The Nun's Priest's Tale
Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales, "Nun's Priest's Tale"
Genre: a beast fable, of the sort best known to us in the collection attributed to the Hellenistic African slave, Aesop. The antagonist in
this tale has his own "series" of beast fables, the "Reynard the Fox" tradition, which exists in many manuscripts in both French and
English. In effect, he's doing a "guest shot" here, but his character would have been extremely well known to Chaucer's audience and
his "modus operandi" as a chicken thief and liar fits the type perfectly. Take a look at a few of Aesop's fables at the MIT Classics web
site and compare them with the Nuns' Priest's version. What makes this a beast fable for adults, and how does the debate between
Chaunticleer the rooster and Pertelote his "wife" parody human attitudes and values? Would you consider C and P to be "round" or
"flat" characters, and what does that do to your feelings and thoughts about this fable?
Form: rhyming couplets.
Source: Marie de France's "Del cok e del gupil" was probably Chaucer's source, by however many intermediary sources, but the
treatment of the tale's epic and romance features, the learned discourse of the birds, and the careful linkage of it to so many other
places in the tale cycle all are uniquely Chaucer's.
Characters: the poor but self-sufficient and honest widow (compare the "Friar's Tale"); Chaunticleer, the handsomest, best-educated,
and most perceptive rooster yet seen in life or literature; Pertelote, his favorite consort among the hens; a murdered traveler who
appears in a dream to his friends in Chaunticleer's inset tale to prove dreams really do foretell the future; the col-fox (Daun Russel), a
sometime "dinner host" of Chaunticleer's father and mother; the dogs, Colle, Talbot and Gerland; Malkyn the maid-servant.
Summary: The rooster, dreaming of an attack by a large, furry, red animal, is advised by his wife not to worry because a little laxative
will put things right. The rooster, proud of his learning, decisively defeats his wife's argument by citing classical authors, including
one author's anecdote about a murdered traveler who, in a dream, tells his companions where his killers have hidden his body. The
rooster, satisfied, has a little "whoopee" with Pertelote and then goes to the barnyard where he encounters the fox. The fox, asking the
rooster to sing so he can experience the rapture of hearing him, nabs the rooster by the throat and is chased by the entire
household. The rooster, thinking quickly, tells the fox that if he were in the fox's position, he should surely turn and shout defiance at
the pursuers. The fox, proud of his success, does so and the rooster flies away into a tree. The fox tries to trick him again, but the
wily bird triumphs.
Interpretive Issues:
1) Just before this tale begins, the Monk has been telling the travelers an apparently unending series of depressing short anecdotes
about the fall of famous men and women. The Knight interrupts the Monk by asserting that tales of "sodeyn fal" without "solas" are
not "gladsom to hear." The Host follows up on this line of reasoning by saying that tragedy ought not to be told as part of a "game"
because it annoys the audience. Might there be an important truth here? We commonly treat comedy and tragedy as mere literary
genres, but in Greek classical times the great tragedies were thought of as medicinal for the political health of the city. They were
performed only on religious festivals in carefully controlled circumstances. Could it be that we harm ourselves by reading such things
as Hamlet or the "Monk's Tale" without those controls?
2) The Host also warns all tellers that to tell tales that bring hearers to sleep wastes the teller's time. How about a hunting tale, he asks
the burly Monk, but the Monk refuses to "pleye" and says "Now lat another telle, as I have toold" (VII.2806-7). This suggests that the
Monk has told the tale he intended to tell, and that he's satisfied with its effect. What was his aim in telling it?
3) The Norton Anthology version of this tale omits the Host's bantering address to the Nun's Priest as "Sir John" who rides on a horse
"bothe foul and lene," and it also omits the epilogue in which the Host delightedly blesses his testicles [sic!] and speculates that he
would have been "a trede-foul aright" [an excellent copulating rooster] had the priest remained "secular.”
4) The tale, itself, presents a great opportunity to see the life of the peasantry, mostly obscured in the tales. The "povre wydwe" runs a
marginal homestead farm that barely supports her and her maid-servant, Malkyn. What other aspects of this household tell you things
about the economic realities of late C14 English peasant life? Why might the Nun's Priest pay such close attention to this setting
before moving into the beast fable that comprises the bulk of the tale? A simple answer would be that it prepares us for the great chase
scene, but remember that the medieval church (and the other tellers' tales) has had some things to say about poverty and wealth.
5) The crowing of Chaunticleer is described as a more sure indicator of the hour "Than is a clokke or an abbey orlogge" (VII2854).
The first town clocks in England were constructed at Salisbury (1386) and Wells Cathedral (1390), and they were notoriously
inaccurate, suggesting there might be a simple truth behind this praise of the bird's sense of time. How does the narrator explain why
Chaunticleer knows what time it is with such accuracy, and how does that link the rooster to the first lines of the "General Prologue"?
6) Pertelote's name translates from the French as "one who confuses someone's lot or fate" (RC 937). Does she deserve this name?
7) Medieval society thought dreams might be of several kinds. The most important difference was between the somnium natural,
which arose from natural causes and the somnium celeste, sent from heaven to warn and instruct. Which kind of dream does Pertelote
think Chaunticleer has had, and which kind does the plot indicate it was? What is the Nun's Priest saying about this rooster?
