The Canterbury tales. The comedy of marriage in Chaucer's Fabliaux

Abstract

In The Canterbury Tales, four fabliaux - the Miller's, Reeve's, Merchant's and Shipman's Tales - seem to have a closer generic identity; they are not only comic tales of low life involving trickery, but they all have to do with marital relations. In all of them a bourgeois husband is tricked into contributing, unwarily, to a free offer of his wife's favours to a clever young man. The scenery is fairly reduced and the characters are, in general, just three: the famous triangle of husband, wife and lover. As to the subject-matter, this genre treats human passions like love, avarice and jealousy in a very elementary way. The social setting is the world of the petit-bourgeois, the world of tradespeople. The author's descriptive tone is usually one of condescension or contempt. Characters are not asked to be noble or to be good, but to be smart. The social and moral norms are often openly subverted.