"The Reeve's Tale": Harlotrie or Sermonyng?
- Author / Editor
- Copland, M.
"The Reeve's Tale": Harlotrie or Sermonyng?
- Published
- Medium Aevum 31 (1962): 14-32.
- Description
- Assesses the "aesthetic status" of RvT, gauging its "crude vulgarity" in relation to its "moral coherence" where social/sexual pretentions are punished commensurately. Argues that Malyne is "notably pathetic," that the parson is the "evil genius of the tale," and that assigning the tale to the puritanical Reeve is stylistically and thematically decorous. Comments on contrasts between RvT and MilT as well as the "quarrel" of the tellers.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Reeve and His Tale
Miller and His Tale
Style and Versification