Thise Been the Cokkes Wordes: A Bakhtinian Reading of Genre in 'The Nun's Priest's Tale'

THISE BEEN THE COKKES WORDES: A BAKHTINIAN READING OF GENRE IN “THE NUN’S PRIEST’S TALE” by Jake William Moore A Senior Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Major in English and the Bachelor of Arts Degree Stetson University, DeLand, Florida Advisor(s): Prof. Thomas Farrell, Prof. Joel Davis, and Prof. Grady Ballenger December 6, 2015 Moore 1 Abstract: This research focuses on a critical analysis of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” using the genre theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Ian Watt, Margaret Anne Doody, and E. M. W. Tillyard. It will examine the romantic, epic, and novelistic elements of the text, focusing particularly on the third category. It will analyze how these elements alter the romantic and epic elements within the text by identifying characters, instances of diglossia, linguistic humor, textual references, and plot structure. This analysis will yield a new perspective on “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” as a text and its significance within the English canon. Moore 2 Considering how popular the English language has become in the modern era thanks to the globalizing forces of economy and politics, it should almost come as a surprise that it was once shunned as the language of the uneducated and unsophisticated. Due to the power-relations of Western Europe during the fourteenth century, medieval England was practically a backwater, floating off the coast of civilization. Despite these conditions, the genius of several pioneering authors brought the English language to literary salvation, establishing a canon of such merit that has withstood the test of time and remained influential to this day. Perhaps the most widely recognized and significant of these texts, The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer is a shockingly clear glimpse into medieval English life and culture, a subject oftentimes obscured and dismissed as “dark.” A collection of 24 tales spanning over 17,000 lines of verse, The Canterbury Tales has historically been lauded as the text which led to the popularization of the English vernacular, a feat which has since paved the way for English greats like Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens. During Chaucer’s time, the dominant languages in literature were French and Latin, languages with vast histories of artistic and scientific development to be sure, but languages alien to many common Englishmen and women. As a result of his accomplishments in advancing the English language as a legitimate form of literary expression, Chaucer is widely considered to be the “Father of English Literature,” a title by no means lightly granted. Popularly considered his magnum opus, The Canterbury Tales, remains the best defense for Chaucer’s accolades. While its language and length can intimidate modern readers, The Canterbury Tales is a surprisingly easy text to wrap one’s head around. Its premise is simple: one evening, a group of Moore 3 pilgrims stay the night at the Tabard Inn outside London as they prepare to embark on a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury. The Host of the Tabard Inn, spying an opportunity to fill his purse, invites the pilgrims to participate in a game: the group will travel to Canterbury together taking turns telling stories along the way. At the end of their pilgrimage, the group will reconvene at the Tabard, and the individual whose story has the “best sentence and moost solaas,” or best meaning and most enjoyment, will win a free meal. From this point, the Tales outlines the stories each pilgrim tells, touching occasionally on the interaction of the various characters travelling together between stories. In order to understand how a text like The Canterbury Tales could erupt out of medieval English culture, one has to first approach the significant cultural shifts that occurring around it. Nearly six centuries later, hundreds of miles away, the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin would emerge with a theory of literature which could examine such cultural shifts through the lens of genre. Focusing specifically on novels, especially in contrast to epic literature, Bakhtin believed that the elements inherent to the novel were the result of an expanding, external cultural awareness. As modes of literary expression, Bakhtin saw the genre of novel as an interaction and intersection of multiple cultures, characterized by a melding of voices within a text and a profound connection between the text and reality. In order to define these connections, Bakhtin invented several new terms and ideas including chronotope, heteroglossia, and dialogism, terms whose definitions are crucial to understanding how The Canterbury Tales functions as a text. The chronotope, literally meaning “time-space,” is defined by Bakhtin as “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature (Dialogic 84). In other words, chronotopes are areas and patterns in texts where time and space are involved. For instance, one common chronotope is that Moore 4 of the road, a chronotope linear in time and movement that is often used in literature to represent an individual’s progression through life. Heteroglossia, on the other hand, is understood by Bakhtin to be “a multiplicity of social voices and a wide variety of their links and interrelationships” (Dialogic 263). For example, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” uses heteroglossia through its inclusion of Latin, Greek, German, French, and Russian as well as English, each language serving to commentate and expand on the others. Hand in hand with Bakhtin’s idea of heteroglossia is his concept of dialogism. A text is dialogic, according to Bakhtin, if it responds to and continues a conversation, or dialogue, with other works of literature. “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” one of the 24 tales that make up The Canterbury Tales as a whole, displays these concepts and ideas, relying on cultures and voices from ancient Greece to Thomas Bradwardine, an English bishop who lived only decades before Chaucer’s work was realized, to achieve its form and function. While the same can be said about and magnified in the whole of The Canterbury Tales, the overwhelming literary scope of the complete text would be impossible to cover even in a book, much less a single essay. “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” offers critics a wide selection of Chaucer’s talents and techniques common throughout the whole text. Like its companion tales, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” not only joins cultures and thoughts distant both chronologically and