Chaucer's Biblical Turn

Abstract

In the Miller's Tale Chaucer turns away from classical sources and a classical authorial persona towards biblical source material in order to craft a providential mode of self-asserting and self-effacing authorship, a turn fraught with generative possibilities for the Canterbury Tales. The Miller and Nicholas theorize God's authorial production as ‘Goddes pryvetee’, concealed meaning they ignore when adapting the Bible but whose concealment they can imitate when claiming its authority. Chaucer writes the Miller's Tale, then, as God would have: its clear design revealing decisive authorial agency, its meaning hidden in the inscrutable transcendence of that agency.