8) How does Pertelote first treat Chaunticleer's fear about his dream and what effect does this have upon the rooster? Does Pertelote's
attitude and rhetoric remind you of any of the pilgrims? Similarly, does the rooster's response with a reading of Cato bring any of our
previous tellers to mind?
9) The Nun's Priest's claim for the fable's historical truth clearly is ironic, but which pilgrims' tales is he taking a swipe at?
10) The high-style apostrophes that introduce the fox's arrival are part of the narrator's mock-epic style, a strategy that might easily be
compared to Henry Fielding's in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, which he called "comical epics in prose." Remember that medieval
readers were not shy about seeking hidden philosophical or religious significance in the world of narrative.
11) The narrator's excursion into the problem of fate and freewill brings us into familiar territory once more, with the ancient question
of God's foreknowledge and human choice. What difference does it make that this story is about a fox and a rooster? More
importantly, where have we heard a disclaimer like the one he uses to escape women's blame for his allusion to Eve's blame for the
Fall?
12) The fox's quick and soothing voice plays on Chaunticleer's vanity with unerring skill. What does he praise and how does it set up
the trap he is about to spring? Note the narrative's shift to anaphora (And...And...And...) to dramatize the actual capture, and to set up
the anaphoric apostrophe that follows (VI.3331-7 and 3338-54). Which tales and tellers is this narrative making fun of? The mock epic
even compares the hens to Roman senators' wives on the night Nero burned Rome, and Chaunticleer's situation to that of Priam, king
of Troy. Does this elevate the rooster or deflate epic and history?
13) The long build-up to the fox's capture of the rooster leaves us little time and little hope for Chaunticleer's escape. This kind of
strategy is still used in the arts today.
“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is a "Beast Fable," a genre that personified animals act like human beings. (Recall that personification in
and of itself does NOT constitute allegory!) The best-known medieval examples of this genre are the Fables of Marie de France
(recall that her Lais are the model for the Franklin's Tale). Chaucer's sources and models for this genre also include various Latin
translations of the Fables of Aesop, but not the Greek originals. In the “Nun's Priest's Tale,” the denizens of the widow's barnyard, in
particular Chaunticleer and Pertelote, a rooster and a hen, are used to poke fun at very human sorts of behavior.
Note the gentle satire of courtly love. Chaunticleer and Pertelote are described like the heroes and heroines of medieval
romances: each is accorded a set portrait that describes his/her physical beauty and magnificent "clothing" as is customary when
heroes and heroines are introduced in courtly romance -- except that here, hero and heroine are a rooster and a hen! Note Pertelote's
indignation at the thought that Chaunticleer might be a coward (and thus unworthy of her love); Chaunticleer's gallant compliments to
his "lady" and statements concerning the effect of her beauty upon him; his references to the physical side of their passion. How do
these and similar statements both follow and poke fun at the conventions of courtly love? What does the Nun's Priest Tale add to our
understanding of Chaucer's attitude toward marriage or the relationship between the sexes?
In particular, consider both the explicit and implicit statements concerning women. Chaunticleer quotes a Latin proverb to
Pertelote, "Mulier est hominis confusio," which he tells her means "Woman is man's joy and all his bliss" rather than "Woman is
man's ruination," a more accurate translation. Note that even if a courtly gentleman -- or a rooster such as Chaunticleer -- may not
have understood Latin, the Nun's Priest himself certainly did! (For whom, then, does he mistranslate this line?) To what extent does
the Nun's Priest's Tale bear out the truth of either the original Latin proverb, or Chaunticleer's mistranslation? (Or perhaps of both?)
Chaunticleer himself musters a long list of "authorities" to argue against Pertelote's contention that dreams are without significance -and yet no sooner does he finish "proving" that dreams are indeed portents of the future than he forgets to heed his own, with ruinous
results. What distracts him from following his own advice? Whose fault is it that Chaunticleer ignores his dream's warning? (On the
medieval notions of scriptural "authority," auctoritas, and the Latin-language auctores, "authors," whose works were considered
authoritative).
Consider the relationship of the tale to the teller. The Nun's Priest accompanies the Prioress and is presumably the priest
attached to her convent: a religious community of women would need a priest to hold Mass, hear confession, give communion, etc.,
since women were not allowed to perform the Sacraments (a privilege of the -- exclusively male -- priesthood). Note that Chaucer
apparently changed his mind and had the Prioress be accompanied by only one priest rather than three as suggested at GP 164
(presumably this discrepancy would have been corrected had Chaucer had time to revise the GP before his death). In the General
Prologue, the Prioress is described as a somewhat reluctant nun who takes great pains to imitate courtly behavior -- something of a
Cinderella "wannabe"; compare the depiction of Lady Pertelote as a distinctly courtly hen. There are also similarities between the
Nun's Priest and Chaunticleer, each of whom is the sole male living within a community of women (the nuns of the convent; the hens
in the barnyard). To what extent does the tale offer an ironic commentary on (or wishful rethinking of) the Nun's Priest's situation?