Reeve’s Tale, The

   by Geoffrey Chaucer

(ca. 1392)

   The Reeve’s Tale is the third of CHAUCER’s CANTERBURY TALES. The tale is a FABLIAU offering a cynical but comic view of human beings at their worst. It employs a common folklore motif called the “cradle trick,” and Chaucer may have based it directly on a French fabliau. But as with his other fabliaux, Chaucer expands the genre in The Reeve’s Tale, with his naturalistic detail and animated characterization of the proud Miller and his family.

   Oswald the Reeve, described as thin and choleric in the GENERAL PROLOGUE, seethes with anger after The MILLER’s TALE, in which a carpenter is cuckolded after marrying a young wife. The Reeve sets out to “quite,” or repay, the Miller, and tells his own story of an arrogant and thieving Cambridge miller named Symkyn, his wife (proud of her elevated lineage as illegitimate daughter of the town parson), and their rather unattractive daughter. Two students from Cambridge (John and Aleyn) bring Symkyn business from the college, and are determined to watch the miller carefully so that he doesn’t cheat them. But Symkyn has his wife turn the clerks’ horse loose, and while they chase down the animal, Symkyn steals a good part of their grain.When the students return, Symkyn is forced to let them stay the night because of the late hour. Aleyn, knowing they have been cheated, determines to take revenge on the Miller by lying with his daughter. In the dark he sneaks into her bed. John, afraid of being called a fool by his classmates when they hear of Aleyn’s conquest, decides to have sex with the Miller’s wife.When she gets up during the night, John moves a cradle from the foot of Symkyn’s bed to his own. When she returns, the wife, feeling for the cradle in the dark, gets into bed with John.

   As dawn approaches, Aleyn leaves Malyne and, fooled by the cradle, climbs into her father’s bed. When he boasts about the time he has had with Malyne, a slapstick brawl breaks out, and ultimately the clerks beat Symkyn and steal back their own grain. Critical response to The Reeve’s Tale has generally found its comedy inferior to The Miller’s Tale. However scholars have found it useful to compare the cynical narrator’s view of sex with that of the joyful narrator of The Miller’s Tale. The parody of courtly language, especially in Aleyn’s farewell to Malyne, which parodies the traditional ALBA, or dawn-song, of love poetry, has also interested scholars. Also worth noting is Chaucer’s use of northern dialect in his portrayal of the two clerks’ language: This is the first extended use in English of dialect for comic effect.

   Bibliography

   ■ Benson, C. David. Chaucer’s Drama of Style: Poetic Variety and Contrast in the Canterbury Tales. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

   ■ Benson, Larry, et al., eds. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987.

   ■ Cowgill, Bruce Kent. “Clerkly Rivalry in The Reeve’s Tale.” In Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales, edited by Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, 59–71. Studies in Medieval Culture, 29. Kalamazoo, Mich.:Medieval Institute Publications, 1991.

   ■ Pigg, Daniel E. “Performing the Perverse: The Abuse of Masculine Power in the Reeve’s Tale.” In Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, edited by Peter G. Beidler, 53–61. Cambridge, U.K.: Brewer, 1998.