I - 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.
II - The Nun’s Priest’s Tale 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.