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Unit 10: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Discussion and Analysis-II

That said, there are a few interesting things about the tale as we have it. Firstly, Roger of Ware Notes
seems to have been a real person who lived at the same time as Chaucer. This lends a whole new
aspect to the Canterbury Tales, if we consider that Chaucer might have populated his pilgrimage
with real people, whom his audience might have recognized. The whole question, raised already in
other tales, of reality verses fiction, takes on a deeper level when we consider that Chaucer is not the
only pilgrim to have a dual existence-in the real world and within the fictional one.

Might this tale be in some way a parody or a joke at the real Roger’s expense? It’s
very possible, but impossible to prove.

Seth Lerer has persuasively argued that–like many other of Chaucer’s works, including “The House
of Fame”, and “The Legend of Good Women”–there is a very real possibility that the Cook’s Tale
might have been left deliberately unfinished. It is, Professor Lerer argues, a tale which breaks off
just at the point where we understand what sort of tale it is to be – a grim, gritty tale about a
prostitute and a drunken, good-for-nothing apprentice. The trajectory from the formal, fictionalized,
stylish romance of the Knight’s Tale, down through the fabliaux of the Miller and Reeve hits rock-
bottom with a realistic tale about a real Cook and animal copulation in exchange for money. We
don’t hear the Cook’s Tale told: but we know all too well what sort of thing is to come next-and so
language disintegrates completely at the end of the First Fragment. Formal language was replaced
by bodily noises in the Miller’s Tale, language was replaced by action in the Reeve’s Tale, and now
language stops altogether. The whole project of the Tales comes to a dead standstill.

10.3 Summary

• A miller named Symkyn lives on some property by a bridge not far from the town of Cam-
bridge.
• The cook is mightily entertained by the story the Reeve told and wants to tell a funny story of
his own.
• The miller’s wife, thinking a devil had visited her, began to cry out in panic to God, and to her
husband to wake up.
• The Reeve’s Tale takes the idea of “quitting” and puts it center stage, changing altogether the
dynamic of the first fragment.
• Symkyn’s wife and daughter are not persuaded into bed, or even seduced slightly, but just
leapt upon.
• Roger of Ware, the Cook, claps the Reeve on the back “for joye”.

10.4 Keywords

Illegitimate : A child born of parents not lawfully married to each other.
Vice : A metal tool with movable jaws which are used to hold an object firmly in place
while work is done on it.
Vengeful : Seeking to harm someone in return for a preceived injury.
Dialect : A form of a language which is peculiar to a specific region.
Grim : Very serious or gloomy.

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