The Nun's Priest's Tale: Themes of Speech and Silence

A Return to Basics in the Nun's Priest's Tale

This tale is in many ways a return to the ground, a return to basics. We start with a poor widow and a dusty yard—a setting far removed from the high-culture classical tragedies of the Monk. Moreover, the tale keeps emphasizing anality and bottoms; in Chaunticleer’s two examples of dreams coming true, a dung cart and a breaking ship’s “bottom” are the hinge of the story, and Pertelote’s advice to Chaunticleer is to take some “laxatyf” to clear out his humours.

There is a good-natured sense of groundedness about this tale, a return—after the dark run of the Monk, the punishing Melibee (and interrupted Sir Thopas), and the bitter Prioress—to the humour and warmth of the early tales. Yet, its theme also darkly foreshadows the end of the tale-telling project itself.

The Moral Ambiguity of Prophetic Dreams

If the tale, taken simplistically, does endorse prophetic dreams (though, as mentioned above, a look at the animal nature of its characters might be seen as parodying the whole concept!), then what is the “moral” that the narrator wants us to take away at the end? As ever, this isn’t totally clear. Yet, one thing it might be is the importance of speaking or not speaking.

The Duality of Chaunticleer

One of the things that makes Chaunticleer, the morally representative chicken, a problem is the fact that he can speak and argue with his wife on the one hand, yet cry “cok! Cok!” when he sees a grain on the floor. He is both chicken and human, rather like Chaucer writes as both himself and as the Nun’s Priest.

The tale is structured by people knowing when to speak and not knowing when to speak:

• Pertelote speaks out to wake Chaunticleer from his dream.
• Chaunticleer foolishly opens his mouth to sing for the fox when he is captured.
• The fox’s final visitation of the trap he himself fell into causes him to open his mouth, letting Chaunticleer go.

Know when you should “jangle” (chatter) and know when to hold your peace.

Silence and the Beast Fable

It is a theme, of course, which points a sharp finger at the whole idea of a beast fable—the whole genre, we might argue, resting on the writer precisely ignoring the correct moments to have a character speak or not speak. It is also a dangerous moral for the Tales as a whole. In a work of literature that constantly apes orality, the injunction to shut up is a serious one—and, as a comparison of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale to the Manciple’s Tale reveals—one very much in Chaucer’s mind at the very end of the Canterbury project.