Friedman, John Block. "Bottom-Kissing and the Fragility of Status in Chaucer's Miller's Tale." The
Chaucer Review, vol. 54 no. 2, 2019, p. 119-140. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/719753.
Friedman’s central argument states “The Miller’s Tale attacks authority and permanence of status among a highly class-conscious, small bourgeoisie, using humiliation through bottom-kissing found in the Old French fabliaux Berengier au Lonch and La Gageure” (119). Friedman draws on Chaucer’s likely knowledge of French fabliaux as a frame for analysis. He discusses the sophisticated and well-established class implications for butt kissing during this time period, positing that Chaucer used it as a story-telling device to critique a rigid class hierarchy. He examines each main character — John the Carpenter, Alisoun, Nicholas, and Absolon — from the perspective of his or her social status and their class aspirations, as this was a time when merchants strived for entrance into the upper classes. Each character, writes Friedman, strives to elevate him or herself above the merchant class and suffers from their own unique case of class fragility, which all come crashing down at the end of the story in one way or another. From this perspective of class fragility, Friedman explores the significance of kissing ass among Old French fabliaux, especially Berengier au Lonch, in which a man is humiliated by a woman and made to kiss her bottom. “To a striking degree, Berengier is obsessed with class and status, and it is organized around the plot device of bottom kissing, which lowers status” (126). He argues that Chaucer takes recognizable devices from fablieaux and enhanced them to make a wider social commentary in The Miller’s Tale, concluding: “... these two window episodes of the Miller’s Tale, Chaucer goes far beyond his possible fablieau models in morphing the beloved’s face and the bottom, the desired and the undesired, questioning the very stability of form, and calling into question the major characters’ sense of self satisfaction” (139).
-- Ted Conover
