Canterbury Tales (Barron's Book Notes)

by Canterbury Tales (Barron's Book Notes) [lit]

  The rooster is terrified, but the fox tells Chanticleer he doesn't mean to harm him. He has heard that he's a marvelous crower, as good as his father was. Chanticleer's father and mother, the fox says slyly, were once guests at his house. Could Chanticleer imitate his father's crowing?

  Big headed from the flattery, Chanticleer closes his eyes to crow. As he stretches his neck, the fox grabs him, throws him across his back, and dashes off. The hens, cackling madly, begin the world's sorriest lament, which brings out the widow and her daughters. A chase scene ensues.

  As they're running, Chanticleer tells the fox that if he were the fox, he'd turn and tell the crowd that it's too late, the bird is his. Good idea, says the fox, and of course as soon as he opens his mouth, Chanticleer escapes up into a tree. The fox tries to lure him down, but Chanticleer vows not to make the same mistake twice. The tale ends with the narrator warning that even though this is just a story about animals, there's a moral in it for people too.

  In the epilogue the Host praises Sir John, not only for his tale, but for his manhood, making cracks about the hens he would need if he were a layman instead of a priest. The priest remains silent.

  We see the WIDOW only briefly, at the beginning and near the end, but she represents an important aspect of the story. Her life is simple and contented because she feels none of the temptations we associate with rich living. We understand her life and moral values in just a few lines.

  CHANTICLEER presents an immediate contrast to the widow's simplicity. He is described like the noble prince in courtly love romances, which is a ludicrous description of a rooster. But this portrait gives us insight into the lovable and not-so-lovable characteristics of us humans, who are just as proud and vain as he is.

  As a rooster, he carries large responsibilities: he crows better than any other rooster, he thinks he's responsible for the very sunrise, he makes use of all the hens sexually, and he struts around his farmyard turf like a lion. He's proud to the point of being arrogant (remember that, especially in medieval literature, pride comes before a fall), he's aware of his attractiveness, he's intelligent and sly, he is full of joy and life.

  Is it ridiculous to have all these noble and ignoble characteristics combined in a rooster? Does his chicken shape keep us from taking him seriously? You'll have to decide how much of his portrait is just for amusement and how much we should apply to ourselves.

  PERTELOTE is a marvelous parody of a wife who henpecks her husband, in this case literally. Impressively, she can quote from Cato, a respected medieval authority, on dreams, which surely not many medieval wives could do, let alone chickens. But her interest lies mostly in the daily concerns of keeping her husband healthy and happy, chalking up his bad dream to indigestion, and offering a complicated mixture of herbs for a laxative.

  She is more than this, though. She is presented as the beloved lady of medieval romances, the queenly figure for whom the knight would gladly die, in accordance with the ideal of courtly love. Yet Chanticleer teases her while serving her in a knightly fashion, implying that she doesn't know things that he knows and therefore shouldn't stick her beak in. But then he does listen to her, and ignores the warning of his dream and his own explanations.

  You might examine whether she represents human folly, seeing only the base things in life and ignoring the spiritual realm, or if she stands for the practicality that Chanticleer lacks.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: STORY LINE

  We get a taste of the characters' symbolic importance to the tale. The widow's way of life, which takes the place of any physical description, is humbly Christian: she doesn't want what she can't have and she practices temperance in all things. This sets up the moral tone of the poem. But among her few possessions she does have a sheep named Moll. It's interesting that she and her daughters don't have names, but her sheep does. This prepares us for the introduction of animals that seem more human than the people in the tale.

  Chanticleer appears more highly bred and privileged than the poor woman who owns him. He sees himself as the center of his small universe.

  NOTE: Chaucer shifts the point of view here from the objective sight of the widow to the viewpoints of the barnyard. He gives a closeup description of Chanticleer and compares his comb to a "castle wall" (line 40), making him appear large, as if we're seeing him on a hen's-eye level.

