ABSTRACT

The modem counterpart to the fabliau is the bar-room story, although regrettably few of these are as well told as Geoffrey Chaucer. Quite apart from their other virtues, the Miller’s and Reeve’s tales on the one hand and the Friar’s and Summoner’s on the other stand out by reason of the mutual animosity of their tellers and by Chaucer’s dramatic exploitation of this within the scheme of the Canterbury pilgrimage. The childish love of surprise is seen again in Griselda dramatic revelation of his choice to his subjects and in the elaborate arrangements–including forged papal bulls–for the second ‘marriage’. In the Middle Ages they are to be found in parts of Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Roman de la Rose and in The Minor of Marriage by Deschamps, Chaucer’s contemporary. The quarrel between celestial husband and wife also repeats the theme of maistrie in marriage which runs through the central tales.