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Article: Chaucer's 'The Miller's Tale.' (Geoffrey Chaucer)(comment on Ricks Carson, The Explicator, vol. 50, p. 66)
- Article from:
- The Explicator
- Article date:
- September 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Ricks Carsons response (Explicator 50|2~: 66-67) to my essay (Explicator 47|31: 4-6) on "The Miller's Tale," although obviously well-intentioned, is dangerously speculative. The point of my work was not "to incriminate Nicolas and Alison" (66) but to illustrate that there is some doubt as to the accuracy of the glosses by Manly, Pollard, Robinson, and others of the word gnof, which those critics perceive to mean "churl" While I do not pretend to express my interpretation as "Chaucer's intent" (66), it is clear that hanging the tag of "churl" on the character of John the carpenter, in the second line of "The Miller's Tale," creates many questions.
Carson writes that ...