Check it Out: The nether ye

"'Thus swyved is the carpenter's wyfe;
And Absalon hath kist hir nether ye
And Nicholas is scalded in the towte
This tale is done, and God save al the rowte'"
"What the hell was that?"
"Bernadette dared me to tell a dirty story. The Miller's Tale by Chaucer is the dirtiest story I know. It would have been hidden in sockdrawers if people in the 14 century had worn socks."

If you've watched season four of The Big Bang Theory, you've already been treated by Amy Farrah-Fowler to the medieval version of a dirty movie. But for all of us who responded like her hapless friend Penny (WTF?), some explanation might be in order.

In The Miller's Tale, a geriatric carpenter has the folly and misfortune to marry a clever young woman with a "lecherous eye," Alison, while renting out the upstairs apartment to Nicholas, a hot young law student. Predictably enough, "her husband being out" and "students being sly," "giving way to whim" Nicholas "made a grab and caught her by the quim." If nothing else, we must congratulate Nicholas for his accuracy.

Alison and Nicholas fall in love, or lust, but it's not the easiest thing to act upon with the old man dogging their every move. To complicate their lives further, the stupidly love-sick parish clerk, Absalon, spends every evening caterwauling love ballads at the window of the master bedroom. Stalker alert, anyone?

But "making love in secret" is Nicholas' talent. Convincing Alison's husband of the imminent apocalypse à la Noah's Flood (faith apparently does have its uses), the carpenter skives off work to build a boat for each of them and suspends them from the roof of his garage. While the carpenter is praying for mercy up in the rafters, Alison and Nicholas sneak off to the bedroom and finally get down and dirty.

Of course, the post-coital relaxation gets interrupted by a certain peeping Tom. When politely informing the gentleman to "go to Hell" fails to get rid of the unwanted surveillance, she agrees to a kiss. Unfortunately for Absalon, it's too dark for him to note what she's doing, so he "put up his mouth and kissed her naked arse/ most savourously before he knew of this." Considering the lack of toilet paper, hygiene products, and dental dams back then, it was probably not the most pleasant experience.

Not being the brightest chap, Absalon remains somewhat stupefied that "something rough and hairy had appeared" and yet "he knew quite well a woman has no beard." When he finally figures it out, he runs off enraged to the smithy, gets a red-hot poker, and returns to the window, pleading for another kiss. This time, Nicholas sticks out his bum and "lets fly a fart/loud as it were a thunderclap" in the clerk's face. Incensed, "his hot iron ready, with a thump," Absalon "smote him in the middle of the rump." BDSM community, I'm sorry, but you have been upstaged.

Smutty as it is, The Miller's Tale was actually written by a civil servant noted for his piety, good manners, and education. The other, lesser-known works of Chaucer are mostly translations from Latin philosophical and religious texts. Yet The Canterbury Tales, in which The Miller's Tale takes pride of place, gained fame and infamy as Chaucer broke with tradition in several ways.

First, Chaucer wrote an original work in English at a time when serious literary works were still being written in Latin or, at worst, French. In doing so, he established himself as the father of English literature and made English an acceptable language for scholarly work. Hate essays? Thank Chaucer that you don't have to write them in a dead language.

Second, Chaucer popularized in court the vast spread of genres he encountered in his travels throughout France and Italy. And while some of these were already in vogue at court, such as the courtly (and chaste) love presented in The Knight's Tale, the ribald humour of The Miller's Tale was decidedly not.

The Miller's Tale is written in the style of a French fabliau, the contextual translation of which is 'a raunchy urban myth.' Fabliaux featured sexual and scatological (literally shitty) humour, and allowed jongleurs, or wandering minstrels, to explore erotic experiences censored from the works of their courtly counterparts. Moreover, it also enabled subversive social commentary as a form of entertainment. For while the word fabliau sounds similar to fable, the closest thing to morality in these stories is its absence in the clergy. Spooning social criticism with comic relief, Chaucer encouraged freedom of speech through social satire in England.

So, get caught skimming some steamy fiction during study break? Hey, the father of English literature was a libidinous old man, so it's hardly going to ruin you.