Analysis of Chaucer's Nuns Priest's Tale

Genre

At its most basic level, the genre of the NPT is a Beast Fable.  By definition a beast fable :

• A prose or verse fable/short story that contains a moral.
• Animal characters that act with human feelings and motives
• Example: Aesop fables such as the “Tortoise and the Hare”

Evidence that the NPT is a beast fable:

• Centred on three characters who are all animals – Chantecleer (Rooster), Pertelote (Hen) and a Fox.
• The animals’ characters show human attributes:

• Chantecleer: proud, cocky, vain, scholarly (able to quote philosophers and classical literature), in a husband-wife marriage more than a rooster-hen relationship, naïve
• Pertelote: critical, dominating, ignorant
• Fox:  sly, cunning

• The tale allows insight on human action.  The fox’s flattery exploited Chantecleer’s vainity, thus leading to the basic moral: “be wary of flattery”.
• A beast fable is always critical of humans, usually focussing on one or two of our flaws/initiations.
• Fables, being didactic and instructive also often have a religious purpose as well, with the NPT exhibiting the power of the will of God.  In other words, our lives are dominated by a pre-determine fate or destiny, and human actions are ineffective in altering that pre-determined course.  In the NPT, Chantecleer’s dream of meeting a dog-like beast in the yard represents his fate.   He even uses biblical evidence to support the value of listening to dreams.  However, it is Pertelote the hen, who ensures that his fate does in fact occur.  She convinces him not to take his dream seriously, which causes him to forget the omen in his dream when being cajoled by the fox.  Therefore, in the end Chantecleer’s destiny and dream do come true.

There is also much evidence to support alterative genres for the NPT.  Like many of Chaucer’s tales, the NPT contains stylistic elements indicative of a parody.

Mock-Heroic:  imitates and ridicules chivalric literature and heroic characters.  

• Chantecleer is established as ‘a hero’ early on, in an over-the-top description:  “His comb was redder than the choicest coral, and crenellated like a castle wall; his beak was black, and like jet its gloss; like lapus-lazuli his legs and toes; Each with nails whiter than the lily flower; and like burnished gold was his colour”.  Note the head to toe description.
• The hero has ‘a love of his life’ (Pertelote)
• Chantecleer is first notified of an impending trial/danger in a dream.  This is similar to other epics like The Aenied.
• Parody of the expected ‘insurmountable trials’ the hero faces occurs when Chantecleer is easily tricked by the fox.
• The hero only succeeds in the end because he tricks the fox in return.

Contemporary example of a Mock-Heroic:  The Broadway musical Spamalot, based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Mock-Tragedy:  The Nun’s Priests Tale contains nearly all the elements of the Aristotelian definition of tradegy:

• Chantecleer’s hammartia (tragic flaw) is his hubris (pride, in this case vanity).
• The peripeteia (reversal of fortunes) occurs when Chantecleer is snatched by the fox.
• The anagnorisis (realisation of the flaw) occurs when Chantecleer escape from the fox and climbs up a tree where he refuses to be fooled by flattery again.