Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas

The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...

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This is the Reeve's Prologue from Geoffrey Chaucer's *The Canterbury Tales* (late 14th century), a framed narrative poem in Middle English verse. Following the Miller's Tale—a bawdy story mocking a carpenter—the Reeve, Oswald, takes personal offense because he is himself a carpenter by trade. He responds with a lengthy monologue on the miseries of old age: desire persists even as physical capacity fades, and old men are left with only four vices—boasting, lying, anger, and greed. His extended metaphor of a draining barrel of life is notably bleak and self-pitying. The Host cuts him off impatiently, essentially telling him to stop philosophizing and get on with his story. The Reeve then announces he will retaliate against the Miller in kind—a dirty tale about a miller—invoking the proverb that one must meet force with force. The prologue is distinctive for its unexpectedly somber meditation on aging lodged inside a comic, competitive framework, revealing a character driven as much by wounded pride and resentment as by ribald wit.

The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...

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