Foreshadowing the Miller's Tale

In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Chaucer the author and Chaucer the pilgrim are both quick to make distinctions between characters and point out shortcomings. Though Chaucer the pilgrim is meeting the group for the first time, his characterizations go beyond simple physical descriptions. Using just twenty-one lines in the General Prologue, the author presents the character of the Miller and offers descriptions that foreshadow the sardonic tone of his tale and the mischievous nature of his protagonist.

Though the descriptions in the beginning of the piece may seem trivial at first glance, the physicality and basic background of the Miller gives us insight as to what motivates his farcical story. We are told "his nosethirles blake were and wyde./A swerd and bokeler bar he by his syde./His mouth as greet was as a greet forneys./He was a janglere and a goliardeys,/And...