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

This modification of Bremond's system, based, as is evident, on a three-step process, reveals, I believe, more about the tale than a more linear diagram. (For completeness, I have included a full list of Bremond's roles although I do not refer to all of them.) What I have attempted is no doubt a compromise necessitated by the desire to spatialize, at least in part, the time-governed processes of reading and narrative action. Movement on the figure is indicated partially by arrows and is implied according to the conventions of reading from top to bottom and from left to right, though these conventions cannot always be observed on such a figure. What will appear immediately, as a result of this attempt to combine sequence and simultaneity on the same diagram, are a double vertical division first into a Course of Love and Dissimulation (itself divided horizontally twice into the Courses of Seduction and of Frustrated Seduction with two different interest points of view(4) - those of Nicholas and Absolon - and a third point of view - Alison's - divided between listening to Nicholas and listening to Absolon). More developed than the first part because it represents the complication and resolution of the action prepared in the first part, the second part - Courses of Love, Dissimulation, Degradation, and Retribution (this last term indicating an added motivation) - is also divided into two general subparts: Courses of Love, Dissimulation, and Degradation, involving first Nicholas and Alison's point of view together and subsequently John's point of view: and Courses of Dissimulation, Degradation, and Retribution, involving first Nicholas and Alison's point of view together and then Absolon's point of view.

From the beginning these points of view are associated with roles, also more or less arranged symmetrically. Nicholas is a seducer; his counterpart, Absolon, is a potential seducer. Alison is a seducee, or, preferably, in Bremond's terms a beneficiary of Nicholas's seduction and a potential victim from her point of view of Absolon's attempted seduction. In the second part, Nicholas and Alison join forces as mutual seducers, so to speak, since Alison is now as willing as Nicholas to engage in lovemaking, and as dissimulators (Alison cooperates in the deception) to maneuver John, a victim, out of the way. In the other horizontal half of the second part, Alison and Nicholas again join (but now it is Alison who invents the deception) to victimize Absolon. After Absolon administers the first kiss, the plot is developed further at this point by his aborted second kiss, for which is substituted Nicholas's fart, to which Absolon's reply is the "kiss" of the red-hot coulter.(5) The symmetry is again perfect with two occurrences doubled: a kiss, an aborted kiss, a fart, and a branding. In the process the first victim, Absolon, becomes the retributor, and the first dissimulator, Nicholas, becomes a victim in a double switching of roles from patient (he follows Alison) to agent (he farts) and from agent to patient (he is branded). Nicholas's reaction to the fire is a call for water, a symmetrical cry balancing his passing of air; it causes John to fall to earth, completing the evocation of the four medieval elements.