The name of Chaucer's Miller

The name of Chaucer's Miller

Carole Hough. Notes and Queries. London: Dec 1999.Vol. 46, Iss. 4; pg. 434, 2 pgs

Subjects:	Literary criticism, Names
People:	Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340?-1400)
Author(s):	Carole Hough
Document types:	Feature
Publication title:	Notes and Queries. London: Dec 1999. Vol. 46, Iss. 4; pg. 434, 2 pgs
Source type:	Periodical
ISSN/ISBN:	00293970
ProQuest document ID:	48258723
Text Word Count	1234
Document URL:	http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=48258723&sid=7&Fmt=4&clie ntId=24632&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Abstract (Document Summary)

The Miller is one of only eight pilgrims to be given a name in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." Hough raises two possibilities relating to the significance of the Miller's name.

Full Text (1234 words)

Copyright Oxford University Press(England) Dec 1999

THE NAME OF CHAUCER'S MILLER

ONE of only eight pilgrims to be given a name in the Canterbury Tales, the Miller is addressed familiarly by the Host as Robyn in line 3129 of the First Fragment:

Oure Hooste saugh that he was dronke of ale, And seyde, 'Abyd, Robyn, my leeve brother; Sum bettre man shal telle us first another.' (1, 3128-30)'

In an influential article on the use of personal names in the Canterbury Tales, Eliason commented that here Chaucer 'let a chance slip, calling him Robyn rather than Robert, a name popularly thought to be derived from robber and often applied generically to thieves' .2 Such a usage would indeed have been in keeping with Chaucer's practice elsewhere, as for instance in his choice of Hubert for the Friar, a name possibly associated with unscrupulous cleric-confessors through the Renart tradition,3 and of John, a generic name for a priest, for the Nun's Priest as well as for the friar in the Summoner's Tale and the monk in the Shipman's Tale .4 By contrast, a more recent suggestion that Chaucer 'may have intended some association with Robin Redbreast, for he emphasizes the red colour of the Miller's hair in the General Prologue',5 is in no way appropriate,6 and overlooks the fact that Robin is not recorded as a bird name until 1549.7

The purpose of this note is to raise two possibilities relating to the significance of the Miller's name, and to point out that in view of Chaucer's well-known predilection for wordand name-play,8 they may not be mutually exclusive. Firstly, there is some evidence that the name Robin may traditionally have been associated with tellers of ribald stories. In a book published in the same year as Eliason's article, Mann drew attention to the use of this personal name for a rybaudoure in Piers Plowman, and asked, 'is it coincidental that the Miller's name is Robin?" In the wider context of the passage from Piers Plowman, it may be possible to take the suggestion further. The reference to Robyn pe Ribaudour occurs at the end of a list of stereotypes, each of which is designated by a generic name:

The inference would appear to be that Robyn was a generic name for a ribaudour 'teller of ribald stories'." The Miller is of course presented as just such a character, both implicitly through his Tale and explicitly in the General Prologue:

He was a janglere and a goliardeys,

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And that was moost of synne and harlotries. (1, 5601)

The name Robyn is thus strikingly appropriate.

Secondly, I should like to re-open the possibility of an association with robber, by suggesting that Chaucer may have been more subtle than Eliason realized. As Rogers notes, 'Robin' was a nickname, originally a diminutive, for Robert'. 12 Elsewhere in the Canterbury Tales, nicknames are used in place of the corresponding baptismal names, and the reader is expected to recognize them as such. The Host, referred to as Herry Bailly by the Cook (1, 4358), is generally identified by modern scholarship with the Henri Bayliff ostlyer listed in the 1380-1 Sudsidy Rolls for Southwark. 13 The Cook calls himself Hogge of Ware (1, 4336) but is addressed by the Host as Roger (1, 4345, 4353), and the Wife of Bath is known as both Alys (111, 320) and Alisoun (111, 804). Bearing in mind that in the passage in question, the Host is attempting to calm a drunken troublemaker by addressing him in affectionate terms, it is not unlikely that Robyn in 1, 3129 also functions as a nickname rather than a baptismal name. I therefore suggest that Robert was in fact the Miller's real name, and that Chaucer intended his audience to recognize it as an appellation appropriate to a thieving rogue.

