Ithaca College

In "Architectural Satire in the Tales of the Miller and Reeve," Chaucer Review, 51.3 (2016), 310-37 (available in Project Muse), Twomey and Stull argue that the houses in which the “Miller’s Tale” and “Reeve’s Tale” occur play a satirical role that complements Chaucer’s satire of the characters’ clothing, speech, and behavior.  Chaucer Review is one of North America’s premier journals of medieval studies.

“The Miller’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” are among the most famous of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (written ca. 1390-1400).  Examples of the literary form known as fabliau, the tales satirize two economically ambitious older men who lodge university students in their homes in Oxford and Cambridge, respectively.  Medieval houses determined social interaction via their layouts, traffic patterns, and entrances/exits, all of which are crucial in the two tales.  Combining archeological research on late medieval English houses with literary criticism of Chaucer’s narratives, Twomey and Stull demonstrate how archaeology and literary criticism together can illuminate satirical implications of the houses that would have been appreciated by Chaucer’s medieval readers.  They also reconstruct the houses in the tales on the basis of surviving medieval English houses, challenging earlier scholarship about the tales.

The idea for "Architectural Satire in the Tales of the Miller and Reeve" came out of Twomey’s ENGL 41000 seminar, “Chaucer and the Trauma of the Marketplace” (Spring 2011), in which Stull gave a guest presentation on medieval English houses.  The two co-authors presented earlier versions of their article at conferences sponsored by St. Louis University (2013) and by the New Chaucer Society (2014), and at the Ithaca College Medieval and Renaissance Colloquium (2014).

Illustration:  Geoffrey Chaucer, from Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes, in London, British Library MS. Harley 4866 (ca. 1411-1420).