Back to: Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
In this article will discuss The Nun’s Priest’s Tale Summary in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Chanticleer is the rooster of an old woman who lives a simple life in a cottage and has two daughters with a few other things including three sows, three cows, a sheep, and some chickens.
Chanticleer in French means ‘sings clearly‘. The rooster sings the hour better than any other chicken around. The chicken has white nails as lilies, black beak as jet, crest redder than a fine coral. Chanticleer loves a hen named Pertelote the most among his many hen-wives.
One day, when, he with his hen-wives, is roosting at night, has a nightmare about an orange hound-like beast threatens to kill him in the yard.
Pertelote, who is courageous, consoles the chicken and tries to convince him not to dread for, she thinks, the nightmare might be the result of some physical malady and she’d get the herbs to cure it.
The chicken, however, doesn’t get convince tells the story of the men who had dreamt murder and was really murdered. Chanticleer refers to textual example to prove his thesis about the nightmare.
After this, he appreciates Pertelote’s beauty and has sex with her twenty times and copulate with her till six in the morning.
On a day in May, the sadness passes over him and announces his happiness. The same day a fox notices every move of his family. The next day Chanticleer notices the fox while looking at a butterfly. The fox meets him with courtesy and flatters him by appreciating his singing.
He gets filled with pride, expands his chest and begins to cry and that moment the fox holds him by the throat and takes him back to the forest. No one could witness what happened because nobody was around that time.
A high-pitched sound begins to come from the hen house when Pertelote has burnt her wings with grief discovering the absence of Chanticleer. When the widow and her daughters find out about that runs, with other people and animal, to look for the fox.
In the meantime, Chanticleer manages to make the fox open his mouth by suggesting him to turn and boast and curse his pursuers. To speak his agreement when the fox opens his mouth, the rooster flies up to the tree.
The fox tries to flatter him again to come down but the c ock has learned his lesson of never trusting the flatter.
