The medieval expression of caritas (love), that quality of generosity and creative grace exemplified by the Christian God when He created the heavens, the earth, and man, is shown in Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale." "The Miller's Tale," however, is a fabliau--coarse, obscene, an extended dirty joke likely intended for the titillation of upper-class minor nobility and court hangers-on. How can one reconcile Christian love and human bawdry? Without a belief deep enough to reconcile paradox or a sense of divine humor that supersedes all seeming contradictions one would find it impossible. Dante's Divina Commedia had to reconcile God's love with the pains of the hell He created. Chaucer resolves the dichotomy between body and spirit with a sense of humor also, the laughter of a man at ease with himself--sly, whimsical, puckish, bantering, deceptively teasing--the urbane qualities of one serene in his knowledge that every manner of thing will ultimately be well.

    Chaucer's humor so fitly resolves the split between a spiritual God and His physical creation that one is tempted to make of Chaucer a profound and deep theologian for his uniting of the diverse elements. After all, Western thought, from Plato forward, has made much of the supposed antipathy between matter and spirit. Christianity furthered that dualism. St. Paul said, .... the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:

    Neoplatonists considered matter inherently evil: medieval man was born in peccatum originale caritas: the impulse toward the seven deadly sins was a result of physical nature. Man's body, it seemed, caused him to sin, while his spirit yearned for contact with God and a release from the chains of bodily desires--pride, wrath, envy, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lechery. The incorporation (Latin corpus--body) of a soul must have seemed a contradiction, an Oxymoronic combination of opposites, a dualism of antipathies to the medieval learned cleric or upper-class sophisticate who had learned the basic Christian philosophic framework that sundered the dissimilarities of matter and spirit into two separate and always opposing forms of reality.

    The unlearned serf would likely be unaware of such differences. After all, his God had created both the heaven of spirit and the earth of matter. The unlearned could see the paradox, if he recognized it at all, as resolved by the power of the Creator, Whom Chaucer indirectly alludes to in the famous eighteen-line opening of the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The well-known passage begins with erotic physicality--the phallic images of roots that are prolific because of the sexual dampness of April showers--and continues with the images of mating

    Chaucer is more Augustine than Pauline in his outlook. Despite the almost Manichaean dualism of Paul, inherited through the Western thought system of Plato's division of matter and spirit, St. Augustine decided that there was no evil, only greater and lesser goods, evil consisting in choosing a lesser good when one can achieve a greater one (Hutchins, 49).

    Perhaps Chaucer is a tad more lenient than Augustine (after all, he had not been converted from Manichaeanism to Christianity, as Augustine had), or perhaps he has the wit and humor to see things with a more benevolent eye. Certain it is that Chaucer could see good despite the seeming evils that afflicted his age. Likewise in many of his characters he could see the intent and desire to do good even when the characters lapsed into a lesser good when they could have achieved a greater one. One must assume that Chaucer's God was kindly and benevolent, as Chaucer himself seems to be. After all, one might argue, whatever man is--physical, spiritual or both--was God's creation through his caritas. "The Miller's Tale" thus reflects God's gift of love to man, since all gifts illustrate the caritascaritas of Christianity and are

    By using patristic exegesis, one can discern in the tale many of the levels of meaning inherent in Chaucer's well-plotted entertainment. The gifts exchanged between various characters may be for good or evil purpose. but patristic exegesis shows that they are all relevant to the principle of caritas.

