Use Of Satire In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

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Geoffrey Chaucer was a Middle English poet who wrote about the profanities and problems in Medieval England. He did so using a writing form of satire to really emphasize what life was like during this time. In his Canterbury Tales, he writes many different stories from the perspective of people making pilgrimages from London to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury. Each story serves as a type of follow-up to the last, such as "The Reeve." In this short story, the Reeve writes about the Miller, who had previously written "The Miller's Tale," that which the Reeve took offense to. Therefore, the Reeve's tale is written about the Miller in order to gain justice. The story begins with a miller and his wife who live near the college, Cambridge.…show more content…
John and Alan shared a bed, the daughter had her own, and the miller and his wife shared a bed with the infant's cradle by the end of it. During the night, Alan expressed to John his thirst for revenge in the situation and decided that he was going to seduce and lay with the miller's daughter. After John refused to do the same, he was left alone in the bed contemplating his loneliness. He then decided that he would not spend the rest of the night alone and went to the miller's bed to retrieve the cradle with the infant son. After he settled back down, the miller's wife got up in the night and when returning to her bed realized the absence of the cradle. She then assumed that she had approached the wrong bed and went over to the bed with the cradle unaware that is was where John was staying. He then immediately lay with her to continue the revenge on the miller. Before anyone woke, Alan left the miller's daughter to return to his own bed after also learning where he could retrieve his flour. When he saw the cradle by his bed, he assumed it to be the wrong one and went across the room to climb into what he thought was the correct bed. After climbing into what was actually the miller's bed, Alan bragged about his
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