Topic > The Miller's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer: Fiction invented to please should remain close to reality

According to Horace, “fiction invented to please should remain close to reality. This article will discuss this proponent of literary theory based on The Miller's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer. This story is the second of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. A miller tells us the story of a wealthy carpenter, John, his young wife Alison, and the two tenants, Nicholas and Absolon. The story focuses on Alison's deception and infidelity towards her husband John. The two live in Oxford. The tragedy begins when John brings with him both Nicholas and Absolon, two poor scholars who need a home. Nicholas, as well as Absolon, cultivate a lustful interest in Alison and begin a plan to seduce her into bed. In fact, Alison gives in to Nicholas and they go to bed briefly while her husband is away on a day trip. Additionally, Nicholas and Alison hatch a plan to spend an entire night together in her husband's bed using the biblical allusion to Noah's flood. Nicholas promptly confuses John by telling him that God will once again destroy the earth with the flood so that they can build "arks" to survive the flood. At the same time Absolon, however, uses love songs to convince Alison to go to bed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay This poem reveals the conflict brought about by the age contrast between couples. In this way, he directly agrees with Horace's belief that literature invented for pleasure should remain close to reality, because poetry reflects the challenges that come with marrying a woman much younger than you. First, Horace's thesis has the simple meaning that literature should represent the reality of life as it gives pleasure to readers. Literature reflects life as it is. For Orazio, this is the main purpose of artistic design. It defines and blends the purposes of entertainment with reality so that we can see our characters and our morality or our character and our vices while reading any work. In this regard, it therefore means that we should be able to draw a moral lesson from fiction as we relate the events, themes and characters of the fictional work to those we see in real life. It is only in this way that we can find applicable literature or fiction to offer us a moral lesson. Chaucer uses The Miller's Tale not only to provide humor, but also foregrounds the moral lesson of the story by including the tragedy that John falls due to his gullibility, falls from the ceiling, and injures himself. This is not to instill empathy in the reader. It acts as a warning to those who are gullible that the consequence of their gullibility is bound to bring them harm and deception. The humorous parts of the poem are indeed fictional, but the poet works according to Horace's thesis, so he only uses humor to give pleasure to the audience as they see reality in this work. Humor also serves to capture the audience's attention as it creates a magnetic field of meaning to draw the audience into choosing a moral lesson richly contained in the story. From the prologue of the story, we see the Miller take over the narration of the story. . However, the poet separates his character from that of the Miller and apologizes by indicating that he is only telling the story as it was first told by the Miller. “M'athynketh that I will propose it again here. And so every Gentile I pray to, for the love of the Goddess, believes that what I see is of good understanding, but thatI don't discuss reherer." We already see two narrators of this story, Miller and Chaucer. The Miller is a fictional narrator whose voice and authority Chaucer, the poet, uses to tell the story. In essence, this describes the reality in folklore fiction where one tells the story as it was told by another. The poet uses this technique to conform to the theory that fiction should be real. He uses narrative techniques employed by ancient folklore narratives to tell a story of his own creation. In fact, other viewers and performers can see and understand Chaucer as the Miller. It's all the more reason why he offers his excuses to convince the reader that he only borrowed the story from the owner and is therefore just a mouthpiece telling the story. Furthermore, the poet uses flawed characters in fantasy to portray reality in life. The defects of these characters are typical realities of human beings beyond borders. For example, the infidelity depicted by Alison is typical behavior common to both women and men of the time. The poet used satire to offer derision through the reality of life itself. In other words, the satirical nature of the story is meant to offer humor on the surface, but is deeply calculated to condemn the vices represented by most people in the real world. Furthermore, Miller's character is a pure reality of the chauvinism and patriarchy of the society at the time of the poem depicted. Chaucer reveals to us that Miller was a cruel and jealous man. He often isolates his wife in a cage or chamber so that she does not have the freedom to socialize with other people, as illustrated in this line, "He was jealous, and took on caged narwe." Miller's portrayal also indicates the lack of wisdom in him. “He knew Nat Catoun, for his wit was rude.” Accordingly, Chaucer draws a resemblance of Miller's character to that of John. The two characters are not intelligent, a trait that causes John to submit to the deceptions of his wife and Nicholas. Although the characters here are fictional, the reality of life presents us with such characters in society. Indeed, the poet wants readers and audiences to cross-examine themselves and the people around them to determine whether the follies depicted in the characters of Nicholas, John, Alison, and Miller exist among them. It also directs the audience to study the consequences of follies in fiction in order to correct their own, so that the same consequences do not occur. It is also appropriate to consider the vulgarity of the language used in the poem. In the prologue the poet invites us to understand that he is not the true narrator of the story. Its artistic and stylistic nature of writing in disguise as Miller, the drunk, is not questionable; however, it gives him the freedom to call a spade a spade, as he tells the story using vernacular as his chosen diction. The poet uses this technique to represent two realities in life. The first is the fact that it is common for drunk people to be careless and lack good language manners while speaking. The second reality is that in most cases drunk people never paint a wrong picture of a situation, since they don't know the disguise but the reality. The vernacular language of the poem therefore serves as a vivid description to bring the audience to the real situation without disguising itself. For example, the poet through the real narrator, Miller, gives Absolon crude language to use while asking Alison for a kiss near her bedroom window. “This Nicholas anon ran away a fart, he waves like he was a dent.” Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now..