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Compare and Contrast Chaucer's The Millers Prologue and Tale and Chaucer's The Wife of Baths Prologue and Tale The essay examines style, point of view, plot, character, setting, theme, and symbols in The Millers Prologue and Tale and The Wife of Baths Prologue and Tale in famous Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. These tales have both many differences and similarities. The Wife of Baths Prologue is quite unusual because the prologue is much longer than the Wifes tale. This is the longest prologue, where the Wife tells the reader almost a full bibliography, while the Miller tells the story about a student, landlord and his wife. Both tales have much in common in terms of the style, because the reader can easily notice a remarkable Chaucer's style of writing. Both tales are influenced by Boccaccio and Petrarch.
Similar to The Wife of Baths Tale, The Millers Tale represents various aspects of social relationship and village life during the medieval period. In The Millers Tale Chaucer does not focus on philosophy but wants to show how love is experienced by ordinary people in daily life. The Millers Tale shows how personal and sexual relationships are influenced by the environment and community in which people live. The Millers Tale tells about the village, parish world, the importance of appearance and dress, the way that different occupations set up specific expectations of other peoples behaviors and who can contact with whom. The characters are also represented in a different way. For example, the Miller is the example of an ordinary man.
He is a heavyset man, who always wins at wrestling. He is vulgar and a fearful sight. Chaucer described him as the person one would never want to meet in the dark. At the same time, the wife is a prototype of the modern emancipated woman.
Hew viewpoint of marriage is completely different with that of traditional opinion. She also has her own views of Scripture and God's plan. It is shocking to all her companions and her companions consider her standpoint heretical and scandalous. The wife supports hew position with conviction and infinite zest, claiming that the head of the house should be the woman, while the man is no match for a woman.
Unlike The Millers Tale, The Wife of Baths Prologue and Tale is more focused on the Wife and her character. This tale is focused on the role of women in the medieval age and is often considered as the first of marriage group of tales (including the Merchants, the Clerks and the Franklins tales). The Wifes Prologue is about the theme of marriage. The Wife tells about her experience in marriage, presenting a long story of her numerous marriages.
The Wifes tale tells a story how the knight in King Arthur's court raped a woman. This tale is a good example of the "loathly lady" motifs popular in the medieval ages, while the Millers Tale combines the motifs of two completely different fabliaux, the so-called 'misdirected kiss' and 'second flood. In The Wifes Prologue, the Wife is a symbol of what was considered a wicked woman by a medieval Church. In the Millers tale, Ab solons character (the clerk) represents a theme of the corruption of the Church. While The Wifes Tale is mostly focused on social relationships and such themes as antifeminism, behavior in marriage, female dominance, economics of love, and sex and Lollardy, the Millers tale is more focused on other themes like corruption of the Church, knowledge and science and other themes.
For example, the theme of female dominance is the most important in the Wifes Prologue. Her dominance is emphasized in terms of sexual dominance, as the wife tells that she is the one who is dominating in the bedroom and the one who made her husbands work for her pleasure. Also, in contrast to the Wifes Tale, the Millers Tale is often considered a parody (the parody of the previous tale told by the Knight about the pursuit of a woman). At the same time, there are many similarities in these tales. Both tales have the similar style of writing, short comic tale in verse, simple, straightforward and vigorous style. Both The Millers Prologue and Tale and The Wife of Baths Prologue and Tale are set in the present with familiar places and real settings.
The characters in both tales are ordinary types: students, peasants, wives, etc. Both tales tell about various tricks and ruses, representing a bright and lively image of everyday life among the middle classes. It should be also mentioned that in both tales and prologues the plot is an exaggeration but not a real world. Both tales are funny and parody middle and lower-class people who are trying to live and act above their level. Finally, in The Millers Tale Chaucer uses comic incongruity and characterization, making this tale the funniest and the most interesting one. Unlike The Wifes Tale, this tale is simpler in structure and is more neatly constructed.
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Research essay sample on Compare And Contrast The Millers Prologue Tale
