Topic > The role of "quit" in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

The role of "quit" in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales In Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, many characters express the desire to "repay" some other pilgrim for the their story. The function of “giving up” gives us insight into the ways in which Chaucer painted the social fabric of his world. The characters of the Knight, the Miller and the Reeve all seem to be taking part in a tournament of words. The role of "stepping down" in The Canterbury Tales serves to "allow the characters themselves to transcend their own social class and class-based moral expectations, in order to gain power over people of the 'higher' social strata." (Hallissy 41) In each prologue of the first three stories we can see a clear description of each speaker's social rank. The Knight is clearly the person who begins the Tale cycle, as he belongs to the highest class of all the Pilgrims. Following the Knight, the Miller usurps the Monk's privilege of telling the next story and begins one of his own. The Miller is allowed by the host to pretend to be drunk and proceeds to tell a story that goes against social convention by mocking the rules and regulations of a higher social class. The Reeve then follows the Miller's Tale with one of his own. Osewold tries to "abandon" Miller's Tale by telling the story concerning Symkyn. The progression from Knight to Miller to Reeve gives us a picture of three very different class levels. Through their speech, however, Miller and Reeve's lower-class characters can comment on and judge people without fear of the socially constructed class system. In his prologue, the Miller seems to be driven by a kind of anger directed at the end of the meaning of the Knight s...... middle of paper ......or in the world of the mind. A humble Miller has as much right to "leave" a Knight as anyone else. The battle, instead, becomes a battle of inner strength, where competitors are defined not by social roles, but by the quality and passion of their beliefs. Works Cited and Consulted Birraio, Derek. Tradition and innovation in Chaucer. London: Macmillan, 1982. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. In Chaucer's Riverbank. Larry D. Benson, ed. Boston: Houghton, 1987.Cooper, Helen. "Deeper into Reeve's Tale, 1395-1670." Pp 168-184. In the Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honor of Derek Brewer. Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Delasanta, Rodney. "The Miller's Tale Revisited." Chaucer Review 31.3 (1997), 209-231. Hallissy, Margaret. Codes of Conduct in the Canterbury Tales. Connecticut: Greenwood, 1993.