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British Poetry

Notes one-a reminder of the mutability of life itself, and the tendency of fickle, feminine Fortune to spin
her wheel and bring those at the top crashing down to the ground. It is, on one level, simply a series
of car-crash narratives-an unrelenting dark, Boethian reminder that the high-status end miserably.
Some more recent studies have tried to locate the Monk’s tale, with its emphasis on the stories told
about the history, and its focus on the writers from whom the Monk has drawn the stories, as a
response to Boccaccio’s De casibus tragedies and a comment on the involvement of writing, poets
and poetry in the support of tyrants and despots.
Yet neither of these readings of the Tale really explains what it is doing within its context. Louise
Fradenburg argues very persuasively in her book that the Monk is a death’s head at the feast-a
sudden explosion of misery and death into the festive fun of the Canterbury project. The Monk’s
own solid physical reality, good for breeding (so the Host jokes - and breeding is the opposite of
dying) is juxtaposed with his tales, precisely about the end of the body and its death, rather than life
and strength.

How does the Monk respond to the teasing of the Host?
Moreover, the numbers that the Monk quotes-he has a hundred tragedies in his cell, of which he
manages to fit in seventeen before he is interrupted-suggest a painfully dismal repetition of the fall
from fortune to misery, fortune to misery, fortune to misery. It is rather as if the Monk himself
becomes a sort of anti-Canterbury Tales all of his own: each of his mini-tales progressively darkening
the horizon.
It is no wonder then that the Knight sees fit to interrupt the Monk and halt his tale-particularly as
the Monk tells tales largely about the demise of high-status characters (and the Knight, of course, is
the pilgrimage’s highest-ranking pilgrim). The Monk himself presents a threat to the fun of the tale:
he is all ‘ernest’ and no ‘game’, as the Host points out to him, and - beginning a trend which arises
more and more as these final tales progress - when he is interrupted, he refuses to speak any further.
One of the tellers has his mouth firmly closed.

17.2 The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

17.2.1 Prologue of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Here the Knight “stynteth” (stops) the Monk’s Tale
“Hoo!” says the Knight, “good sire, namoore of this”. The Knight then praises the Monk, but says
that he has heard quite enough about mens’ sudden falls from high status and grace, and would far
rather hear about men climbing from poverty to prosperity.
The Host steps in to concur, telling the Monk that his tale is boring the company, and that his talk is
worth nothing, because there is no fun to be had from it. The Host asks the Monk to tell another tale-
and the Monk responds that, having no desire to play and have fun, he has said all he has to say.
The Host then turns to the Nun’s Priest, asking him to draw near, and asking him to be merry of
heart in his tale. “Yis, sir”, says the Nun’s Priest–and, described as a “sweete preest” by the narrator,
the Nun’s Priest begins his tale.

17.2.2 The Nun’s Priest’s Tale Text
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

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