Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas

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

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The Reeve's Tale is a comic fabliau from Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales* (late 14th century), a genre characterized by bawdy plots, social satire, and the humiliation of the proud. It follows two Cambridge students, John and Aleyn, who travel to a mill near Cambridge to prevent the dishonest miller Symkyn from stealing their college's grain — only to be outwitted when Symkyn frees their horse, steals their flour while they chase it, and forces them to spend the night. The students exact revenge by sleeping with the miller's wife and daughter, with Aleyn bedding the daughter and John, after a mix-up in the dark involving a displaced cradle, tricking the wife into thinking he is her husband. The tale ends in slapstick violence when the confusion is discovered and the miller is beaten. Chaucer uses the story to puncture the pretensions of Symkyn and his wife, who are obsessed with social status and respectability yet are thoroughly humiliated by the very "ignorant" clerks they looked down on. The tale is a direct riposte to the Knight's Miller's Tale, told by the Reeve as professional revenge against millers, and its Northern English dialect for the students is an early and notable example of dialect characterization in English literature.

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

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