Beowulf, Lanval, and The Miller's Tale: Uniquely Representative of Medieval Social Order

For centuries, literature has provided humans with countless numbers of enjoyable and enlightening stories which have entertained billions of readers in every region of the world. For a story to maintain recognition in mainstream literature for centuries upon centuries, however, it must do more than tell a good story: it has to educate the reader about something they did not already know. For a modern reader studying famous works of literature from the Middle Ages, it is very important to learn how humans lived and interacted with one another in the time and area in which the work was written. To fully understand and appreciate any work of literature, one must learn what society values during the time period and geographic area in which the work was written and which characteristics make a person respectable and proper; works in the Middle Ages are no exception. Beowulf, Lanval and The Miller's Tale each depict the social order of their time and give modern readers great insight into the world in which they written.