Who Is The Miller In The Canterbury Tales

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the physical characteristics and mannerisms of the storytellers help the audience to understand the background and shape the content of their story. Instead of describing the pilgrims’ particular professions, Chaucer specifies in the General Prologue their physical characteristics which signify aspects of their character. Within the troupe of pilgrims, the Miller takes on a larger than life persona which shapes his raunchy tale. The Narrator describes the Miller as a cheat, a bagpipe player, and a stout wrestler with red hair and a blue hood. These particularities of the Miller’s appearance demonstrate significant qualities about millers during the medieval time period. The General Prologue portraits
/ He was short-sholdred, brood, a thikke knarre” (548-49). The Miller’s athleticism comes from his physical build and his strenuous job. The idea that a rustic man, such as the Miller, excels at wrestling very realistically portrays an ordinary member of the medieval community. However, in terms of the plot development of the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s description of the Miller as an athletic wrestler places the Miller in competition with the Knight (Sememza 66). An additional detail that lends itself to the comparison of the Miller and the Knight is the Miller bearing “a swerd and bokeler . . .by his syde” (558) as evidence that conflict is inevitable (Miller 149). In the “Miller’s Prologue,” the Miller asserts, “I kan a noble tale for the nones, / With which I wol now quite the knyghtes tale” (3126-27). Though the Miller can craft the tale with the finesse of the Knight, his content reflects his own rustic sensibilities. The Miller places himself in competition with the Knight in a verbal wrestling match to prove his place in society (Semenza 72). Chaucer’s Miller interrupts the Monk in order to confront the Knight open a dialogue concerning the social gradation of the estates of temporal and spiritual
One theory about the Miller’s interruption of Chaucer’s predetermined order simply determines that “[t]he Millere, that for drunken was all pale” (Chaucer 3120). T.W. Craik agrees with this assertion that the Miller gets away with telling his tale before the Monk simply because he is drunk (Craik 1). However, this answer to why the Miller interrupts does not allow for any possibility of Chaucer’s social commentary. The Miller’s drunkenness might give Chaucer a pretense to hide his critique of the medieval estate. Chaucer assumes an ironical innocence in order to blame the Miller for the bawdiness and not the narrator or author (Craik