The Nun's Priest's Tale (4)
Although St Kenelm was excused from responsibility for ignoring the significance of dreams because of his tender age and because "so hooly was his hert", Pertelote is not going to be similarly exonerated and Chauntecleer deviates from his usual courtesy when he ends: "That ye hadde rad his legend, as I have I" which implies ignorance on her part: he continues in a somewhat patronising vein for many more lines until her beauty suddenly stops him in his flow. We can therefore visualise him looking at her from time to time, particularly when he addresses her: "Dame Pertelote, I sey you trewely" before piling up his many diverse exempla. Scipio, Daniel of the Old Testament, Joseph (Daniel viiff and Genesis xxxvii and xl-xli) and many more are adduced to wear her down; he picks up once more her word "vanitee" which has clearly stung him. He is, in effect, telling her she does not know enough instances but covers himself by saying that he realises that not all dreams are significant. Haughtily he tells her that anyone truly interested "May rede of dremes many a wonder thing" implying that her scepticism is uninformed and casual. The tone is of human learned scholarly debate made humorous coming from the beaks of fowls and by the element of personal irritation, wounded pride and trivial marital conflict. Although the accumulation of exempla is slightly ludicrous, the cockerel intends to show that heroic characters from classical legends have presaging dreams and therefore elevates himself to their level, a twist on the conventional mock-heroic mode. Chauntecleer also reverses his own case as it is Hector's wife who dreams and the husband who takes no notice, ironically, because he is about to ignore his own dream. (This story was a medieval addition to the legend of Troy but Chauntecleer/the Priest does not recognise this). His high-flown assertions are comically debased by his sudden weariness: "But thilke tale is al to [too] long to telle/And eek [also] it is ny [nearly] day": the bathos unintentionally mocks his own evocation of the heroic. Chauntecleer now reveals one of his main motives: to avoid laxatives, which he has recalled and which may have been at the back of his mind throughout his learned discourse. He believes they taste nasty and rather petulantly concludes: "I hem diffye, I love hem never a deel." His "conclusioun" is therefore a mixture of tragic of tragic assertion with comic bathos as he is overcome with distaste for medicines and love and lust for his paramour. He has been distracted from his own warnings and concerns for self-preservation.
Rather as the Knight rebukes the Monk, he calls upon himself to "stinte" and turns to Pertelote with a lover's gratitude for the beauty of his beloved. His lust makes him inconsistent as he now says his dread has died away: even in this change of mood he wants to show off his learning although his quotation argues against itself as it points out that woman is the "confusio" [ruin] of man, another Garden of Eden reference. He completely mistranslates the word as "joy and al his blis" because that is what he is feeling, but he therefore makes the same mistake as Adam and deviates from what he knows is the right course of action out of uxoriousness. The collapse of his self-control is made more comic and pointed when we recall Medieval anti-feminism and how many of the pilgrims would have reacted with horror to his repetition of Original Sin, even though the Wife of Bath would have been delighted. It is appropriate also as the yard has been depicted as a kind of threatened paradise for hens. In this case he might do better to eat the offered food, the herbal remedies, however. The next part of his speech is that of the passionate and sincere lover for whom nothing else matters but the loveliness of his lady but here it is humorously transposed to hens with the especially ridiculous image of his frequently wishing to have sex whilst still on their too narrow perch. Yet the Priest manages to make the affection touching and sensual as the cockerel feels her "softe side" next to him which a human could also relate to in bed. It is a joyful and natural relationship but instinct is in conflict with rational control - and wins. This view of love sees woman as man's means of perfect earthly bliss and yet an instrument of his Fall, a strange outlook for a priest, perhaps, when the sensuality is so powerfully and positively evoked. Sexual desire is not seen as a sin in itself.
There does not seem to be an appreciable difference between the meanings of the terms "sweven" and "dreem" and so he must be using both for emphasis but the pair leave their perch: either the cockerel is by character acting against conviction or Fate has entered the narrative. Now that he has, as he believes, won the battle of words he calls for his hens and is no longer afraid but "real" [royal], full of sexual prowess as he makes love to his favourite twenty times and then, it seems, the same again before six o'clock - we know he has an instinctive knowledge of time but we do not know how the Priest has information about the erotic habits of fowls. The description of him is rich and grand as he walks on tip-toes, clucking when he finds a grain. He is enjoying a surge of confidence and self-esteem but such pride can leave him vulnerable: the comparison with a prince reminds us that he is a bird and could be prey to a fox in any slackening of watchfulness. the Priest now gives acceptable oral signals that his story will change direction as he leaves the cockerel to his "pasture" [feeding] and promises to tell of his "aventure" [luck or fate].
