right|250px|thumb|Oswald the Reeve

"The Reeve's Tale" is the third story told in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The reeve, named Oswald in the text, is the manager of a large estate who reaped incredible profits for his master and himself. He is described in the Tales as skinny, bad-tempered, and old; his hair is closely cropped reflecting his social status as a serf. His sword is rusty while he rides a fine gray horse called Scot. The Reeve is a skilled carpenter, a profession mocked in the previous "Miller's Tale". Oswald responds with a tale that mocks the Miller's profession.

The tale is based on a popular fabliau (also the source of the Sixth Story of the Ninth Day of The Decameron) of the period with many different versions, the "cradle-trick". Chaucer improves on his sources with his detailed characterisation and sly humour linking the act of grinding corn with sex. The northeastern accent of the two clerks is also the earliest surviving attempt in English to record a dialect from an area other than that of the main writer. Chaucer's works are written with traces of the southern English or London accent of himself and his scribes, but he extracts comedy from imitating accents.

More broadly, "The Reeve's Tale" is known as a "cradle-trick" story, where a wife gets into the wrong bed because the cradle has been moved. "Cradle-trick" tales were popular all over Europe in the Middle Ages. One such story is the 13th-century French Le meunier et les II clers. In Le meunier et les II clers, the clerks are new to the area and looking for jobs as bakers. The miller has his wife send them into the woods to look for him while he steals their goods. They come back and end up spending a night with the family, and find that the miller's daughter spends every night locked in a bin to protect her chastity. During the night, the miller's wife has sex with one of the clerks in exchange for a ring which will restore her virginity. She then gives the clerk the key to her daughter's bin and invites him to have sex with her. The miller later finds out and accuses his wife, only to have her reveal that he is a robber. Other "cradle-trick" tales include the French De Gombert et des deux clers, a Flemish tale: Ein bispel van ij clerken, and two German tales: Das Studentenabenteuer and Irregang und Girregar. Malyne's parallel in The Decameron also finds the night enjoyable after some initial fear and is eager for future meetings with the clerk.

Satiric aube

As morning approaches, Aleyn and Malyne have an exchange of feelings which scholars have described as a mock aube or dawn-song, where two lovers express their sorrow at parting in the morning after a night together. Chaucer himself used aube elsewhere, for example in his Troilus and Criseyde. This type of love poem was usually written in a very high, courtly style and the characters in them were usually knights and ladies, but in this tale Chaucer brings it down to the level of a fabliau, which gives it a strong satire. For example, Aleyn, instead of saying to Malyne, "I am thyn own knight", says "I am thyn own clerk" (emph. added), and Malyne, between emotional words of parting, tells Aleyn about a bread in the mill—an odd fixture in any love poem. (This may be a slang term for pregnancy, similar to the modern "bun in the oven", a further humiliation to the Miller.)

Adaptations

"The Reeve's Tale" is one of eight of Chaucer's stories adapted by Pier Paolo Pasolini in The Canterbury Tales. Patrick Duffett portrays Alan, Eamann Howell portrays John, the Italian producer/actor Tiziano Longo portrays Simkin the Miller, Eileen King portrays his wife and Heather Johnson portrays Molly.

See also

  • Bed trick

References

General references

Inline citations

  • "The Reeve's Prologue and Tale", middle-english hypertext with glossary and side-by-side middle english and modern english
  • Read "The Reeve's Prologue and Tale" with interlinear translation
  • Modern Translation of the Reeve's Tale and Other Resources at eChaucer
  • "The Reeve's Tale" – a plain-English retelling for non-scholars.