week 12 discussion
Paper details:
Sex and its myriad expressions are an important motif in The Canterbury Tales, as we’ll see again next week. In the Miller’s and Reeve’s Tales, the audience is invited to laugh, while the fictional audience of pilgrims is invited to enjoy the respective humiliation of clerk, carpenter and miller. What do you make of the implied moral rules there? Of the expressly stated ‘lessons’, e.g.
3163 An housbonde shal nat been inquisityf
A husband must not be inquisitive
3164 Of Goddes pryvetee, nor of his wyf.
Of God’s secrets, nor of his wife.
3165 So he may fynde Goddes foyson there,
So long as he can find God’s plenty there,
3166 Of the remenant nedeth nat enquere.”
Of the rest he needs not enquire.”
– Prologcgoue to Miller’s Tale
