ABSTRACT
Knapp concentrates on the adversarial relationship between the Miller’s Tale and the Knight’s, suggesting that the challenge to the dominant discourse of the latter works through the former’s ‘internal persuasiveness’, in particular through the ‘psychical conformity’ among individuals that jokes, according to Freud, produce. In the Miller’s Tale, the son-figure Nicholas is able to use patriarchal systems of obedience (to biblical injunctions) against the ‘father’ of the Tale himself, John, and more generally against the whole paternal order represented by the Knight and his telling. Knapp locates the Tale within a climate of medieval nominalism sceptical about authoritative truth-claims such as those advanced by the Knight. For more on nominalism and on Knapp’s piece, see my Introduction, pp. 2, 14–15.
