The Nonnes Preestes Tale – A fable narrative

Although the Canterbury Tale is Chaucer’s most mature work, it includes some of his earlier writings.  The plan of the tales was probably adopted soon after 1386 and the General Prologue composed in 1387. Geoffrey Chaucer may have himself taken part in a pilgrimage in April 1387, because of the illness of his wife Phillipe, who probably died soon after. Instead of original plan of 120 tales 24 are told, of which two are interrupted before the end and two broken off soon after they begin.

        Nonnes Preestes Tale (also called Nun’s Priest’s Tale) is one such tale among the tales of the Canterbury Tale.  It consists of (a) General Prologue, (b) Tales and (c) Talk on the Road.

        In The NPT, the distinctive quality of narrative act of Chaucer has been brought out through a poem, telling the tale of cock, hen and fox. This narrative quality of the story teller has been highly appreciated. The narrative of the poem is a beast fable and mock epic based on incident in the Reynard Cycle.      

        NPT collaborates a number of narratives in terms of stories. Some of them are stories about dream- told by the Cock and the Priest. The Priest started the tale with a poor widow, rather advance in age, had a small cottage beside a grove, standing in a dale. The widow led very simple life, providing for herself and her two daughters from a small farm. She had a cock called Chaunticleer and several hens, out of which Pertelote was famous figure in the story.

        There is a story of dream. One morning Chaunticleer started fearing about a bad dream, he had at night. This fear had made him groan and frightened Portelote. Hearing the dream the Chaunticlear had, she mocked him, telling that he was a coward, because dreams were meaningless vision.  Her solution was that she would pick herbs from the yard in order to bring his humors normal, Chaunticleer disagreed but he dropped the issue and praised Portelote for her vision and beauty.

        There is second narration of the cock and the fox. One fine day, cock found a fox moving around, immediately he tried to escape from the place. But the fox stopped him by saying that he was the friend of Chaunticleer. The fox also praised his father who was a good singer. Fox also requested the cock to sing a beautiful song.  Believing the fox, the cock stood on his tip toes and began to stress his neck for singing closing the eyes. The fox grabbed him by the throat and ran off.  People nearby saw the episode and ran after the fox to save the cock. The cock could speak somehow and told the fox to declare that he would eat the cock. The fox agreed but as soon as opened the mouth, the cock escaped. The fox was disturbed and cursed everybody present there.        

        Fiction and history are mixed-up in the tale. The literary genre of poetry like NPT in medieval Europe, specially in England surprises the 21st Century readers.     

Nonnes Preestes tale is primarily a fable, assuming an identity or parallelism between animals and humans, specially in the light of fable satire.

The tale depicts the age (14th Century), in which Geoffrey Chaucer lived and wrote such a beautiful moral stories which are read and taught in today’s colleges also.      

The theme and moral that people may draw from the tale are:

People should trust somebody upto certain extent and not totally. Also, men and women should lead a simple life and plain diet. Man-woman relationship mentioned in the NPT:Womman is mannes joye and al his bliss(Woman is man’s delight and all his bliss)