The Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Tale Summary & Analysis

In Oxford there lives a rich old carpenter. Boarding at his house is a poor young scholar, Nicholas, who is very learned in astrology and can also sing well. The carpenter is very jealous of his eighteen-year-old wife, Alison, who is pretty and flirtatious: the Miller describes her as a frisky young flower.

One day, Nicholas begins to flirt with Alison. Nicholas grabs her, and though she cries out at first in protest, he coaxes her sweetly and she gives in. However, since the carpenter is such a jealous man, they agree to wait until they can make love in secrecy. Nicholas is confident that, as an educated clerk, he will be able to outwit a carpenter.

On the next holiday, Alison goes to the parish church, where another young clerk, Absolon, spies her. Absolon is vain and finely dressed, with curled hair and fashionable tunic. His one fault, the Miller says, is his squeamishness: Absolon doesn’t like to fart in public. Absolon is smitten with “love longynge”: if Alison had been a mouse and he a cat, he would have pounced.

Absolon serenades Alison underneath her window, brings her gifts, and showers her with money, but to no avail––Alison loves Nicholas, and Absolon might as well be her pet monkey.

One Saturday, the carpenter travels to nearby Osney, and Alison and Nicholas form a plan to spend the night together. Nicholas tells Alison to have a day’s worth of meat and drink brought to him in his room and to tell her husband, if he asks, that she does not know where he (Nicholas) is.

When the carpenter returns on Sunday, he wonders about Nicholas and asks a servant to check on him. After knocking and receiving no reply, the servant peeks through a hole in the door that the cat uses to get in and out and sees Nicholas sitting upright, gaping at the moon.

The carpenter is convinced that Nicholas has gone mad due to his study of astronomy and declares that this is what men get for inquiring too closely into “Goddes pryvetee.”

The carpenter and the servant break down Nicholas’s door and find the scholar sitting still as a stone, gazing into the air. The carpenter shakes Nicholas, saying prayers and calling on Christ to arouse him from his trance. Finally, Nicholas speaks, telling the carpenter that he has had a vision from God.

Nicholas says that he has discovered through his astrology that on the next Monday night, there will be a wild rainstorm twice as great as Noah’s flood. All mankind, he says, shall die. The carpenter cries out, “Allas, my wyf! / And shal she drenche?” Nicholas replies that he knows a remedy, and that if the carpenter follows his orders, they will all––including Alison––survive the flood.

After swearing the carpenter to secrecy, Nicholas tells him to get three tubs, instructing him to fill them with enough food to survive for a day (the water, he explains, will subside the next day) and to hang them high from the roof. The carpenter must also bring an axe so that when the waters subside, they can cut the tubs loose and float away.

They will climb into the tubs before nightfall, says Nicholas, and they will not speak a word to each other the entire time. The carpenter and Alison, Nicholas says, must not hang next to each other so that they will not be tempted to sin. Weeping and wailing, the gullible carpenter leaves to make his preparations, telling Alison everything in strictest confidence (although she, of course, knows the whole plan already).

On Monday night, the carpenter, Nicholas, and Alison climb into their tubs and say their prayers. The carpenter falls asleep, and Nicholas and Alison promptly hop out of their tubs and tumble into bed with each other.

That same Monday, Absolon happens to be in Osney, and, inquiring after the carpenter is told that he is either out of town gathering timber or at home. Absolon, who has been by the carpenter’s house and has not seen him there, decides that he will go there at dawn and confess his love to Alison.

Absolon chews cardamom and licorice to sweeten his breath, and at the first cock’s crow, he knocks on Alison’s window and begs for a kiss. She rebuffs him, saying that she loves another. Absolon begs her, and she opens the window, telling him to come quickly. He carefully wipes his mouth dry, but in the pitch-dark, he kisses her “naked ers” that she has stuck out the window. Alison and Nicholas laugh as the furious Absolon rubs his lips with dust and woodchips.

Screaming and cursing, Absolon goes to his friend the blacksmith and borrows a hot iron. He returns to the window, knocks, and tells Alison that he has brought her a gold ring and that he will give it to her in exchange for a real kiss.

Nicholas, who has gotten out of bed to urinate, sticks his rear end out the window. Absolon tells Alison to speak so that she can let him know where she is, and Nicholas lets fly a fart as loud as thunder.

Though nearly blinded, Absolon strikes Nicholas’s rear with the hot poker and brands the skin. Nicholas cries for help and for water. The carpenter wakens at the cry of “water!” and, thinking that the flood is coming, cuts the cord, and his tub crashes to the floor.

The carpenter lies in a swoon, his arm broken. The neighbors rush in to see the spectacle. Nicholas and Alison tell everyone that the carpenter is crazy, and no one will listen to the carpenter’s story about Noah’s flood. The townspeople all laugh.

The Miller sums up the tale: the carpenter’s wife has been “swyved” by Nicholas, despite the carpenter’s jealousy; Absolon has kissed her lower regions; and Nicholas has been scalded in the buttocks. “God save al the rowte!” says the Miller.