Dr. Michael Delahoyde
Washington State University

Prologue:

The ideal order breaks down into realistic randomness and the interplay of characters when the Miller intrudes on the Host's intended introduction of the Monk as the next teller of a tale. But the Host also instigates competition immediately, and one wonders what was it about the Knight's Tale that seems so open to "quyting."

Note the assumptions and antagonisms. The Reeve has moral objections in advance, already seems to hate the Miller, and may have a certain degree of occupational sensitivity. But everyone, including us, makes assumptions about the nature of the Miller and the coming tale.

Note the poses and disclaimers. The Miller admits he's drunk; but, slyly, whom does he implicate in that fault? Then our narrator apologizes too -- all this before the tale has even begun!

Tale:

A student once wrote accidentally but aptly: "The whole tale is a love triangle between three men and one woman."

The genre of tale is known as the fabliau. Fabliaux often do involve triangles between a wife, her lover, and a cuckolded husband, and they usually do amount to a sexual joke. The basic plot is familiar and the fabliau always compact -- nearly every line sets up the joke. Between 200 and 300 of these survive in French; in English, only a handful, and half are Chaucer's (the Miller's, the Reeve's, the Friar's, the Shipman's). But the fabliau is a courtly form with an aristocratic perspective that finds itself amused by rubes; it is not really common people's entertainment (just as The Beverly Hillbillies was not designed to target the Appallachian demographic). Part of the joke sometimes is that the low-class buffoons are cast into roles in which they attempt to imitate the manners of the court.

Consider the broken arm of the carpenter in the end of the story. How does the tale really fit the teller?