miller's tale? please help?

Question

hey so i have to do a paper on miller's tale and courtly love. i have no clue where to start, theres a lot to write but i dont know what to include. any ideas?
its about 2-5 pages long. i dont even know where to begin.

Answer 1

If you need help finding stuff on courtly love, you could try this site:
http://classiclit.about.com/od/courtlylove/Courtly_Love.htm
(particularly the Rules of Courtly Love)

I would suggest looking over the particular points in courtly love that you can uphold and then lay out your paper going over them point-by-point and pulling in examples from the Miller's Tale that illustrate each one.

Make sure you look at Absolom - he's an example of a 'courtly' lover because he loved Alison even though she was married and didn't want anything except to serenade her (and to get a kiss - an arguably chaste kiss).

Nicholas is probably an example of a courtly lover-gone-wrong...in the sense that he should have loved Alison from afar and never cuckolded her husband.

Hope that helps...