Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

“The Miller’s Tale” 117
to the Virgin”; l. 30), seems full of irony. Not only (as practically
every commentator notes) does the title of the hymn remind us of
the story of the angel Gabriel announcing to the Blessed Virgin that
she would give birth to the Prince of Peace [B&G 533; M68], but
it also ironically foreshadows Nicholas’s own interest in John’s wife,
Alison, later in the tale. Just as one medieval tradition suggested that
the biblical carpenter Joseph suspected his wife Mary of infidelity
when he learned that she was pregnant [B&G 572], so the carpenter
John in Chaucer’s tale will soon have real reason to suspect (although,
ironically, he doesn’t) that his own wife is cheating with Nicholas.
By continually alluding to Christian lore and legend throughout the
tale, Chaucer constantly reminds us of all the taboos being broken by
Nicholas as well as by practically all of the other characters.
One of those characters, of course, is Alison herself, whose very
name in the middle ages was a common name for a witch [B&G
510], the name of a noted literary prostitute [V33], a name shared
with Chaucer’s own notorious and highly-sexed Wife of Bath [V34],
and also a name that may ironically echo the famous liturgical phrase
“kyrie eleyson” (“Lord, have mercy”; [V172]). The famous description
of Alison’s body is a parody of descriptions of beautiful ladies in
courtly romances of Chaucer’s time [B&G 518], but whereas most
of those descriptions begin with the lady’s head and face, the Miller
immediately focuses (as does Nicholas later) on Alison’s middle
[B&G 637; V142–43]. Although her dress and appearance are repeatedly
associated with the holy colors of black and white [V142] (colors
which were often used in the habits on nuns), many details of the
description foreshadow Alison’s later sinful behavior. Her embroidered
underwear, for instance (ll. 52–53), was associated with “vanity,
extravagance, and sensuality” [V145], while her pulled black eyebrows
were not only fashionable at the time [V146] but were also considered
by some physiognomists to be a sign of “a lecherous nature” [B&G
504; however, for a dissenting view, see B&G 539 and V146]. Repeatedly
Alison is described in terms that liken her to different kinds
of animals (thus already suggesting her potential violation of ideal
standards of human conduct), and perhaps the most memorable of all
these comparisons is the simile likening her body to that of a “wesele”
(l. 48). Weasels, as it happened, were thought in the middle ages to
have a “lustful nature. . . . The creature was associated with shapeshifting,
sexual trickery, storms, showers and bad young women”