    One of the first gifts mentioned is Alisoun's promise to give Nicholas her love. On a literal level, it is an acquiescence to join him in adulterous enjoyment. As Beichner points out, Chaucer's imagery characterizes her as a rustic. She is small as a weasel, wears an apron white as morning milk, has eyes as black as a wild plum, is as blissful as a Jeannete pear, softer than wool, singing like a swallow, skipping like a kid or calf; she has a mouth sweet as honey and ale or mead or a hoard of apples in aromatic hay. Since she is rural, she is admittedly knowledgeable, uninhibited and healthfully sexual in her directness, with none of the squeamishness and insipid pretense of the "citified" Absolon (123, 124). Her gift of love to Nicholas is literal. She knows what all animals, including

    But her promise is more than physically literal. Considered allegorically, one might say that her promise is the promise of all love to all men. Humans seek love as naturally as animals mate (or humans mate as naturally as animals seek love--in both instances the impulse, if not the expression describing it, is the same). When Alisoun offers love, the eternal female willingly enters into a pact with the eternal male, allegorically revealing, by both parties' tacit acknowledgment of their intent, that it is proper and enjoyable and has its rightful place between humans who are proper for each other, as Nicholas and Alisoun are by interest, similar age and like propensities, and as Alisoun and her husband John are not, nor are she and Absolon, since John is sexually selfish, a lecher, and Absolon a vapid child. He mourns for her "as doth a lamb after the tete," a line which shows Chaucer 5 humor in its ambiguity. Were one to put commas in the right place he would see that it is Absolon mourning as well as the lamb, "after the tete." Ambiguity is one of Chaucer's weapons in his satire against conformity, superficially orthodox Christianity, tradition and circumspect behavior. All these are qualities of the hypocrite, as shown in his portrait of the Prioress.

    On a tropological or moral level, Alisoun 5 promise to fulfil Nicholas' request is the response of the universe to human needs. The tropological or moral level is meaning, the trope a symbolic gesture or physical signal that indicates the purpose behind the surface

    Beichner says that Nicholas is "hende" in the way that he woos Alisoun (124). Obviously he has been fondling her ("Do wey your handes") and catching "hir by the queynte" and holding her "harde by the haunche-bones." Perhaps the chaotic and undirected sexual urge indicates that "hende" Nicholas' hands have been put to use before his encounter with Alisoun. Chaucer uses the adjective eleven times.

    A tropological interpretation of Nicholas' plea and Alisoun's promise provides a link between the physical act and its spiritual completion. The generative organs, Chaucer has the Wife of Bath say, were made for each other. In addition to "purgacioun of urine," and "to knowe a femele from a male," they were made "for ese of engendrure, ther we nat god displese" (WoB Prol., 116-28). The organs were therefore good if they were used to fulfil the purpose of creation, in the Wife's words, "to wexe and multipleye." As we may be certain, and as patristic exegesis suggests, the Wife's understanding of waxing and multiplying means more than biological contact of egg and sperm in a petri dish.

    When one looks at the request and promise by the couple on an anagogic level, he may see that the event is comparable to prayer from man and answering blessing from God. It is no accident that in the practice of courtly love the female is adored as a goddess and the male is plaintively seeking her love. This "religion of nature," as it has been called, is, considered exegetically, a reflection of the religion of Christianity. Both are, in some form religions of love. Thus a patristic exegesis of the Song of Solomon usually expresses the idea that man's love for woman is an imitation of Christ's love for the Church, or divine love for the object of its creation.

    What Nicholas and Alisoun contemplate is literally the highest bliss, the most perfect happiness, the most profound and complete enjoyment of which humans are physically capable. That their cuckoldry is ultimately spiritual in Chaucer's eyes is evident in his use of imagery to describe their erotic coupling. When

    In these few lines Chaucer himself accomplishes the four levels of patristic exegesis. There is literally revel--pure fun and abandonment in bliss, just as on an

    Thus the scope of meaning for the sexual act as envisioned by patristic exegesis might indicate that it is for immediate gratification, or revel (literally), for a longer time of comfort and relaxation of the libido, a sense of ego satisfaction and well-being subsumed under the abstract term "melodye" (allegorically) and for an even more protracted time of fulfilment in longterm happiness and probable childbearing, which is its "bisinesse" tropologically. Finally, anagogically considered, it is co-creation with the creator of the universe.

