1. The Cant er bur y Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Reeve’s Tale

2. The Reeve, Oswald
Physical Characteristics, Clothing, Accessories
Old, choleric, thin “stick legs”
Closely shaven beard, hair stopped above his ears.
Wore a blue overcoat
Rode a dapple-grey (named Scot)
Had a rusty blade on his side
Words, Experiences, and Personality Traits
Rich but Cheap (kept money tucked away)
wise
People beneath him were afraid of him.
Carpenter of first-rate skill
Could tell how well his crops would grow by observing the weather
patterns.
He rode in the back of the pack on their journey

3. Middle Class
The Reeve
Common-man , under the rule of a master, learned a useful
trade (carpentry)
Inferences
Chaucer states that “he could judge by watching drought
and rain/The yield he might expect from seed and grain”
Chaucer makes reference to the Reeve’s “master”
Chaucer also states that the Reeve “had been under
contract to present/The accounts, right from his master’s
earliest years.”
Chaucer makes the Reeve seem like an ordinary middle
class citizen. “He had a lovely dwelling on a heath”
Heath: a tract of uncultivated, open land, with infertile,
sandy soil, covered with grasses and weeds.

4. The Tale
The Reeve’s Tale
Main Characters
The Miller: “Simpkin the Swagger”. He is a jealous and corrupt man
who has a penchant for stealing. He plays the bagpipes and he is very
protective of his wife.
Miller’s wife: (unnamed) nobly born, father was the Parson of the
town. Educated in a nunnery
Molly: the Miller’s 20 year old daughter. “plump, well-grown, but
had pretty hair.” (Other than her hair, she was ugly)
Unnamed and genderless child in a cradle: the couple’s youngest
child.
Alan and John: two young, gullible students from Cambridge
University. They devise a plan to expose that the Miller is a thief.
Setting
A Mill in Trumpington, not far from Cambridge town.

5. Climax: Alan crawls into bed with the Miller since there was
no cradle at the foot of his bed. Thinking it was John, he tries Plot synopsis
to wake him up and whispers in his ear “ Get ready to leave, I
have been having sex with Molly all night!”
Molly told Alan where the cake was with
their cornmeal baked into it.
Out of Jealousy, John moved the baby cradle to the foot of his bed
so that when the Miller’s wife got up un the middle of the night,
she would get into bed with him. John had sex with the Miller’ s
wife. “Till the third morning cock began to sing” The Miller Punched Alan in the face and
Fal
made him bleed.
ling
To get back at the Miller for stealing their
cornmeal, Alan has sex with Molly all night
A
ctio
long while everyone is sleeping.
ns:
While the two boys were looking for their
horses, the Miller stole half of their s: n
Actio
The Miller tripped and fell on his wife. His wife
cornmeal. The two boys finally found thought that she was in bed with her husband and
their horses and the Miller invited them thought that the two students were fighting. She
g
Risin
to stay the night. beat her husband, thinking it was Alan, with a stick
While the students were grinding and he fell to the ground.
their corn at the mill, the Miller set
their horses free
The Miller and his family are
visited by two students from Conclusion: The two boys ran
Cambridge, John and Alan. off with their cornmeal and
their horses. “Do evil and be
Exposition: Miller and His wife live with their done by as you did”
two children at the mill in Trumpington.

6. Theme
•The theme of the Reeve’s tale is simple:
“What goes around comes around”
•The Miller was a thief and stole from the
two boys. In return, he ends up getting beat
with a stick by his own wife!
•Other themes include: trickery, deceit,
revenge, theft, and satisfying guilty
pleasures.

7. Classification of the Tale
Genre of the Tale:
Fabliau (fab-lee-oh) A story based on clever tricks involving infidelity(disloyalty).
Supporting evidence for classification
• This tale is a fabliau because revolves around deceitful tricks. John and Alan
have sex with the Miller’s wife and daughter to get back at him for stealing their
cornmeal.
•The Miller is a disloyal man, therefore he pays for his actions in the end of the
story when he gets beat by his own wife.
•“Cradle swapping”
Source of the tale
The Flemish Een bispel van .ij. clerken, a derivative of Jean Bodel's Old French De
Gombert et des deux clers, is a likely source for the Reeve's Tale.
Contemporary Counterparts:
•This story is the perfect example of the saying “what goes around comes around”
•Much like the popular shows of today (Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City,
and Degrassi) Sex is a big theme.
•Desperate Housewives is full of deceit and trickery as well as disloyalty and
“bed-hopping”