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Teaching The Canterbury Tales: The Reeve's Tale

Reeve it and weep.

Activities: 13
Quiz Questions: 33

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Description
Sample

Chaucer's "The Reeve's Tale" is a disturbing story about how two young students take revenge on a miller who's cheated them of flour. What begins as a seemingly lighthearted story very quickly takes a sinister turn.

"The Reeve's Tale" focuses on revenge, short and simple. Revenge, says Chaucer, doesn't have to be all big and epic.

Take that, Tarantino.

In this guide, you'll find

a look at how well the humor of "The Reeve's Tale" (we promise there is some) compares to contemporary styles of humor.
an exploration of "revenge" as a theme both in the story and in human nature.
a chance to play literary critic by comparing "The Reeve's Tale" to Boccaccio's The Decameron and deciding: who wrote it better?

Make revenge even sweeter for your high schoolers with Shmoop's guide to "The Reeve's Tale."

What's Inside Shmoop's Literature Teaching Guides

Shmoop is a labor of love from folks who love to teach. Our teaching guides will help you supplement in-classroom learning with fun, engaging, and relatable learning materials that bring literature to life.

Inside each guide you'll find quizzes, activity ideas, discussion questions, and more—all written by experts and designed to save you time. Here are the deets on what you get with your teaching guide:

13 – 18 Common Core-aligned activities to complete in class with your students, including detailed instructions for you and your students.
Discussion and essay questions for all levels of students.
Reading quizzes for every chapter, act, or part of the text.
Resources to help make the book feel more relevant to your 21st-century students.
A note from Shmoop’s teachers to you, telling you what to expect from teaching the text and how you can overcome the hurdles.

Want more help teaching Teaching The Canterbury Tales: The Reeve's Tale?

Check out all the different parts of our corresponding learning guide.

Instructions for You

Objective: As GC (you know, Geoffrey Chaucer) was writing The Canterbury Tales, you'd think he'd get a bit bored—or at least run out of occupations to write about. (Reeve…knight…wife?) So how did he keep it fresh? Well, being the smart guy that he was, Chaucer varied the types of stories he told. So in his masterpiece, you get everything from sweeping epics (kind of) to the humorous tales that the Miller and the Reeve tell.

In this exercise, your students will explore how well the humor of "The Reeve's Tale" compares to examples of more contemporary humor. Steps 1 through 4 should take about 60 to 70 minutes, with Step 5 being completed at home.

Get ready to Reeve.

Materials Needed: access to a collection of humorous short stories, a copy of the text, and/or Shmoop's summary page

Step 1: Have a class discussion to get them to think about comedy. Here are some questions you could ask, and make sure to write the characteristics the class identifies on the board.

Think about a comedy you really like, whether book, movie, or TV show. What makes it funny? As a class, come up with a list of characteristics that make a story funny.

Answers will vary depending on preferences, but may include:

Improbable situations
Embarrassing moments
"Quirky" central characters
Clever, witty writing
Physical comedy

Step 2: Next up, you'll introduce the concept of the fabliau by providing your students with the definition on the board: a humorous, frequently ribald, or "dirty" narrative. The tales often revolve around trickery, practical jokes, sexual mishaps, scatology (ew), mistaken identity, and bodily humor (Source).

Break students into pairs and have them write down specific examples of how "The Reeve's Tale" is a fabliau. After ten minutes, have the pairs share some of the examples they identified.

Step 3: Now that you've educated the students on fabliau (they'll be well equipped to dazzle their friends and family at their next dinner party) and intrigued them enough to look up scatology (again, ew), begin to explore the quality of the humor in "The Reeve's Tale." Have them chew on these topics in a class discussion for a few minutes:

How does "The Reeve's Tale" compare to the list of comedy characteristics they identified in Step 1?
Is there anything not funny about the story?
A lot of times in comedies, people get their "just deserts." Does this happen in "The Reeve's Tale"? (Or maybe: Do you find the outcome is a bit harsh?)

Step 4: Now that that's all settled, your students will explore how well the humor of the medieval period holds up to more modern works by comparing "The Reeve's Tale" to another humorous short story.

Go to East of the Web's "Top 20 Humor Stories" and select between five to seven stories, depending on the size of the class.
Let the students select the story they want to read for the exercise, and allow them to read the story in groups.
Provide them a few guiding questions that will help them process the information. They can simply discuss these as a group:
- What's humorous about the story?
- What type of humor is used in the story? Situational humor, word play, physical comedy, etc.
- How does it compare to "The Reeve's Tale" as a humorous short story?

Step 5: Time to put that energy and reading into a well-crafted comparison/contrast essay. Here's a suggested prompt:

You've had a chance to explore humor from the medieval period and something a bit more contemporary. How do the two compare? What are the similarities and what are the differences between the two? And finally, which did you prefer and why?

This should be a formal essay (intro and conclusion, with three body paragraphs) and around 500 words when all's said and done.

Instructions for Your Students

As GC (you know, Geoffrey Chaucer) was writing The Canterbury Tales, you would think he would get a bit bored, or at least run out of ideas to write about. After all, this guy had to write close to 120 stories. How was he gonna do it? How was he gonna keep it fresh?

(He didn't use the expression "keep it fresh"—we'll tell you that much.)

Being the smart guy that he was, he varied the types of stories he told. So in his masterpiece, he wrote everything from sweeping epics (kind of) to the humorous tales that the Miller and the Reeve tell. Does the type of comedy Chaucer wrote in the 1300s hold up to today's standards?

Time to find out.

Step 1: Think about a comedy you really like, whether book, movie, or TV show. What makes it funny? As a class, you'll come up with a list of characteristics that make a story funny.

Step 2: The tale that the Reeve tells is a fabliau; teach will share the definition with you. Then, partner up and find evidence that demonstrate that "The Reeve's Tale" is a fabliau. Be sure to write 'em down. You'll be sharing them with the rest of the class in about ten minutes.

Step 3: Now that you know what a fabliau is and are ready to dazzle your friends and family at your next dinner party, you're going to explore how the humor in "The Reeve's Tale" holds up to modern standards. Chew on these topics in a quick class discussion:

How does "The Reeve's Tale" compare to the list of comedy characteristics identified in Step 1?
Is there anything not funny about the story?
A lot of times in comedies, people get their "just deserts." Does this happen in "The Reeve's Tale"?

Step 4: Now you'll think about how "The Reeve's Tale" compares to something written more recently, particularly in terms of comedy. Here's what you'll need to do:

Your teacher has selected different stories from the "Top 20 Humor Stories" on East of the Web.
Select the one that seems the most interesting to you.
Form a group with the other students who chose the same story. Read the story and discuss the following questions:
- What's humorous about the story?
- What type of humor is used in the story? Situational humor, word play, physical comedy, etc.
- How does it compare to "The Reeve's Tale" as a humorous short story?

Step 5: You knew it was coming: time to put that energy and reading into a well-crafted comparison/contrast essay.