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

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

A second thematic implication resulting from a study of this application of Bremond's model is the overvaluing of Alison, whose absence of punishment in the end has given commentators some concern. Indeed, the symmetry we have spoken of is interrupted at the climactic moment of the action: Alison disappears as her two lovers confront each other in a sort of blindfolded duel and as her husband so suddenly reappears (one is tempted to call his coincidental dropping in a parody of the melodramatic rescue). While the text has been devoting itself to Nicholas and Absolon and then to John, it has neglected Alison, the fourth character, who suddenly becomes just as conspicuous by her absence as John by his miraculous presence. When the text remembers her, and this it does immediately after John's intrusion - an unwanted third party spoiling the symmetry of the two lovers - it couples her with Nicholas (3824), effectually hiding her individuality, and thus creates a new symmetry opposing them to John (and Absolon). But Absolon's name is not mentioned, as if he now has disappeared, and the asymmetry of three characters opposes the new couple, Nicholas and Alison, to John, who remains alone as the victim of ridicule. Where Alison had disappeared at the moment of poetic justice, making an awkward asymmetry that reveals three punished men - Absolon at least implicitly wiping his mouth, Nicholas cooling his behind, and John nursing his broken arm - she reappears in symmetrical company with her lover to help divert the punishment by the principle of poetic justice toward John, who without a partner stands outside the protection of even numbers.

When we look back up at the top of the diagram, we realize how it reveals Alison's process of learning about dissimulation and of changing from a passive potential victim to an active dissimulator and degrader.(6) She has been quickly initiated into the overdetermined value of this fictional world. In the first half, she goes to school to Nicholas and learns the lesson of seduction so that she is capable of handling Absolon. Having understood sexual deception, she next learns the confidence trick from Nicholas's practicing it on John. Then she puts her knowledge into practice by degrading Absolon. This act actually modifies her role from pupil to teacher of Nicholas, who is not only demoted to an inferior role in the schooling process but is also punished for what Henri Bergson would call comic repetition ("raideur de mecanique" 8): in merely imitating Alison's gesture of offering her nether part as target, he is given a hot spanking for his failure of imagination (Rudat adds "phallic pride" to the reasons for Nicholas's punishment [140]). I would even propose here that the symmetry in Figure 4 - which divides roughly into equal halves the diagram of the two lower Courses of Love, Dissimulation, and Degradation and of Dissimulation, Degradation, and Retribution - suggests the approximately equal duration of Nicholas and Alison's patient waiting for the opportune moment to plan and effect their night of love compared to the time of Absolon's impatient and unwelcome wooing of Alison. Absolon is punished by the misdirected kiss for participating naively in Alison's and the text's travesty of romance (thus, his many courtly-love traits), whereas Nicholas is rewarded for his encouraged patience, perhaps also a stimulation toward the gratification by love. Punishment for impatient persistence is then repeated, though applied to Nicholas's rear (as opposed to Absolon's lips), when Nicholas rather unimaginatively attempts to duplicate Alison's degrading trick. His inventiveness (the fart), which varies the mere repetition of Alison's retribution, is, however, inferior to Absolon's more forceful retribution. In fact, at this point the narrative almost threatens to modify its comic mode.