  His portrait and that of the hens--his "paramours" (line 47)--are from a courtly romance, especially the standard romance description of Pertelote, "courteous, discreet, debonair," who captured the heart of this noble rooster when she was only seven days old. But the whole romantic ideal is undercut by a reminder that these are animals: we are in the long-ago days when animals and birds could speak and sing (line 61). This shift back and forth from romance (and later, philosophy) to the barnyard occurs throughout the tale, usually with hilarious effect.

  Chanticleer's dream is suggestive of a medieval riddle: what is like something and yet is not that thing? (You can probably think of similar riddles from childhood.) His nightmare is about an animal "like a dog," but he doesn't know what. We immediately recognize a fox, which obviously Chanticleer his never seen; this puts us in a position of knowing more than the rooster does and keeps us from taking him too seriously.

  Pertelote then becomes anything but "courteous" and "debonair." It's ridiculous that he should be afraid of dreams, she says. Aren't you a man? she asks in all seriousness (though to us it's very funny). Dreams come from overeating, gas, and an imbalance of bodily humors, in her opinion, as does her husband's red "choler" (bile: one of the four temperaments believed to rule the body). In quoting Cato (lines 120-121), she is presenting one prominent medieval view of dreams, the "natural" theory that says they are worthless. Her courtly tone of voice mixes with the pragmatic until she concludes he should take a laxative.

  He thanks her courteously, then refutes her opinion. He uses "exempla"--highly structured examples that make a moral point--to show the theory that dreams are sent from heaven to point to joys and trials in the present life.

  NOTE: Some readers think his courteous attitude here toward Pertelote is full of male superiority, barely masking his contempt for her intelligence. Keep this in mind; later we will see other attitudes toward women.

  His first example, of two friends forced to sleep in different places, is long and serious. A man refuses to listen to the dream of his traveling companion saying he's being murdered, but it turns out to be true. The next is of another traveling pair, one of whom refuses to believe his friend's dream that they will be drowned, and he indeed gets drowned when the ship's bottom splits "accidentally."

  In these examples, Chanticleer first brings up the idea of fortune, which "governs" us all equally (lines 179-180). Is that the only purpose for his long-winded answer? It may be to build up suspense for the action to follow, or to create a serious purpose in contrast to the amusing fact that we're listening to a rooster. But it also serves to show that the point of the tale is basically serious. The change from comedy to a serious tone may represent the fact that fortune can change lives from cheerful to dismal, as indeed happens to Chanticleer later.

  He rattles off half a dozen more short examples, in case Pertelote isn't convinced, or to impress everyone with his education. But after he predicts darkly that these ideas mean he will meet a terrible doom, he ends hilariously by adding that besides, he hates laxatives. This leads us to wonder whether his whole recitation has been from strongly held belief or from fear of having to take laxatives.

  Returning to his courtly attitude, he tells Pertelote the sight of her takes away all his fears. Just as sure as "In principio" (the first words of the Bible; in other words, the gospel truth), "woman is man's joy and all his bliss" (lines 343-346).

  NOTE: The pun is double and says something about Chanticleer's attitude toward his wife. The Latin quote really means, "Woman is man's confusion [or ruin]," and "In principio" ("In the beginning...") can also refer to the Fall in the beginning becaus
e of Eve. He could be mistranslating this to tease her or, as some believe, to hide his contempt for her. Or perhaps, being only a rooster, he doesn't understand it himself. Which do you think makes the most sense?

  Chanticleer gives up his theories in favor of love, as the end of his speech indicates. But his decision to listen to Pertelote and ignore his own arguments about portentous dreams turns out to be a mistake.

  Chanticleer's adventure takes place 32 days from the start of March (the beginning of the year, in those days), in other words, in May, the significance of which we saw in the Knight's Tale.

