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.Epilogue to The Nun's Priest's Tale
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The Nun’s
Priest’s Tale
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Click here for the Summary and Analysis - The Nun's Priest's Tale 1
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.Epilogue to The Nun's Priest's Tale
The
Host, praises the tale as "myrie", and then, as he did with the Monk,
suggests that the Nun's Priest would be an excellent breeding man (trede-foul)
if only he were allowed to breed - for the Nun's Priest, the Host continues, is
brawny, with a great neck and large chest.
Analysis
The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale is one of the best-loved and best-known of all of the
Tales, and one whose genre, in Chaucer’s time and now, is instantly
recognizable. It is a beast fable, just like Aesop’s fable, and as one of Chaucer’s
successors, the medieval Scots poet Robert Henryson, would go on to explore in
great detail, its key relationship is that between human and animal. The key
question of the genre is addressed at the end by the narrator himself: telling
those who find a tale about animals a folly to take the moral from the tale,
disregarding the tale itself. But can we take a human moral from a tale about
animals? Can an animal represent – even just in a tale – a human in any useful
way?
For
a start, it is important to notice that the animal-human boundary is blurred
even before the tale begins, when the Host mocks the Nun’s Priest (who, being a
religious man, would have been celibate) and suggesting that he would have made
excellent breeding stock (a “tredefowl”, or breeding-fowl, is the word he
uses). The thought is an interesting one – because if we can think of the Nun’s
Priest himself as potentially useful in breeding, animalistic terms, then can
we think of his tale in potentially useful in human terms?
The
question frames the other themes of the tale. The issue of woman’s counsel is
raised again (last foregrounded in Chaucer’s tale of Melibee) explicitly –
should Chaunticleer take Pertelote’s advice about how to interpret his dreams?
Should he disregard his dreams, and get on with his life? He does, of course,
looking among the cabbages (perhaps even to find herbs), when he sees the fox –
and at that point, the tale seems to suggest, he should never have listened to
his wife in the first place: his fears were valid.
That
is, until we remember what the narrator tells us anyway at a crucial point,
that his tale is “of a cok” – about a chicken. It is hardly as if we need a
prophetic dream to tell us that foxes like eating chickens: its what we might
call animal instinct. This is doubly highlighted when, after quoting Cato and
discussing the various textual politics of dream interpretation, Chaunticleer
calls his wives excitedly to him because he has found a grain of corn – and
then has uncomplicated animal sex with Pertelote all night. It is a
contradiction, Chaucer seems to imply, to expect unchicken-like behavior from a
chicken: yet the contradiction is one which fuels the whole genre of beast
fable. If the Nun’s Priest had too much human dignity and restraint to be a breeding
fowl, Cato-quoting Chaunticleer has animal urges too strong to be a viable
auctour.
Except
that, of course, with the possible exception of Arviragus and Dorigen in the
Franklin's Tale, there is no more stable and robust “marriage” in the Canterbury
Tales than Chanticleer and Pertelote’s. The two fowl have a fulfilling sexual
relationship - and the sex occurs as a pleasurable, uncomplicated end in
itself, a stark contrast with the sexual transactions of the Franklin and the
Wife of Bath’s tales. In one sense, then, the animals are not so bestial.
Interpreting
dreams, incidentally, is a favorite theme of Middle English literature, and it
frames a whole genre of poetry, known as “dream poems”, of which Chaucer
himself wrote several (including the Book of the Duchess and the House of
Fame). Dreams and text are closely intertwined, and – even in this tale – the
way in which a dream poem juxtaposes the text of the dream with the text of the
story is clear. Is a dream any more or less real than a tale? If we can take a
moral from a tale, can we take one from a dream?
This
tale is in many ways a return to the ground, a return to basics. We start with
a poor widow, and a dusty yard - a setting far removed from the high-culture
classical tragedies of the Monk. Moreover, the tale keeps emphasizing anality
and bottoms - in Chaunticleer’s two examples of dreams-coming-true, a dung cart
and a breaking ship’s “bottom” are the hinge of the story, and Pertelote’s
advice to Chaunticleer is to take some “laxatyf” to clear out his humours.
There is a good-natured sense of groundedness about this tale, a return – after
the dark run of Monk (interrupted), before him the punishing Melibee (and
interrupted Sir Thopas) and bitter Prioress – to the humour and warmth of the early
tales. Yet its theme also darkly foreshadows the end of the tale-telling
project itself.
If
the tale, taken simplistically, does endorse prophetic dreams (though, as
mentioned above, a look at the animal nature of its characters might be seen as
parodying the whole concept!) then what is the “moral” that the narrator wants
us to take away at the end? As ever, this isn’t totally clear. Yet one thing it
might be is the importance of speaking or not speaking.
One
of the things that makes Chaunticleer the morally-representative chicken a
problem is the fact that he can speak and argue with his wife on the one hand,
yet cry “cok! Cok!” when he sees a grain on the floor. He is both chicken and
human, rather like Chaucer writes as both himself and as Nun’s Priest. The
tale, however, is structured by people knowing when to speak and not knowing
when to speak: Pertelote speaks out to wake Chaunticleer from his dream,
Chaunticleer foolishly opens his mouth to sing for the fox when he is captured,
and it is Chaunticleer’s final visitation of the trap that he himself fell into
on the fox which causes him in turn to open his mouth – and let Chaunticleer
go. Know when you should “jangle” (chatter) and know when to hold your peace.
It
is a theme of course which points a sharp finger at the whole idea of a beast
fable - the whole genre, we might argue, resting on the writer precisely
ignoring the correct moments to have a character speak or not speak; and it
also is a dangerous moral for the Tales as a whole. In a work of literature
that constantly apes orality, the injunction to shut up is a serious one – and,
as a comparison of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale to the Manciple’s Tale reveals – one
very much in Chaucer’s mind at the very end of the Canterbury project.
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Click here for the Summary and Analysis of The Nun's Prist's Tale -
The Nun's Priest's Tale 1
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