Geoffrey Chaucer provides humor in many of the tales from Canterbury Tales. The Miller's Tale is one such tale. In the Miller's Tale, a carpenter marries an eighteen-year-old girl named Alison. The carpenter also houses a cleric named Nicholas. The clever Nicholas tries to take advantage of the carpenter's young wife while he goes away. Alison begins to like Nicholas and tells him that if he can trick her husband, then she will make love to him. Another man, Absalom attempts to capture Alison's love, but "Alison loved clever Nicholas so much that Absalom could go blow his horn elsewhere."(Canterbury Tales 65). Nicholas comes up with a plan to trick the carpenter. He tells the husband that he knows another great flood will come and that he, the carpenter, and Alison will be safe if the carpenter builds three separate bar

Chaucer also uses the humor in his stories to provide comic relief. The humorous tales act as a sort of comic relief in the novel. Chaucer inserts humorous tales to take away from the impact of more serious tales. Tales such as the Miller's Tale and the Reeve's tale offset the seriousness of tales such as the Second Nun's Tale and the Pardoner's Tale. Many of the tales in Canterbury Tales tell stories of hypocrisy, greed, and poor faith. These tales intend to teach a moral lesson of man's religious duties. Tales such as the Miller's Tale and the Reeve's Tale represent a more light-hearted attempt to teach a lesson, usually about marriage, love, and trust. Chaucer inserts these humorous tales in an attempt to bestow upon the reader a message about life. Chaucer's jovial approach provides the reader with a message by showing how foolish a certain character acts. The author uses humor to convey messages without seriousness while providing comic relief for the tales with more serious messages and approaches.

The genre of humor which Chaucer uses also adds to it's essence. Geoffrey Chaucer uses a form of comic genre called fabliau throughout the novel. Chaucer's Miller's Tale, Reeve's Tale, Shipman's Tale, and Summoner's Tale represent fabliaux. A fabliau comes about in the form of a brief comic tale, usually insulting and often obscene. Fabliaux usually take place in the present an

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