The anonymity of many of the Canterbury pilgrims, and the use of generic names and titles for others, is widely acknowledged to be a deliberate stylistic device by which Chaucer characterizes them as 'representatives of types before making them individuals'." I suggest that in the case of the Miller, Chaucer brought together two generic types, the rybaudoure and the robber, to form one of his finest comic and onomastic creations.

[Footnote]

1 F. N. Robinson (ed.), The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn, ed. Larry Benson et al. (Oxford, 1987), 67. All line references are to this edition.

2 N. E. Eliason, 'Personal names in the Canterbury Tales', Names, xxi (1973), 137-52, at_147.

[Footnote]

3 C. Muscatine, 'The name of Chaucer's Friar', Modern Language Notes, lxx (1955), 169-72. An alternative view associating Friar Hubert with the use of the same name in the Middle English lyric The Man in the Moon is presented by E. Reiss. 'Chaucer's friar and the Man in the Moon', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 1xii (1963),481-5.

[Footnote]

' Chaucer's use of generic names in these and other instances has led to uncertainty as to whether or not they are the actual names of the characters. Eliason thinks not, arguing that they are applied generically rather than individually ('Personal names in the Canterbury Tales', at 145).

' N. Yuasa, 'The art of naming: a study of fictional names as an element of style in Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare', Poetica xh (1984), 59-83, at 59 60.

[Footnote]

' As has often been pointed out, the medieval physiognomists regarded red hair as a sign of bad temper, a trait amply displayed by the Miller.

' W. B. Lockwood, The Oxford Book of British Bird Names (Oxford. 1984), 129.

[Footnote]

' See for instance R. P. Clark, 'A possible pun on Chaucer's name', Names, xxv (1997), 49 50; D. Gillam, 'Some sidelights on Chaucer's Wife of Bath', Names. xxxv (1987), 64-73; N. P. Howe,'Chaucer's use of Trumpyngtoun in The Reeve's Tale', Names, xxiv (1976), 324: P. B. Taylor, 'Chaucer's names', Neuphilologische Mittedungen, lxxxv (1994).243-8.

[Footnote]

' J. Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, 1973), 282 n. 54.

" A. V. C. Schmidt, William Langland: Piers Plowman. A Parallel- Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions. Vol. 1: Text (London, 1995), 276. The quotation is from the B-text. The passage is shorter in the A-text, and has been further expanded in the C-text. but all three contain the reference to Robyn Pe Ribaudour.

[Footnote]

" ME ribaudour is recorded as a nonce occurrence in Piers Plowman, and is defined as 'jester' in IT Kurath and S. M. Kuhn, Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, 1952- ), s.nnribaudour(e, ribaudrere. In the context, however, the term has clear associations of ribaldry, an interpretation supported by comparison with the related word ribaudri(e, defined in MED as '(a) Debauchery, dissipation, ribaldry; (b) bawdy speech, coarse jesting; a dirty story@ (c) lechery, illicit love; coarse or immoral behavior; (d) banter, jesting, idle talk, gossip'. D. Pearsall, Piers Plowman hj- William Langland- an Edition of the C-text (London, 1978), 408, s.v. rybauder, gives the definition 'teller of coarse tales. scurrilous buffoon'.

[Footnote]

" P. B. Rogers, 'The names of the Canterbury pilgrims', Names, xvi (1968), 339-46, at 342. Eliason also notes that Rob-vn is 'one of many common variants of Robert' ('Personal-names in-the Canterbury Tales, at_142).

[Footnote]

" The Riverside Chaucer, 825. This point too is overlooked by Yuasa, who appears to take HerrY Bailly as a fictional coinage ('The art of naming', at 61).

" Rogers, 'The names of the Canterbury pilgrims', at 340.

[Author Affiliation]

CAROLE HouGH

University of Glasgow