![]() Kolshansky (1976) argues that the correctness of perception of a literary text depends on the reader’s overall knowledge and mastery of the language code. Written more than six centuries ago, Chaucer’s text may present some comprehension problems for today’s readers. In view of its literary value, this picture of the Miller’s world should be carefully preserved for the modern reader and the generations of readers to come. 48), and his tale “represents a carnivalesque expos é of the official culture of the Middle Ages” (p. Rigby puts it (1996), “the fabliau-world of the Miller is natural, material and tangible” (p. Chaucer is remarkable among medieval authors for being able to break with the analogical or symbolic view of reality (Burton, Greentree 1997, p. Though “The Miller’s Tale” is a version of a well-known comic story of which several forms are known, and which probably existed in the oral tradition of Chaucer’s time (Moore 2002, 2004), Chaucer makes it into a piece of art, supplying the story with memorable characters, realistic details, intricate plot and a surprising end. The story ends with Alison rousing the neighbours to chase John, who they declare to be mad. Nicholas’s cries for ‘Water’ awaken John, who cuts the rope, falls to the floor and breaks his arm. Thinking this a good joke, Nicholas does so too, but, tricked the first time, Absolom now fetches a hot ploughshare and buries it in Nicholas’s behind. Taking advantage of the dark night, the mischievous woman puts her backside out of the window for him to kiss. That same night Absolom comes to woo Alison. ![]() ![]() John follows Nicholas’s advice and spends the night in his tub while Nicholas and Alison enjoy the pleasures of love-making. To carry out the plan, Nicholas persuades John that a second Flood was coming and the only way for him and his wife to survive was to spend the night in separate tubs tied under the ceiling, so that when the Flood came they could cut the ropes and sail away. Nicholas and Alison plan to spend the night together. In “The Miller’s Tale”, Alison, the pretty young wife of an Oxford carpenter named John, has two suitors: a student, Nicholas, and the parish clerk, Absolom. Such stories frequently involved a betrayed husband (the cuckold), his unfaithful wife, and a cleric who is the wife's lover. “The Miller's Tale” is a fabliau, a genre of a short merry tale, generally about people in absurd and amusing circumstances, often naughty sexual predicaments, which was popular in medieval France and England. In particular, it serves a comic illustration of men-women relationships so different from the stereotypical code of “courtly love” associated with medieval European literature. “The Miller's Tale” is undoubtedly the most entertaining story among those told by the personages of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and deserves a special attention of a modern reader, giving us a realistic, though farcical, picture of the world Chaucer lived in. ![]() Key-words: medieval text modernization reality-building constituents translator’s choices. In addition to difficulties resulting from the significant time distance between the original text and the modern English reader, the translator of “The Miller’s Tale” faces the problem of language “propriety” in rendering explicit vocabulary relating to sex and physiological functions. The study showed a number of challenges posed by the intricate realism and bawdy farce of “The Miller’s Tale” for the modern translator both in terms of words’ meaning and functional status. Such “reality-building constituents” include locale markers common practices characterizing people’s life in a medieval English town people’s beliefs household details characters’ individual appearances, courting and love-making, etc. T he author singles out some major “reality-building constituents” that make up the world of the famous story and looks at how the translator handles them in terms of the lexicon. The paper researches how medieval English reality of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale” is brought across to the present-day reader in modern English translation.
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