preview

The Nun's Priest

Decent Essays
Open Document

Analysis of “The Nun’s Priest” The Nun’s Priest is an awkward story-teller who is used to suitors chasing him. On the journey, he tells a story about his vain rooster. In this story, Chanticleer has a dream that a fox-like beast was chasing him. His wife, Pertelote, tells him that dreams don’t hold any merit and that he just needs a laxative. That day, a fox convinces Chanticleer not to run from him by appealing to his vain nature, and captures him. Everyone begins to chase after the fox, who is running around the farm. Chanticleer convinces the fox to open his mouth and release him by telling him to yell insults at his pursuers. This tale is a fable that comments on the Middle Ages, uses satire to get its point across, and has a moral that is applicable to life in the twenty-first century. …show more content…

“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” opens up with by first using animals to portray people and by placing the tale of courtly love in the setting of a barnyard. The plot of the tale analyzes the compelling battle among farm creatures to the Jack Straw Rebellion (a peasant’s revolt in England in 1831). The fox and the rooster’s story reveals the conflict between the nobility and the peasants. Chaucer uses animals to illustrate humans because he believes humans behave like animals. There is no question that “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” was written in a satirical manner. Chaucer writes the passage in the model of a Homeric epic, but he fills it with the squawking and pecking of simple birds. The rooster, Chanticleer, appears to be a simple animal that is hilariously vain and self-absorbed. By using the chickens as his main characters, Chaucer is effectively comparing man and beast. By writing in such a humorous style, Chaucer shows that man is no better than a rooster, vain and full of

Get Access