  NOTE: The Nun's Priest's Tale interweaves many threads from other tales, leading many to believe that this is the story that most accurately shows Chaucer's own beliefs about humanity and its place in the grand scheme of things.

  By calling attention to the start of the world "when God first made man" (line 368), and remembering that the story takes place when animals could speak, Chaucer makes it sound like Chanticleer and his hens are close in time to the Fall and have a clearer vision than we have of where we all stand in God's grand design. We are again reminded of fortune: Chanticleer has a "sorrowful cas" (accident, a word Chaucer never uses lightly), and we are reminded of the biblical teaching that "worldly joy is soon gone" (lines 384-386). This comes right after Chanticleer's announcement of contentment, warning us that only the higher pleasures of God are outside fortune's wheel. We're also reminded that the tone of the whole "romantic" tale is tongue-in-cheek when the narrator says the tale is just as "true" as the legend of Lancelot that women are so fond of. (Is this another slight against women?)

  The fox's attack has been "forecast" (line 397) through Chanticleer's dream from God's "high imagination," and all the ideas presented so far now get put to the test of action. The narrator raises the whole idea of destiny and man's freedom as the catastrophe approaches, but in an exaggerated, humorous way. He brings up "simple" versus "conditional" necessity, an important argument with medieval scholars: does man live by "simple necessity," which means everything is predetermined, or by "conditional necessity," in which God knows everything but allows men freedom of choice?

  Instead of answering, he puts the question in perspective by reminding us that this is a tale about a cock and a hen. Is this saying that philosophy is useless, and that the wisest of us know no more than barnyard animals? Some point to the confusion the narrator shows in the philosophical passage as evidence for this view. Others think it's just the Nun's Priest's way of avoiding responsibility for the philosophical explanation and for the attack on women that follows. (Is it Chaucer or the priest who decides to take back the offensive comments that women's advice is what caused the Fall?) The escape line (line 442) that he means these comments only as a joke might mean the narrator is part of the whole comedy of the tale, or that he's trying to make a fast getaway.

  As the fox approaches, Chanticleer sings like a mermaid" (line 450), which in the Middle Ages symbolized the ancient Sirens whose sweet songs lured men to their doom. This is a reference to the fact that Chanticleer's voice will soon do him in. He's about to learn the difference between believing something (that his dream spelled evil to come) and acting on that belief, which he hasn't done. Because this is a tale with a Christian moral, he must deal with the trials and tribulations arising from his action (or lack of it) before he can reach a happy ending.

  When he sees the fox, he feels an instinct to flee, because it is in the natural order for an animal to run from its enemy. This instinctive knowledge flies in the face of all the learned knowledge we've been shown, and shows the divine order as it really is--all things according to their nature.

  Chanticleer falls prey not only to the fox but to the sin of pride, emphasized by the fox's use of Devil (saying he's not a "fiend," line 466) and angel (saying that Chanticleer sings as merrily as one, line 472), which refers to Satan's fall from grace. On another level, it's possible that the fox's use of flattery and deceit to win Chanticleer parallels the rooster's use of the same tactics to woo his wife. His crowing (which also means "boasting") also becomes ironic when we realize that the fox is praising Chanticleer's "wisdom and discretion" (line 498), which the bird certainly is not displaying at this moment. He's literally blinded by flattery because he's closed his eyes to sing.

  The exclamation of complaint that follows is hilarious, attaching such heroic importance to the abduction of a rooster: "Alas, that Chanticleer flew from the beams!" Venus is implored to save her noble servant (like Palamon in the Knight's Tale and like the Wife of Bath who also loves "more for delight than to multiply the world," line 524). The passage might also serve to ridicule the learned works and show how useless they are when it comes to keeping men (or roosters) from the consequences of their own stupidity.

  The chase scene that follows starts with a joke of the hens' laments being worse than when the Romans burned Carthage and Nero burned Rome. This could serve to point up Chanticleer's inflated sense of his own importance, or just to make the hens again appear more human. The scene also brings the spectator right into the mess--out "ran Colle our dog" (line 563).

