The Hidden Meaning of The Nun's Priest's Tale

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The Hidden Meaning of The Nun's Priest's Tale

It has been suggested that a "Chaucer tale exploits the nature of its genre but also draws attention to the ideological biases and exclusions inherent in the genre"2. In my opinion The Nun's Priest's Tale is a wonderful example of Chaucer testing the bounds of his chosen genre - in this case the beast fable.

What is a beast fable? Obviously a tale about animals, but one where "animals are used as embodiments or caricatures of human virtues, vices, prudences, and follies ... and the other typical qualities of mankind. They are generally brief cautionary anecdotes that use the obvious resemblances between man and animals to point a moral or push a proverb home entertainingly"3.

Chaucer can be seen to exploit the nature of the beast fable fully in The Nun's Priest's Tale. It contains all of the traditional elements mentioned above: the central characters are the chickens Chauntecleer and Pertelote, and Russell the fox; the culpability, gullibility, guile and boastfulness of the characters are examined; the tale is brief, approximately 650 lines; and several morals are offered. The tale is also entertaining, but not only because of its caricatures of human traits. The tale contains numerous sub-genres such as the romance, rhetorical debate, and Christian misogyny, and it is the interplay of these sub-genres with the framing beast fable that creates much of the humour.

In The Nun's Priest's Tale Chaucer shows up some of the worst excesses of these popular medieval traditions by putting them into context with his animal characters. The incongruity of a chicken taking part in a debate on the significance of dreams, for example, is inherently comic, but does not just...

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...9), 251-270. This from p. 266.

8. F. Anne Payne, "Foreknowledge and Free Will: Three Theories in the Nun's Priest's Tale" The Chaucer Review 10 (1975), 201-219. This from p. 208

9. Ian Bishop, "The Nun's Priest's Tale and the Liberal Arts," Review of English Studies NS30 (1979), 257-267. This from p. 17.

10. Payne, p. 205.

11. Walter Scheps, "Chaucer's Anti-fable: Reductio ad absurdum in the Nun's Priest's Tale," Leeds Studies in English 4 (l970), 1-10. This from p. 7.

12. Bishop, p. 266.

13. Payne. p. 218.

14. Payne. p. 210.

15. Payne. p. 211.

16. 0wen, p. 267

17. Jill Mann, "The Speculum Stultorum and the Nun's Priest's Tale," The Chaucer Review 9 (1975), 262-282. This from p. 275.

18. Friedman. p. 253.

19. 0erlemans, p. 318.

20. Scheps. p. 8.

21. Payne, p. 214.

22. Mann, p. 277.

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