A Reflection on The Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Prologue and Tale

After reading the second story in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chauser,
which in The Miller's Prologue and Tale, I have cognized that "The Miller's Tale" is the
story of a cunning man, Nicholas, who tricks a not-so-bright carpenter in order to get the
carpenter's wife into bed.
I think with this plot, the main use of cleverness in the story seems to be to
seduce and beguile. The same is true of the various talents the characters possess.
Nicholas uses his reputation for prophecy to play his trick, while Nicholas's romantic
rival Absolon attempts to use his various musical gifts to seduce Alison. Add to this a
lengthy exposition from John about how inquiring too much into God's secret
knowledge, can only end in ruin, and "The Miller's Tale" begins to seem like pretty
negative example for cunning and cleverness. Yet, it also seems to warn against their
opposites, it's John, the not-at-all clever carpenter who, arguably, takes the hardest
knocks in this tale.
It's always a bit of a crapshoot to try to draw a moral from Chaucer's tales, but I
think at the very least "The Miller's Tale" seems to warn us against too-smooth, too-
clever types like Nicholas, and the easy-to-get woman whose not faithful like Alison.