    To moderns nourished intellectually by the Western thought systemized by Plato, the conjunction of matter and spirit well might seem reprehensible. That an act of eroticism--and illicit at that--could also be a means of contact with God is a concept likely offensive to those who carefully separate matter and spirit, body and soul, and think of the mundane as inimical to pure religion. Yet the exegetical system, like deep understanding or the power of the Creator, unites all levels of interpretation.

    When Chaucer wrote the lines about Alisoun and Nicholas going to bed, was he aware of himself illustrating the four levels of exegetical meaning? I believe that he was, particularly so because he allows the anagogical level to be ambiguous. This time his ambiguity is used (ambiguously) for more than humor. The lines which betoken the spiritual level of eroticism through their imagery

    Those who see Alisoun's promise of love

    The theme of caritas and/or the reversal thereof continues in "The Miller's Tale" as Absolon woos Alisoun. Although he is illsuited to be her lover, being too young and unrealistic to properly conduct an intrigue, too squeamish about physicality to deal with the coupling of vile bodies, Absolon thinks himself a lover. Yet he does not speak to her personally, or even use his hands as directly as "hende" Nicholas, but woos her once by singing under her window and then by "menes

    Absolon's messenger-service approach is as vapid as his gifts, which are not presents from a generous and overflowing heart but bribes meant to win him sexual pleasure. Gifts they are, and hence microcosms of God's caritas, but his mead, wine, spiced ale, cookies hot from the oven and other tangible gifts are those of one obviously thinking more of his own than of mutual pleasure. Absolon fails not because he is subverting the principle of caritas, but because of the natural consequence of his stupidity and ill-management.

    Is Alisoun, although rural, also cheap enough to be bought with bribes? Absolon seems to think so. His wooing is as unrealistic and insincere as his use of cardamon seeds and licorice root to make his breath sweet. The reader is justified in seeing him as a foppish and prettified rake, obviously more in love with the idea of himself as a lover than with Aflsoun. His incessant hair-combing and sartorial excesses further

    When Nicholas pretends to swoon with revelations of a new Noah's flood, carpenter John brings him "of mighty ale a large quart," ironically symbolizing, by his sharing of spirit the sharing of Alisoun that they are soon to do. The affinity is more than mere familiarity. Despite his other faults, John's concern for Nicholas' welfare is genuine. He is concerned about Nicholas' health, has the door broken down to rescue him, and is generous with his ale when he realizes that Nicholas needs drink. Since his generosity is an example of caritas, John shows himself worthy (at least in this area of conduct) as one who loves his neighbor as himself. Since Nicholas dupes gullible old John the lecher, however, consuming his ale as he will consume his wife, Nicholas also deserves whatever corneuppance he gets at the shot window. In each instance, the gift, whether intended for bribery, compliment, or generosity of caritas, reveals the medieval ideal of selfless love or an abomination of it so culpable that such sin deserves consequent pain for its being an Angustinian "lesser good." But while it may be a "lesser good," it is still a subverted microcosm--a dim reflection of God's bright caritas.

    Other gifts in the tale--the kiss, the hot poker, etc.--are so well known as to need no protracted explanation. If one interprets them in the light of the previous ones I have mentioned, the result will be to further support my thesis. It could hardly be otherwise. Since in the medieval view everything

    Since the ale contains alcohol, or spirit, it is therefore reminiscent of the wine of the Eucharist--Christ's blood. It is likely that the Christian us of alcoholic spirit to symbolize holy spirit is based on earlier discovery, probably by caveman, that fruit or grain, the staff of life, produces alcohol if left in water, the curious effects of drinking it revealing, to the primitive mind, a spirit that must be contained in the grain and which, consumed by man, enhanced his spirit also, releasing him from the bonds of his body. Thus religion might be said to be a by-product of the brewing process.

Beichner, Paul E. "Characterization in The Miller's Tale. Chaucer Criticism. Richard J.Schoeck and Jerome Taylor. NotreDame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960. vol. 1.

Hutchins, Robert Maynard, ed. Augustine. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

Robinson, Fred N. Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1957.