Sexual and practical jokes play a large part in the Millers Tale, for example Alison tricking Absolon into kissing her ‘arse’, this idea however comes from a raucous Middle English song called ‘Old Hogan’s Adventure’. The fact that Nicholas is short and brawny in his manner and speech contrast his feminist presentation at the start of the tale. The three characters of Nicholas John and the wife Absolon fit securely into the fabliau theme of the ‘love triangle’ a plot that always lends itself to sexual jokes. One of the best jokes in the Miller’s Tale is the way the characters use the language oaf courtly love to gain their selfish lustful ends, a major theme in many Fabliau tales. Nicholas and Absolon called Alison ‘leman’, sweetheart, and Alison speaks of Nicholas’s courtesy which we don’t take seriously. This is a contrast to the seriousness of love in the Knights Tale. It also reminds us that the purpose of courtly love in the end is of a sexual nature. Classic Fabliau targets for jokes are the religious in this case it is John who believes Nicholas’s tale of the ‘flood’ the tale also makes fun of John’s beliefs, gullible ‘fools’ such as John and Absolon who because of their foolishness are punished by Nicholas’s and in a sense Alison’s cunning. John is a good Carpenter; but he is naive in that Nicholas was able to persuade him about the oncoming flood. He is also irrational by thinking that he can keep his young wife contented. His punishment is a broken arm and whilst he was asleep his lodger was making love to his wife.
The characters of Nicholas, Absolon and John are all different personalities but their social status is akin to a Fabliau, in the sense that they are realistic and lower / middle class since the target audience for the tale in Chaucer’s time would not have been ‘common’ this is shown by the tales courtly form. But the jokes and themes may have surprised much more upper class people, to which the Miller apologies before he even begins. Many critics have argued that the tale must have been for the bourgeois, indicating that they had a strong appetite for them to be satirized in literature. The tale has no moral to this story, although many things are held up for ridicule Usually an older figure in this case John is cuckolded by a younger man whom the older man has himself brought into the house, this shows another characteristic of the Fabliau.
When Chaucer was writing the Canterbury Tales he used well known story structures from the ‘Middle Ages’, the triangle relationship between Old John, his young wife, and the lodger, recurs many times in literature since. Even to the present day, much scorn is made of mature men who marry young girls, and who cannot satisfy their needs. For the language Chaucer uses colloquial expressions and segments of conversations he over heard, this makes the Canterbury Tales an unbiased reference for ‘Middle Ages’. Fabliaux usually are told by mouth therefore there are not many written down.
All the three male characters in The Millers Tale suffer because of their lust for the only female character Alison. Because of there different personalities they all approach Alison in different ways. Ending with a succession of practical jokes with the red hot poker searing Nicholas’s behind, the flood and the joke of Absolon kissing Alison’s behind, this maybe seen scatological humour another trait of the fabliau. The tale is ribald in context; farce is a obvious form of humour in the Miller Tale as is irony. Chaucer plays off text against text to create ironic effect, the carpenter is a perfect ironic remedy to the Mi8ller’s advice of in the prologue, we learn that the best way for husbands to avoid being cuckolded is to; “An hoiusbonde shal nat been inqiusityf / Of Goddes pryvetee, nor of his wyf.” The three male characters in the Miller’s tale conform very well to the personalities and themes of the fabliau. But Chaucer changes his characters so they do not completely match genre, as we have seen with their different conventions and methods of acquiring their goals, Nicholas is direct and straight forward, Absolon is indirect and foolish and hence gets punished for it and John is honest and gullible and does not have Alison at the top of his list.
