonec, who simply needs proof that her lover to be is Christian. Absalom, on the other hand, possesses many more of the qualities that one would expect that a lover in a story about courtly love would have. He does not lock his wife up in a tower and stay far away from her. He will go to any extent for his true love. Possibly the reason for Alison's shifting actions is due to Chaucer's image of women at the time, as was argued against by Christine de Pisan.
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Acceptance Essays
