Sexual Innuendo in the 'Reeve's Tale'

Author / Editor
Lancashire, Ian.

Title
Sexual Innuendo in the 'Reeve's Tale'

Published
Chaucer Review 6.3 (1972): 159-70.

Description
Shows that double entendre "invests the entire narrative action" of RvT, explicating individual puns and demonstrating the prevalence of the sexual implications of flour, milling, and grinding throughout the tale and in later works by John Heywood and Shakespeare. Not evident in the French source of RvT, these sexual innuendoes underlie its theme of "poetic justice."

Chaucer Subjects
Reeve and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Language and Word Studies
Style and Versification