The Nun's Priest's Tale

.
.
.

The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

.

The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, one of the 24 stories in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is based on the medieval tale of Reynard the Fox, common to French, Flemish, and German literature.

The protagonist of this mock-heroic story is Chanticleer, a rooster with seven wives, foremost among them the hen Pertelote. Pertelote dismisses Chanticleer’s dream of being attacked and tells him to go about his business. A fox soon approaches and flatters him, recalling the exquisite song of Chanticleer’s father. The vain rooster is thus tricked into closing his eyes and crowing, only to be seized by the fox and carried off. As Chanticleer’s owners and the animals of the barnyard run after them, Chanticleer suggests that his captor yell to tell them to turn back. When the fox opens his mouth, the rooster escapes. The tale ends with a warning against flattery.

.
.
.

Summary

A poor widow, rather advanced in age, had a small cottage beside a grove, standing in a dale. This widow led a very simple life, providing for herself and her daughters from a small farm. In a yard which she kept, enclosed all around with palings and with a ditch outside it, she had a cock called Chaunticleer, who was peerless in his crowing. Chaunticleer was beautifully coloured, with a comb redder than coral, and a beak as black as jet, and he had under his government seven chickens, who were his paramours, of which his favourite was Dame Pertelote.

One morning, Chaunticleer began to groan in his throat, as a man who was troubled in his dreams does, and Pertelote, aghast, asked him what the matter was. Chaunticleer replied that he had had a bad dream, and prayed to God to help him to correctly interpret it. He had dreamt that he, roaming around the yard, saw an animal “lyk an hound” which tried to seize his body and have him dead. The “hound’s” colour was somewhere between yellow and red, and his tail and both his ears were tipped with black.

Pertelote mocked him, telling him that he was a coward. Pertelore then argues that dreams are meaningless visions, caused simply by ill humors (bad substances in the body) – and quotes Cato at length to demonstrate her point. Her solution is that she will pick herbs from the yard in order to bring his humors back to normal.

Chaunticleer disagreed, arguing that while Cato is certainly an authority, there are many more authorities available to be read who argue that dreams are significations – of good things and bad things to come. He stated the example of one man who, lying in his bed, dreamt that his friend was being murdered for his gold in an ox’s stall, and that his body was hidden in a dung cart. Remembering his dream, this man went to a dung cart at the west gate of the town, and found the murdered body of his friend. Chaunticleer then described the story of two men, who were preparing to cross the sea. One of them dreamed that, if he crossed the sea the next day, he would be drowned - he told his companion, who laughed at him, and resolved to go anyway. The ship’s bottom tore, and his companion was drowned. Chaunticleer also cited the examples of Macrobius, Croesus and Andromache, who each had prophecies in their dreams.

Then, however, Chaunticleer praised Pertelote, asking her to speak of “mirth”, and stop all this talk of prophecy - the beauty of her face, he says, makes him feel fearless. He then quoted the proverb “Mulier est hominis confusio”, translating it as “Woman is man’s joy and all his bliss”, when it actually translates “Woman is man’s ruin”. Chaunticleer then flew down from his beam, called all of his hens to him, and revealed that he’d found a grain lying in the yard. He then clasped Pertelote to him with his wings, and copulated with her until morning.

When the month of March was over, Chaunticleer was walking in full pride, all of his wives around him, when a coal fox (a fox with black-tipped feet, ears and tail) broke through the hedges and into the yard. He bode his time for a while. The narrator then goes off into an aside, addressing Chaunticleer, and wishing that he had taken “wommennes conseils” (woman’s counsel) – before he moves back into the tale, reminding us that his tale “is of a cok”.

Chaunticleer sang merrily in the yard, and, casting his eyes among the cabbages, caught sight of the fox – and would have fled, but the fox addressed him, asking where he was going, and claiming to be his friend. The fox claimed to have met Chaunticleer’s mother and father, and talked of his father’s excellent singing voice, and the way his father used to stretch out his neck and stand on his tiptoes before singing. The fox then asked whether Chaunticleer can sing like his father – and Chaunticleer stood on his tiptoes, stretched out his neck, closed his eyes, and, as he began to sing, the fox grabbed him by the throat and ran off to the wood with him.

The poor widow and her two daughters, hearing the cry of the chickens, ran after the fox toward the crove, and many other men and animals ran after them. Chaunticleer managed to speak to the fox, and encouraged him to turn to his pursuers and curse them, telling him that he was going to eat the cock. The fox agreed – but as he opened his mouth to agree, the cock broke from his mouth suddenly and flew high up into a tree. The fox tried to persuade him down, saying that he had been misinterpreted, and that Chaunticleer should fly down in order that he might “seye sooth” (tell the truth) about what he had meant, but Chaunticleer knew better this time. The fox finally cursed all those who “jangleth whan he sholde holde his pees”.

The narrator then addresses everyone who thinks the tale is mere foolery, asking them to take the moral of the tale, rather than the tale itself: taking the fruit, and letting the chaff remain. Thus ends the Nun’s Priest’s Tale.

.
.
.

Analysis

The Nun's Priest's Tale is one of Chaucer's most brilliant tales, and it functions on several levels. The tale is an outstanding example of the literary style known as a bestiary (or a beast fable) in which animals behave like human beings. Consequently, this type of fable is often an insult to man or a commentary on man's foibles. To suggest that animals behave like humans is to suggest that humans often behave like animals.