The next passage is complicated and unclear in dates (it could be April 1st or May 3rd but Aries and Taurus are both virile Zodiac signs appropriate for our cockerel) a satire on astronomers of the period; there is a further circumlocutio [a roundabout way of saying something simple] to tell us that it is nine o'clock whereas Chauntecleer knows it by instinct "by kinde, and by noon oother loore" and responds to the signs of a spring morning, the song of happy birds and the growth of fresh flowers with "revel and solas" [joy and contentment] filling his heart. The somewhat obvious rhyme "singe/springe" adds to the sprightliness of the account. The brief evocation of the season would strike the pilgrims whose journey also started on a spring day. They would therefore respond to the change of mood when a "sorweful cas" [sad mischance] befalls the cockerel as it might to them in their merriment. The tone is now elevated and a sententia [serious generalised moral] expounded: "For evere the latter ende of joye is wo" augmenting the mock-heroic element. A "rethor" is an expert on rhetoric such as Geoffroi de Vinsauf and so we know that the Priest is aware of such matters as accepted devices of oratory and writing and recognises that he must make his story or sermon as effective as possible. The theme is mutability of which this tale would be a worthy "sovereyn notabilitee" [supreme example], as true as Arthurian legend, so revered by women but of a lower genre, being a romance. The Priest is raising his own story to a higher level of significance and also inserting a gibe at the ladies in his audience. Another strong signal returns the listeners to his "sentence" [main subject matter].
At this point, enter the col-fox "ful of sly iniqitee", conforming to the description of the creature in Chauntecleer's dream and comparable to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. (There has been speculation that the name refers to a particular person as there has been about Russell used later). The fable narrative line is combined with the mock-heroic as the fox "By heigh imaginacioun forncast" [by divine foreknowledge or by malice aforethought] now breaks through the hedge although he has been around for three years - no explanation is given for this but the number has magical connotations. There is bathos as he lies in a vegetable or cabbage patch until forenoon but a reminder of the earlier story of murder in the phrase "homicides alle" adds a threatening element. The elevation of the story rises to absurdly comic heights as the Priest overdoes the rhetorical device of exclamatio in evoking three traitors from history whose introduction into the barnyard is comically incongruous. Chauntecleer's misfortune is also regretted in highly exaggerated sublime language: "O Chauntecleer, acursed be that morwe ..." and the "O" does not even form a perfect parallel as it is now used of the victim, not the perpetrator. A lengthy scholarly and philosophical debate on Freewill and Predestination is heralded by "what that God forwoot [knows in advance] moot nedes be": the context of hens makes this as out of place as were the analogies but it is a universal problem which the Priest hopes will engage his listeners and raise himself in their esteem (despite an awkward and amateurish rhyme of "clerkis" with "clerk is"). Anyone who is versed in the schools' or universities' activities will know that this is a "greet altercatioun" and therefore the Priest is flattering his more learned listeners.
With a homely reference, the Priest declares that, in this matter, "he ne kan nat bulte it to the bren" [cannot sift the wheat from the chaff]. This use of diminutio whereby the speaker confesses himself inadequate does need some explanation: either he is using the device to gain approval for his modesty or he is accepting that the Church had not made up its mind on the issue or the admission is a result of the multiple speakers. The cockerel would not know about it though Chaucer certainly did. Also "kan" has three possible meanings: "know how to,", "am able to" and "am allowed to" although St Augustine, Boethius (whose work De Consolatione Philosophiae Chaucer had translated into English) and Bradwardine "kan". The next lines are complex and involve three theories: Bradwardine's that God's foreknowledge forces the person to do the act out of necessity (simple necessity); Augustine's that free choice is available even though God knows the outcome; and Boethius' that God's foreknowledge has only conditional control over the act. The point here is that the discussion is incongruous in the barnyard tale and that the Priest does not handle it well. He seems to realise this and hastily moves off the topic, disclaiming responsibility for the debate or any choice of answers to the question and giving another oral signal to his listeners: "My tale is of a cok, as ye may heere." He hopes he has made a good impression but has the wisdom to return to his strengths, which are those of narrating a fable and complying with the Host's requirements for something lighter than the Monk's tedium.
