I. The Miller’s intrusion into the arranged order of story telling: symbolic of the lower middle-class disruption of the former social structure.
II. Knowledge vs. Ignorance:
1. Marital fidelity: advantages and disadvantages.
2. God’s way of managing the world: obscurantism.
3. Science: prying into God’s secrets.
4. A dialectic without favoring either side.
III. Sinister reference to the Clerk and the Reeve:
1. The clerk as a meek target of other story tellers’ satirical jokes.
2. arguments among story tellers.
IV. Aristocratic Courtly Love versus Lower-class straightforward sexuality:
V. Amoral world of the tale:
1. All male characters suffering misfortunes of one kind or another, but Alison facing no form of punishment.