Miller’s Tale Suggested readings by Harriet Raghunathan

To start with:

Brewer, Derek. ‘The fabliaux’ in Rowland, Beryl, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies. London and New York, 1968. (SDC)

Cooper, Helen. Oxford Guides to Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, pp 92-107. (JMC, useful to xerox)

Donaldson, E. Talbot. "Idiom of Popular Poetry in the Miller's Tale." English Institute Essays 1950. Rpt in his Speaking of Chaucer (New York: W.W. Norton and Co.,1970), pp. 13-29; also in Chaucer--The "Canterbury Tales": A Casebook, ed. by J.J. Anderson (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 143-60. (Widely available. Essential)

Knapp, Peggy. Chaucer and the Social Contest. New York: Routledge, 1990. (JMC and elsewhere) pp. 32-44.

Kolve, V.A. Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales. (Stanford, CA, 1984) pp. 158-216. In South Campus.

Neuss, Paula. "Double Entendre in the Miller's Tale." Essays in Criticism 24 (1974):325-40. [JMC]

Phillips, Helen. An Introduction to the Canterbury Tales: Reading, Fiction, Context. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. (SDC) pp. 54-63. Useful introduction.

Other

Blum, Martin. Negotiating Masculinities: Erotic Triangles in the Miller’s Tale.in Peter Beidler ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. Boydell and Brewer: Woodbridge, 1998.  DU lib. Good and clear

Brown, Peter and Andrew Butcher. The Age of Saturn: Literature and History in the Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991 (Brit Council, DU. Probably has something good but I can’t recall.)

Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender. Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 1992, pp. 223-36. (SSC) I believe you can get much of this online, probably at www. luminarium. Google it.

Knight, Stephen.  Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Leicester, H. Marshall. ‘Newer Currents in Psychoanalytic Criticism and the Difference “It” makes: Gender and Desire in the Miller’s Tale.’ ELH 61 (1994) 473-499

Miller, Mark. Naturalism and its discontents in the Miller’s Tale. ELH 67 (2000) 1-44.

Patterson, Lee. “‘No Man His Reson Herde’ Peasant Consciousness, Chaucer’s Miller, and the Structure of the Canterbury Tales.” Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain 1380-1530, ed. Lee Patterson (1990) rpt in New Casebooks: Chaucer. Eds Valerie Allen and Ares Axiotis. Basingstoke:Macmillan, (1997) 167-92, a shorter version.

Rowland, Beryl "Chaucer's Blasphemous Churl: A New Interpretation of the Miller's Tale." In Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins. Ed. by Beryl Rowland. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974, pp. 43-55. (SDC, I think. Focuses on Christian allusions and the sins represented in the main characters. Read alongside Kolve, above, who warns against taking Christian allusions too seriously.  If Rowland is not available, check the index to DW Robertson ‘s Preface to Chaucer (Princeton 1962) for refs to Miller’s Tale, to get an idea of the ‘Christian exegetical’ reading of the text.

The following are available in SDC if anyone wants to try them. (ChauR= Chaucer Review)

Kevin S. Kiernan, “The Art of the Descending Catalogue, and a Fresh Look at Alison” ChauR 10 (1975)1-16

Peter Beidler    ChauR 12 (1977)    Art and Scatology in MillT.

Jos. A. Dane    ChauR 14 (1980)    Mechanics of comedy in MillT

Patrick Gallacher    ChauR 18 (1983)    Perception & reality in MillT
Catherine T Kacz    ChauR 18 (1983)    Ch's beard-making

Stolen from JMC maybe available elsewhere.

Farrell, T. J.    “Privacy in the Miller’s Tale” ELH 56 (1989) On privacy, see also Peter Goodall, ‘Allone, withouten any compaignye’: Privacy in the first fragment of the Canterbury Tales.

Melissa Furrow    ELH 56 89   “ME fabliaux and modern myth” [fabliau elements appear in romance]