This tale is told using the technique of the mock-heroic, which takes a trivial event and elevates it into something of great universal import. Alexander Pope's poem The Rape of the Lock is an excellent example a mock-heroic composition; it treats a trivial event (the theft of a lock of hair, in this case) as if it were sublime. Thus when Don Russel, the fox, runs off with Chaunticleer in his jaws, the chase that ensues involves every creature on the premises, and the entire scene is narrated in the elevated language found in the great epics where such language was used to enhance the splendid deeds of epic heroes. Chaucer uses elevated language to describe a fox catching a rooster in a barnyard — a far cry from the classic epics. The chase itself reminds one of Achilles' chasing Hector around the battlements in the Iliad. To compare the plight of Chaunticleer to that of Homer's Hector and to suggest that the chase of the fox is an epic chase similar to classical epics indicates the comic absurdity of the situation.

The mock-heroic tone is also used in other instances: when the Nun's Priest describes the capture of the Don Russel and refers to the event in terms of other prominent traitors (referring to the fox as "a new Iscariot, a second Ganelon and a false hypocrite, Greek Sinon") and when the barnyard animals discuss high philosophical and theological questions. For Lady Pertelote and Chaunticleer to discuss divine foreknowledge in a high intellectual and moral tone in the context of barnyard chickens is the height of comic irony. We must also remember the cause of the discussion of divine foreknowledge: Lady Pertelote thinks that Chaunticleer's dream or nightmare was the result of his constipation, and she recommends a laxative. Chaunticleer's rebuttal is a brilliant use of classical sources that comment on dreams and is a marvelously comic means of proving that he is not constipated and does not need a laxative. Throughout the mock-heroic, mankind loses much of its human dignity and is reduced to animal values.

The Nun's Priest's ideas and positions are set up in his genially ironic attitude toward both the simple life of the widow and the life of the rich and the great as represented by the cock, Chaunticleer (in Chaucer's English, the name means "clear singing"). The Nun's Priest's opening lines set up the contrast. A poor old widow with little property and small income leads a sparse life, and it does not cost much for her to get along. The implication is that living the humble Christian life is easier for the poor than for the rich, who have, like Chaunticleer, many obligations and great responsibilities (after all, if Chaunticleer does not crow at dawn, the sun cannot rise).

The Nun's Priest contrasts the two human worlds of the poor and the rich in the description of the poor widow and the elegant Chaunticleer. The widow's "bour and halle" (bedroom) was "ful sooty," that is black from the hearth-flame where she had eaten many a slim or slender meal. Notice the contrast: The term "bour and halle" comes from courtly verse of the time and conjures up the image of a castle. The idea of a "sooty bower" or hall is absurd: The rich would never allow such a thing. Yet soot is inevitable in a peasant's hut, and from the peasant's point of view, the cleanliness fetish of the rich may also be absurd. A slender meal ("sklendre meel") would of course be unthinkable among the rich, but it is all the poor widow has. Likewise, the widow has no great need of any "poynaunt sauce" because she has no gamey food (deer, swan, ducks, and do on) nor meats preserved past their season, and no aristocratic recipes. She has "No dayntee morsel" to pass through her "throte," but then, when Chaucer substitutes the word "throat" ("throte) for the expected "lips," the dainty morsel that the image calls up is no longer very dainty. The aristocratic disease gout does not keep the widow from dancing, but it's unlikely that she dances anyway. Dancing is for the young or rich. As a pious lower-class Christian, she scorns dancing of all kinds. In short, the whole description of the widow looks ironically at both the rich and the poor.

When the Nun's Priest turns to Chaunticleer, he begins to comment on the life of the rich in other ironic ways. Chaunticleer has great talents and grave responsibilities, but the cock's talent (crowing) is a slightly absurd one, however proud he may be of it. (In middle English. as in modern, "crowing" can also mean boasting or bragging.) And Chaunticleer's responsibility, making sure the sun does not go back down in the morning, is ludicrous. His other responsibilities — taking care of his wives — are equally silly. Part of the Nun's Priest's method in his light-hearted analysis of human pride is an ironic identification of Chaunticleer with everything noble that he can think of. His physical description, which uses many of the adjectives that would be used to describe the warrior/knight (words such as "crenelated," "castle Wall," "fine coral," "polished jet," "azure," "lilies," and "burnished gold," for example) reminds one of an elegant knight in shining armor.

The reader should be constantly aware of the ironic contrast between the barnyard and the real world, which might be another type of barnyard. That is, the "humanity" and "nobility" of the animals is ironically juxtaposed against their barnyard life. This contrast is an oblique comment on human pretensions and aspirations in view of the background, made clear when Don Russel challenges Chaunticleer to sing, and the flattery blinds Chaunticleer to the treachery. Here, the tale refers to human beings and the treachery found in the court through flattery. Chaunticleer's escape is also effected by the use of flattery. Don Russel learns that he should not babble or listen to flattery when it is better to keep quiet. And Chaunticleer has learned that flattery and pride go before a fall.

.
.

.

Click here for Epilogue to The Nun's Priest's Tale - 

The Nun's Priest's Tale 2

.
.
.

.
.