Philosophical Sleaze? The 'strok of thought' in the Miller's Tale and Chaucerian Fabliau

Abstract

Did Chaucer drop his philosophical interests in writing fabliaux? Critics often deny them serious implication, yet these tales share with "Troilus" and the Knight's Tale a core structuring concept expressing Boethian ideas on chance and providence. The Miller's Tale draws on the representation of flood in the Roman de la Rose as a providentially ordained event which human astrological science vainly seeks to forecast. Chaucer's fabliaux give readers the sensation of embracing intricate configurations of events in one climactic 'strok of thought', like Providence in the "Consolation of Philosophy." But the sensation is paradoxical: it reveals comical human short-sightedness.