チョーサーと香り : The Miller's Taleにおけるsweeteの意味

概要

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The purpose of this paper is to focus on the usage of the word sweete in The Miller's Tale of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. All the three main characters in The Miller's Tale, Alison, Nicholas, and Absolon, are represented by sweete in different ways. Nicholas, a student, rents a single room from a carpenter, who is Alison's husband. Nicholas makes his room smell sweet with herb, and he himself is also sweet like herb to get Alison's love. Absolon, a church clerk also falls in love with her and tries to make himself sweet by chewing sweet herb. Besides, these two men in love offer sweet things to Alison to taste her sweetness. Nicholas takes her to his sweet-smelling room and holds her in his arms. Absolon gives her sweet presents such as spiced wine and waffle. Thus three of them pour sweetness on each other and these sweet presents make sweet Alison sweeter and sweeter, and their sweetness gets more and more farcical and sexual. In The Miller's Tale, these three main characters seem to be obsessed with the sweetness in order to fill their sexual desire. As a conclusion, I would like to discuss how sweete plays an important role to make this tale take on sexual and vulgar atmosphere with taking the medieval idea on food, especially herb and spice, into consideration.
2003-03-31