The Miller’s Tale

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.