Greimas, Bremond, and the 'Miller's Tale.' - A.J. Greimas; Claude Bremond

Style, Fall, 1997 by Harold F. Mosher, Jr.

Two remarks about method might be made at this point. The first is that, as has been noticed often, structural narratologists tend to choose relatively uncomplex stories to analyze: the fairy tale; the detective story; or in the case of Greimas, relatively simple short tales.(3) These narratives are amenable to systems that reduce them to their bare terms, and our choice and handling of the Miller's Tale fits this tradition so far. In fact, our reduction in Figure 1 could easily lead us to constitute the main plot of the tale as a "kernel narrative" in Gerald Prince's terms (Narratology 83; Grammar 31), consisting of at least two events and one modification of a state arranged in chronological order: Alison was beautiful and faithful to John, and then Nicholas wooed Alison, and then, as a result, Alison was no longer faithful to John. One can easily conclude that the method merely makes a simple story simpler. On the other hand, these reductions of the narrative to its structural bones do suggest a line of inquiry worth pursuing. In Greimas's model, Alison appears to be only an object of value, possessed or not possessed by two different men. Similarly, in Prince's scheme Alison seems to be relatively inactive in the first two statements: she has two given traits, beauty and faithfulness, the latter resulting only from her acceptance of a marriage proposal from another and her observance of the resulting legal and moral state codified by her society. In the second statement it is Nicholas who acts. Although the third statement describes Alison's new state of infidelity in negative terms and in terms that emphasize her dependency on John, a contradiction of her former state, it does imply a more willful act on her part in defying what the law and presumably the culture support: that is, fidelity in marriage.

Such an attempt to define Alison as more than a lack, more than just an object of value, however, seems to be defeated by both the Greimas model presented in Figure 1 and the second Greimas taxonomy diagramed in Figure 2. Just as in the plots-of-struggle diagrams, where all three men appear as possessors or potential possessors of the object Alison, so in the diagram of roles, men assume the functions of different actants (Greimas, Semantique structurale 20-21; Courtes 54; Hawkes 88-90; Blanche 56) while Alison assumes only the role of object. Nicholas is both subject (protagonist, principal mover) and receiver of the desired object. John is his first opponent to be outwitted, whereas Absolon is a second, rather helpless opponent to be degraded. In a sense John is also the sender, unwittingly of course, because his age and absence from home from a young, attractive wife push her (though she does not need much encouragement) into the arms of a more willing (and undoubtedly able) man. Another version of this paradigm accounting for Absolon's attempted seduction of Alison shows Absolon as subject and as potential receiver and John and Nicholas (hidden to Absolon) as opponents with John again as sender and Nicholas as the actual receiver of the object only because, we are told, Alison loves him better despite all of Absolon's efforts (3385-88). Greimas's systems seem to reveal a great deal of energy in the men's (especially Nicholas's and Absolon's) activities as opposed to an almost motiveless acceptance or rejection by Alison.