"With sorwe" [unfortunately] the cockerel heeded his wife's advice, says the Priest, but this is not entirely accurate as Pertelote's herbal remedies were eschewed and Chauntecleer did not eat what she offered, unlike Adam whose story is the topic of the next piece of traditional opinionated reference: "Wommennes conseils been ful ofte colde" [harmful] as one such destroyed the Paradise where Adam was "ful myrie and wel at ese", a strangely secular vision for Priest to have. Also all animals lived in amity in Eden. Suddenly he seems to realise that he has women in his audience and apologises that it was only "in my game" [in sport]. The fact that the Priest makes a substantial error in saying that Chauntecleer followed his wife's advice suggests that, like many other pilgrims, he has not fully understood his own tale or perhaps has taken the gist, that she disparaged the dream and so influenced him. He instructs them to "rede auctours" [the authoritities], a very vague piece of advice and comically attributes the insults to the cockerel, backing out completely: "I kan noon harme of no womman divine" [find nothing discreditable in any woman - note the two emphatic negatives].
A Paradise for birds is now evoked with the hens' sun bathing and Chauntecleer "so free" [noble] singing away but with a couple of comic allusions to mermaids and the opinion of Phisiologus, an authority used unskilfully and inappropriately in this context. The comparison between man's fear and that of the cockerel in the fable is made explicit as he sees the fox, led towards him and his fate by such a trivial object as a butterfly. The tale has been full of moments of fear and careless happy bravado interspersed. He does not wish to crow now and cries out with onomatopoeia: "Cok, cok." The Priest has another difficulty here: how does the cockerel know what is fearful or evil if he has always lived in a state of primal bliss? The narrator has to adduce instinct and claim that the fowl knows his enemy "natureelly".
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Although St Kenelm was excused from responsibility for ignoring the significance of dreams because of his tender age and because "so hooly was his hert", Pertelote is not going to be similarly exonerated and Chauntecleer deviates from his usual courtesy when he ends: "That ye hadde rad his legend, as I have I" which implies ignorance on her part: he continues in a somewhat patronising vein for many more lines until her beauty suddenly stops him in his flow. We can therefore visualise him looking at her from time to time, particularly when he addresses her: "Dame Pertelote, I sey you trewely" before piling up his many diverse exempla. Scipio, Daniel of the Old Testament, Joseph (Daniel viiff and Genesis xxxvii and xl-xli) and many more are adduced to wear her down; he picks up once more her word "vanitee" which has clearly stung him. He is, in effect, telling her she does not know enough instances but covers himself by saying that he realises that not all dreams are significant. Haughtily he tells her that anyone truly interested "May rede of dremes many a wonder thing" implying that her scepticism is uninformed and casual. The tone is of human learned scholarly debate made humorous coming from the beaks of fowls and by the element of personal irritation, wounded pride and trivial marital conflict. Although the accumulation of exempla is slightly ludicrous, the cockerel intends to show that heroic characters from classical legends have presaging dreams and therefore elevates himself to their level, a twist on the conventional mock-heroic mode. Chauntecleer also reverses his own case as it is Hector's wife who dreams and the husband who takes no notice, ironically, because he is about to ignore his own dream. (This story was a medieval addition to the legend of Troy but Chauntecleer/the Priest does not recognise this). His high-flown assertions are comically debased by his sudden weariness: "But thilke tale is al to [too] long to telle/And eek [also] it is ny [nearly] day": the bathos unintentionally mocks his own evocation of the heroic. Chauntecleer now reveals one of his main motives: to avoid laxatives, which he has recalled and which may have been at the back of his mind throughout his learned discourse. He believes they taste nasty and rather petulantly concludes: "I hem diffye, I love hem never a deel." His "conclusioun" is therefore a mixture of tragic of tragic assertion with comic bathos as he is overcome with distaste for medicines and love and lust for his paramour. He has been distracted from his own warnings and concerns for self-preservation.
