One of the most widely read and admired of
CHAUCER’s CANTERBURY TALES, The Nun’s Priest’s
Tale is a BEAST FABLE in which a fox tricks a cock
named Chaunticleer into closing his eyes to sing
in order to seize him and carry him away, and the
cock subsequently tricks the fox into letting him
go. But the tale is told in a mock-heroic style that
treats Chaunticleer and his favorite wife, Pertelote,
as if they are a knight and lady in a courtly ROMANCE. The tale is also full of fascinating digressions and rhetorical displays that effectively divert
the reader from the simple plot.
Chaucer’s tale seems to be drawn from the
ROMAN DE REYNART, an epic-length compilation of
the fables of Reynart the Fox. The ultimate source
of the story was probably a fable by MARIE DE
FRANCE called “Del cok e del gupil,” or “The Cock
and the Fox.”
In the tale the rooster Chaunticleer lives like a
king with his seven wives in the barnyard of a poor
widow. Sleeping next to his beloved Pertelote,
Chanticleer awakes in a great fright. He tells
Pertelote that he has dreamt of being attacked by a
strange, red beast. Pertelote, vowing that she cannot love a coward, tells Chaunticleer that his dream
was likely caused by indigestion, and offers to mix
up a laxative for him. But Chaunticleer, declaring
that he defies laxatives, defends the prophetic
power of dreams. He recounts several examples of
dreams that proved accurate in foretelling disastrous events. Yet despite besting her in a long debate, Chaunticleer ends up following Pertelote’s
advice to pay no heed to the dream.
As Chaunticleer struts about the yard later in
the day, he is startled by a fox, who through flattery
gets the cock to close his eyes, stand on his toes,
and crow loudly. But as soon as Chaunticleer
blinks, the fox seizes him and makes for the woods.
The widow, her household, and all the animals on
the farm, even down to the buzzing bees, pursue
the fox. The narrator goes through a number of digressions at this point, including a meditation on
free will and predestination, a diatribe against taking women’s advice, a complaint about the evils
that occur on Fridays that parodies a lament on the
death of RICHARD I by GEOFFREY OF VINSAUF, and a
catalogue of all those who join in the chase. Ultimately Chaunticleer saves himself by convincing
the fox to taunt the pursuing crowd once he has
reached the safety of the woods.
When the fox opens his mouth to do so,
Chaunticleer flies to the safety of a tree. As the tale
ends Chaunticleer draws the moral that one
should not blink when one ought to keep his eyes
open, and the fox answers with the moral that one
shouldn’t speak when one ought to keep silent.
The narrator concludes that the reader should take
the fruit of the tale and leave the chaff.
This last direction has been difficult for scholars to follow, since almost all of the tale is
“chaff ”—that is, digressions that have little to do
with the basic plot or any morals drawn from it.
Like the rest of the tale, that final advice is probably a joke, since in it Chaucer invites us to dismiss
nearly all of the tale. Scholars have noted the appropriateness of the tale to a priest narrator, especially one that served a nunnery. The tale’s
relationship with The MONK’S TALE, which precedes it, has also been explored, particularly the
way the tale parodies the “fall of a great man,” the
theme of the tragedies that make up The Monk’s
Tale. Other scholars have seen relationships between this tale and other tales in Fragment VII of
The Canterbury Tales, including The PRIORESS’S
TALE, whose moral “murder will out” is echoed
when Chaunticleer describes his dream. Perhaps
most fruitfully, the tale has been interpreted as a
parody of rhetorical excess, so that the tale’s style
is, in fact, its central point. Some have seen the
narrator as losing control of his material through
his unchecked rhetorical flights. But all agree that
this is one of the most entertaining of all
Chaucer’s tales—a masterwork of comedy.
Bibliography
Benson, Larry, ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Bloomfield, Morton W. “The Wisdom of the Nun’s
Priest’s Tale.” In Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C.S.C.,
edited by Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy,
70–82. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1979.
Gallick, Susan. “Styles of Usage in the Nun’s Priest’s
Tale,” Chaucer Review 11 (1978): 232–247.
Johnson, Lynn Staley. “ ‘To Make in Som Comedye’:
Chaunticleer, Son of Troy,” Chaucer Review 19
(1985): 225–244.
Wheatley, Edward. “Commentary Displacing Text:
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale and the Scholastic Fable
Tradition,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 18 (1996):
119–141.