Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Modernizes Heroism With A Rooster

The Nun’s Priest’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a tale that allegorically reveals the depths of human behavior and psychology through animals on one hand while subverting common expectations of an epic in order to provide comedy on the other hand.

Chaucer uses his characters as props to reveal the true nature of humans. At the start of the Miller’s Tale, a tale of debauchery and crass humor, Chaucer divorces himself from the work, reminding the reader that he is simply a stenographer. His characters are living, breathing entities with lives of their own, lives that dance along the meteres of his poem. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale differs from the other tales in that there is an added layer of abstraction in the form of farm animals.

Readers are introduced to the epic tale of Chauntecleer, a rooster, husband to seven hens, king of his yard, master of his chicken coop. His dream and the fear that he exhibits from that dream shows how much humans fear the unknown. The dog-like beast is the “other,” the foreigner, the invader. Fear of invasion is relevant to medieval times, invasion of armies and of disease or bad “humors.” Pertelote’s advice to take laxatives in order to cure himself of bad dreams not only serves as a comedic quip but it also highlights the difference in thinking between the matron hen and the…