Rather as the Knight rebukes the Monk, he calls upon himself to "stinte" and turns to Pertelote with a lover's gratitude for the beauty of his beloved. His lust makes him inconsistent as he now says his dread has died away: even in this change of mood he wants to show off his learning although his quotation argues against itself as it points out that woman is the "confusio" [ruin] of man, another Garden of Eden reference. He completely mistranslates the word as "joy and al his blis" because that is what he is feeling, but he therefore makes the same mistake as Adam and deviates from what he knows is the right course of action out of uxoriousness. The collapse of his self-control is made more comic and pointed when we recall Medieval anti-feminism and how many of the pilgrims would have reacted with horror to his repetition of Original Sin, even though the Wife of Bath would have been delighted. It is appropriate also as the yard has been depicted as a kind of threatened paradise for hens. In this case he might do better to eat the offered food, the herbal remedies, however. The next part of his speech is that of the passionate and sincere lover for whom nothing else matters but the loveliness of his lady but here it is humorously transposed to hens with the especially ridiculous image of his frequently wishing to have sex whilst still on their too narrow perch. Yet the Priest manages to make the affection touching and sensual as the cockerel feels her "softe side" next to him which a human could also relate to in bed. It is a joyful and natural relationship but instinct is in conflict with rational control - and wins. This view of love sees woman as man's means of perfect earthly bliss and yet an instrument of his Fall, a strange outlook for a priest, perhaps, when the sensuality is so powerfully and positively evoked. Sexual desire is not seen as a sin in itself.
There does not seem to be an appreciable difference between the meanings of the terms "sweven" and "dreem" and so he must be using both for emphasis but the pair leave their perch: either the cockerel is by character acting against conviction or Fate has entered the narrative. Now that he has, as he believes, won the battle of words he calls for his hens and is no longer afraid but "real" [royal], full of sexual prowess as he makes love to his favourite twenty times and then, it seems, the same again before six o'clock - we know he has an instinctive knowledge of time but we do not know how the Priest has information about the erotic habits of fowls. The description of him is rich and grand as he walks on tip-toes, clucking when he finds a grain. He is enjoying a surge of confidence and self-esteem but such pride can leave him vulnerable: the comparison with a prince reminds us that he is a bird and could be prey to a fox in any slackening of watchfulness. the Priest now gives acceptable oral signals that his story will change direction as he leaves the cockerel to his "pasture" [feeding] and promises to tell of his "aventure" [luck or fate].
The next passage is complicated and unclear in dates (it could be April 1st or May 3rd but Aries and Taurus are both virile Zodiac signs appropriate for our cockerel) a satire on astronomers of the period; there is a further circumlocutio [a roundabout way of saying something simple] to tell us that it is nine o'clock whereas Chauntecleer knows it by instinct "by kinde, and by noon oother loore" and responds to the signs of a spring morning, the song of happy birds and the growth of fresh flowers with "revel and solas" [joy and contentment] filling his heart. The somewhat obvious rhyme "singe/springe" adds to the sprightliness of the account. The brief evocation of the season would strike the pilgrims whose journey also started on a spring day. They would therefore respond to the change of mood when a "sorweful cas" [sad mischance] befalls the cockerel as it might to them in their merriment. The tone is now elevated and a sententia [serious generalised moral] expounded: "For evere the latter ende of joye is wo" augmenting the mock-heroic element. A "rethor" is an expert on rhetoric such as Geoffroi de Vinsauf and so we know that the Priest is aware of such matters as accepted devices of oratory and writing and recognises that he must make his story or sermon as effective as possible. The theme is mutability of which this tale would be a worthy "sovereyn notabilitee" [supreme example], as true as Arthurian legend, so revered by women but of a lower genre, being a romance. The Priest is raising his own story to a higher level of significance and also inserting a gibe at the ladies in his audience. Another strong signal returns the listeners to his "sentence" [main subject matter].
