Chaucer's use of biblical material in ‘The Miller’sTale’.

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CHAUCER’S USE OF BIBLICAL MATERIAL IN ‘The Miller’s Tale’

The biblical references and implications in ‘The Miller’s Tale’ mockingly inter-relate the tale’s sexual and vulgar content and its religious elements.  It is a parody on and critique of the Church, mocking all sacred: the stories from the Bible, the saints, even the Holy Family.  

The ‘dronken’ miller commences his tale in ‘Pilates voys’, implying that the story will be condemning Christianity, since Pilates, according to the Bible, has condemned Jesus with his words.   As the scholar clerk Nicholas and parish clerk Absolon represent St. Nicholas and Absalom, Son of David, miller sinfully compares two saints with two lustful and immoral men, who are concerned more with secular than the spiritual matters. Since carpenter John metaphorically represents Joseph and Noah, and his young wife Alison therefore represents Virgin Mary and Noah’s wife, the miller this time immorally correlates Joseph/Noah and Virgin Mary/Noah’s wife with a madman and a promiscuous, sly wife, when the Church forbids promiscuous behavior and implies that mad behavior is associated with the Satan.  

Further religious mocking is portrayed by the actions of Nicholas in the tale, as he does exact the opposite of what St. Nicholas did.  While St. Nicholas was very zealous in his efforts to maintain ecclesiastical discipline and honor, especially in relation to the marriage laws, Nicholas the clerk has no concern for honor and respect toward marriage, as he is successfully pursuing a married woman.  When one Countess left her husband for a paramour, St. Nicholas commanded that she should be excommunicated unless she returned to her husband.  Nicholas in ‘The Miller’s Tale’, however, is even using religion to break the sanctity of marriage and influencing Alison to commit adultery, a sin. Nicholas, the clerk, invokes and manipulates the biblical story of Noah and the flood to convince the ignorant carpenter John of the impending flood, and further advance his own plan to sleep with Alison. By using his knowledge and religious references to invoke authority, Nicholas is successful in his deception, since the carpenter does not doubt the teaching of the Church. Furthermore, Nicholas hypocritically tells John that he and Alison must abstain from sleeping together because they will be awaiting God’s grace. John believes everything Nicholas says; even that Nicholas is so knowledgeable that he knows God’s business.  John’s knowledge, on the other hand, is limited, as he does not know there was no mention of Second Flood in the Bible, or that Noah built only one boat, not an additional one for his wife, nor does he know much about Noah’s Arc, as his confusion of ‘Noees flood’ and ‘Noweles flood’ (line 710) shows.   Carpenter John then agrees to make three boats, so that his wife Alison, Nicholas and John himself can be saved from the flood.  Although Nicholas presents the story of Noah’s flood as very similar to the story in the Bible, frequently calling upon ‘Goddes privetee’ and ‘Goddess grace’ to validate his reasoning, the story he tells contrasts greatly the story in the Bible.  The original story helps to explain the power and compassion of God, since God sent Noah the flood because man had become corrupt and lecherous.  These same sins are causing this fake ‘flood’, thus strengthening Satan, and this time the plan is Nicholas’. In this way, Nicholas uses the sacredness of religion to pursue his private erotic-aesthetic sensual pleasures, with no sacredness attached; therefore he almost embodies Satan.  Bible is degraded, in this way, being portrayed as only a tale book, one of many texts which can be played with and rewritten. Although the carpenter shows genuine fear of the flood and says it’s not men’s business to know about God’s secret affairs, suggesting he respects and fears the power of God, by placing his complete trust in Nicholas, embodiment of Satan, he destroys his own piety.    Like a joke on God, Nicholas does know God’s secret affairs and what the future will bring. Nicholas further states that his plan will work because a clerk can fool a carpenter any day – a class distinction and condescension in contrast with the teachings of the Church.  The entire scene encompasses several sins.  First, the whole story is a lie and thus a sin.  Lust, another sin, serves as the driving force behind this lie. Finally, Nicholas and Alison’s intercourse out-of-wedlock for pleasure serves as the sinful result of the story.  The miller therefore contorts the most holy image of Noah into a dreadful satanic scene of the tale. The fact that a man such as Nicholas sings ‘Angelus ad Virgenum’ is itself mocking of the Church.  

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Carpenter John’s wife Alison portrays promiscuous behavior almost continuously throughout the tale; from the sinful encounter with Nicholas, agreement to deceit her husband to her indulge in adultery.  When Nicholas tells her to sleep with him immediately, or he will ‘spille’ (l.170) so ‘God [him] save’, it is another pun on religion as this ‘spille’ could perhaps mean ‘waste the seed’, God forbid, as opposed to depositing it with Alison’s ‘mercy’ (180). Right after she and Nicholas made a plan how to arrange their next adulterous encounter, Alison goes to church, juxtaposing the profane and the sacred in the same ...

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