  There's no longer any control or reasoned argument, just chaos. There's even a reference to a wider uproar, the Peasants Revolt headed by Jack Straw (line 574), when many people feared for their lives because of rioting in the streets. Like the animals in the poem, there was good reason to fear that heaven would fall.

  Suddenly the priest tells us, "See how Fortune suddenly turns around the hope and pride of their enemy!" (lines 583-584). Chanticleer has flattered his wife, then the fox wins him by flattery, now he uses flattery to win his freedom back; a nicely completed circle of fortune. The whole idea of running off at the mouth--referring to Chanticleer's use of the dream "knowledge" that is true but that he ignores--also gets pegged when the fox says misfortune will come to those who blab when they should shut up (lines 613-615).

  Chanticleer sees the truth through this self-awareness, learning from his mistakes. The sins of pride and self-satisfaction are solved by self-knowledge. And, in case we're tempted just to write off the whole tale as a "folly" (trifle) about a fox, a rooster, and a hen, the Nun's Priest reminds us we should "Take the moral, good people." We should accept what applies to us (take the "fruit" and leave the "chaff," line 623) and become better people for it.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: SETTING

  The widow's little cottage provides us the moral as well as the physical setting for the tale. Her way of life provides a hint of ideal human, Christian behavior that leads to self-restraint and contentment. This is the world to which Chanticleer's boastful self-importance is connected, and the world to which the barnyard returns after the intrusion of the evil fox.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: STYLE

  As in the Miller's Tale, we get an ironic use of the language of courtly love and description to point up human desires and weaknesses, which the ideal of courtly love embodies. (Weakness because the beloved lady has the power of life or death over the lovesick knight, as in the Knight's Tale.)

  The "noble" style also serves to parody the tragic tone of the Monk's endless tales of Fortune bringing down all the greats (Hercules, Samson, etc.), and supplies a comic answer to his gloom. (Keep in mind, too, that the Knight requests another tale, so perhaps the Nun's Priest means to give the Knight something to match his noble taste.) The parody of a classical tragic style also gives us reasons for the occasional outbursts of lament and complaint (such as the wonderful "death" passage that begins, "O woeful hens!" line 549).

  Themes of other tales, such as the ones just mentioned, appear through the tone and language of this tale. Some take this to mean that the Nun's Priest, who is never described, and "Chaucer" the narrator, who also is left blank, are pretty much the same person. This may or may not be true, but we can see a great deal of affection for the attitudes expressed here, especially since Chaucer has a soft spot for Boethius, whose philosophy plays a role in several of these tales.

 
; Another reason for the humorous tone of the story could be that Chaucer accepts his world with an unshakable faith in divine order that underlies the world's craziness. Humor allows him to be detached from ups and downs of the characters (and making them birds is another way of detaching himself). Because he is so sure of God's providence, he can calmly watch other people's shortcomings and even his own.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: THEMES

  1. DREAMS

  The relevance and importance of dreams, like the relevance of astrology and dreams/visions in the Miller's Tale, still provoke lively debate today. Is Chanticleer's dream valid in the Freudian sense--dealing with anxiety and wish-fulfillment--or is it, as some would still believe, a psychic way of revealing the future? Chanticleer gives us plenty of ammunition for believing that dreams can tell the future, but do you believe his stories? Does the fact that his dream does come true give more weight to the psychic idea? Or is the dream another way of showing that everything in the world is predetermined and man's actions are pointless?

  2. DESTINY AND FREE WILL

  This is a complex issue that is brought up in the tale but not resolved. We are told two contradictory things: that man is free to make his own choices (as Chanticleer is free to accept or reject Pertelote's advice), and that he is not free because everything is already destined (which means the fox will attack no matter whose advice Chanticleer follows). Both ideas are right, but neither is completely right. That's the problem of being human.