How Does Chaucer Use Humor In The Millers Tale

While you would be hard pressed to deny/ignore the heavily present humor in the Millers Tale, which earns it the title of a fabliau, it is also critical to consider the ways in which Chaucer contradicts these moments with instances of seriousness. One thing the Miller’s Tale makes absolutely clear is that it’s difficult to discern between what is light-hearted and fun compared to what is meaningful and moral telling. However, identifying that this contradiction exists is only the beginning. Further dissection of the work proves to make the point that each example of humor interruption with points of seriousness serves a specific purpose and is overall useful to understanding the story. Considering the character of John, the carpenter, will begin the discussion, as he is one of the first characters that we are introduced to. He is living a relatively normal life; in essence, his story is grounded in facts that would not lend …show more content…
The finale of Allison and Nikolas’s elaborate, and admittedly funny, scheme is John, an old man, lying broken both mentally and physically, his home destroyed, his neighbors thinking he is crazy, and his wife cuckolded. The play tells us “he lay, bothe pale and wan; For with the fal he brosten hadde his arm; But stonde he moste unto his owne harm” (631-634). Here Chaucer is directly pointing us to the fact that even though the play was funny, all that is left behind is destruction and no one got what they set out to get in the end. The final lines describe for us what the characters did get, however, “Thus swyved was the carpenteres wyf, For al his keping and his Ialousye; And Absolon hath kist hir nether yë; And Nicholas is scalded in the toute” (664-667). The moral being that it’s all fun and games until it goes too far and people’s lives are