At this point, enter the col-fox "ful of sly iniqitee", conforming to the description of the creature in Chauntecleer's dream and comparable to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. (There has been speculation that the name refers to a particular person as there has been about Russell used later). The fable narrative line is combined with the mock-heroic as the fox "By heigh imaginacioun forncast" [by divine foreknowledge or by malice aforethought] now breaks through the hedge although he has been around for three years - no explanation is given for this but the number has magical connotations. There is bathos as he lies in a vegetable or cabbage patch until forenoon but a reminder of the earlier story of murder in the phrase "homicides alle" adds a threatening element. The elevation of the story rises to absurdly comic heights as the Priest overdoes the rhetorical device of exclamatio in evoking three traitors from history whose introduction into the barnyard is comically incongruous. Chauntecleer's misfortune is also regretted in highly exaggerated sublime language: "O Chauntecleer, acursed be that morwe ..." and the "O" does not even form a perfect parallel as it is now used of the victim, not the perpetrator. A lengthy scholarly and philosophical debate on Freewill and Predestination is heralded by "what that God forwoot [knows in advance] moot nedes be": the context of hens makes this as out of place as were the analogies but it is a universal problem which the Priest hopes will engage his listeners and raise himself in their esteem (despite an awkward and amateurish rhyme of "clerkis" with "clerk is"). Anyone who is versed in the schools' or universities' activities will know that this is a "greet altercatioun" and therefore the Priest is flattering his more learned listeners.
With a homely reference, the Priest declares that, in this matter, "he ne kan nat bulte it to the bren" [cannot sift the wheat from the chaff]. This use of diminutio whereby the speaker confesses himself inadequate does need some explanation: either he is using the device to gain approval for his modesty or he is accepting that the Church had not made up its mind on the issue or the admission is a result of the multiple speakers. The cockerel would not know about it though Chaucer certainly did. Also "kan" has three possible meanings: "know how to,", "am able to" and "am allowed to" although St Augustine, Boethius (whose work De Consolatione Philosophiae Chaucer had translated into English) and Bradwardine "kan". The next lines are complex and involve three theories: Bradwardine's that God's foreknowledge forces the person to do the act out of necessity (simple necessity); Augustine's that free choice is available even though God knows the outcome; and Boethius' that God's foreknowledge has only conditional control over the act. The point here is that the discussion is incongruous in the barnyard tale and that the Priest does not handle it well. He seems to realise this and hastily moves off the topic, disclaiming responsibility for the debate or any choice of answers to the question and giving another oral signal to his listeners: "My tale is of a cok, as ye may heere." He hopes he has made a good impression but has the wisdom to return to his strengths, which are those of narrating a fable and complying with the Host's requirements for something lighter than the Monk's tedium.
"With sorwe" [unfortunately] the cockerel heeded his wife's advice, says the Priest, but this is not entirely accurate as Pertelote's herbal remedies were eschewed and Chauntecleer did not eat what she offered, unlike Adam whose story is the topic of the next piece of traditional opinionated reference: "Wommennes conseils been ful ofte colde" [harmful] as one such destroyed the Paradise where Adam was "ful myrie and wel at ese", a strangely secular vision for Priest to have. Also all animals lived in amity in Eden. Suddenly he seems to realise that he has women in his audience and apologises that it was only "in my game" [in sport]. The fact that the Priest makes a substantial error in saying that Chauntecleer followed his wife's advice suggests that, like many other pilgrims, he has not fully understood his own tale or perhaps has taken the gist, that she disparaged the dream and so influenced him. He instructs them to "rede auctours" [the authoritities], a very vague piece of advice and comically attributes the insults to the cockerel, backing out completely: "I kan noon harme of no womman divine" [find nothing discreditable in any woman - note the two emphatic negatives].
A Paradise for birds is now evoked with the hens' sun bathing and Chauntecleer "so free" [noble] singing away but with a couple of comic allusions to mermaids and the opinion of Phisiologus, an authority used unskilfully and inappropriately in this context. The comparison between man's fear and that of the cockerel in the fable is made explicit as he sees the fox, led towards him and his fate by such a trivial object as a butterfly. The tale has been full of moments of fear and careless happy bravado interspersed. He does not wish to crow now and cries out with onomatopoeia: "Cok, cok." The Priest has another difficulty here: how does the cockerel know what is fearful or evil if he has always lived in a state of primal bliss? The narrator has to adduce instinct and claim that the fowl knows his enemy "natureelly".
To continue to the Nun's Priest page 5 click here
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