'No Man His Reson Herde': Peasant Consciousness, Chaucer's Miller, and the Structure of the 'Canterbury Tales'

Author / Editor
Patterson, Lee.

Title
'No Man His Reson Herde': Peasant Consciousness, Chaucer's Miller, and the Structure of the 'Canterbury Tales'

Published
South Atlantic Quarterly 86 (1987): 457-95.

Description
Although Chaucer was associated with the aristocratic seigniorial and mercantile classes, in the first eight tales he vigorously asserts the aggressive voice of peasant protest--fully in MilT but reverting to a somewhat more traditional and conservative social ideology in RvT, CkT, WBT, FrT, and SumT.
Reprinted in the author's Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 113-55.

Alternative Title
Literary Practice and Social Change, 1380-1530.

Chaucer Subjects
Miller and His Tale.