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British Poetry

Notes 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” (chatters when he should hold his peace).

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.

17.2.3 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

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