spatially, it does so through the English vernacular, a language considered insignificant to the world outside the British Isles. Its careful use of form, theme, and language are best understood, however, through a Bakhtinian lens of critique thanks to Bakhtin’s special attention to the ways in which culture manifests itself in genre. His theories on epic literature, the use of time, and the manipulation of language within texts engages “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” far more intimately than any other standard analysis of genre. The ways Chaucer and Bakhtin Moore 5 behave alongside one another gives their reader insight into the deep, wide-reaching implications of cultural developments and expansion on literature as a whole. As one tale within The Canterbury Tales, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” revolves around the fable of Chauntecleer the rooster. In the Nun’s Priest’s story, Chauntecleer wakes from a nightmare in which he sees a fox coming to eat him. After a lengthy discussion between Chauntecleer and his wife Pertelote on the nature of dreams and visions, Chauntecleer roams his enclosure until a fox appears, feigning friendship and a desire to hear the rooster crow. Chauntecleer, in a moment of vanity, obliges and is quickly kidnapped by the fox. Only by tricking the fox in return does Chauntecleer escape to freedom, ending the Nun’s Priest’s tale. In discussing “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” several distinctions must be made. The parts of The Canterbury Tales which I have designated “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” include the tale itself as well as its prologue and epilogue. While the central tale offers a bounty of text to analyze, the prologue and epilogue provide a glimpse into the tale’s place within the larger Canterbury Tales that an isolated reading might easily overlook. Furthermore, these two texts construct a framing narrative which alters the way in which a reader would read and understand the contents of the tale. In particular, the structuring of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” between a prologue and epilogue is an authorial choice which Bakhtin would argue cannot be easily dismissed. The contents of the tale are affected by the presence of external voices in the prologue and epilogue, and the commentary given by these voices about the tale suggest the ways in which a reader ought to understand the tale. As such, in order to fully appreciate and analyze “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” not only as a text but as a part of The Canterbury Tales, attention must be paid to the text immediately surrounding the tale as well. Moore 6 The intertextuality and awareness of both culture and genre in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is a reflection of its author. A product of a world caught between prosperity and plague, Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime in the year 1343. As the son of a second-generation vintner, or wine-maker, Chaucer lived a life of social connectedness, rubbing elbows with foreign merchants, English nobility, and his common countrymen. Over the course of this life, Chaucer played the role of philosopher, alchemist, and astronomer, each pursuit fueling his greatest profession, author. These pursuits put Chaucer in contact with ideas and conversations that he would include in his works including free will, predestinated fate, and the nature of good and evil. In addition to his literary and scientific interests, Chaucer served as a bureaucrat, courtier, and diplomat for the English crown, traveling the western world from Italy to France. As a result, few of his contemporaries could claim to be as well read as Chaucer, having read individuals from the Roman philosopher Boethius to the Italian poet Boccaccio. Returning to his native England, Chaucer brought an international, trans-cultural perspective to his works, introducing the English people to the philosophical questions raised in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and the classic tragedy of Troilus and Cressida in their native tongue. Pinning down the genre of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” despite and perhaps because of its complexity, is no easy task. If Bakhtin seems quick to make exceptions, create subcategories, and invent new words to explain his theories on genre, it may be due to genre’s inherently complex nature. In Chaucer’s time, the idea of genre as defined by modern theorists was basically unknown. It was not, however, unconsidered. Possessing elements of epic, romance, and novel, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” displays a keen awareness of the elements and techniques Bakhtin uses to classify genres including parody, heteroglossia, and chronotope. Additionally, due to the significance of the prologue and epilogue, the genre of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” Moore 7 oftentimes becomes stuck in a limbo of genre, reading one way with these appendages and a dramatically different way without them. In considering genre in a medieval text, one cannot avoid the genre of romance. An often misunderstood and misidentified genre, romance was a dominant mode of literary expression during and prior to Chaucer’s time. Unlike their silver-screen cousins, medieval romances were not tales of star-crossed lovers or unsinkable ships. Instead, romance, or “Roman,” was “a lengthy narrative fiction, either in poetry or prose, written in a modern ‘Roman’ language” excluding Latin (Doody 187). Oftentimes, romances dealt with mystical, fairy-tale creatures and environments like dragons, knights, and forests, although these fantastic elements were only popular elements rather than requirements. Margaret Anne Doody, in her book The True Story of the Novel, writes about the use of vernacular in Chaucer’s time, a fledgling practice which saw only a handful of authors attempt to bring into the popular literary modes. One such mode Doody notes is the romance, citing Marie de France as an example of English authors using the vernacular instead of Romance languages to write romance. Doody argues that “the essence of ‘romance’ lies not in castles or journeys, but in the use of a common language, a language of daily life,” referring to the vernacular as “the medium for storytelling” (187). In certain aspects, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” possesses clear romantic elements, most notably in its central theme and use of chronotope. In fact, the Nun’s Priest makes an address to his audience, defending his story as being as “trewe… / As is The Book of Launcelot de Lake,” an extremely popular romance known across England (444-5). Here, a tongue-and-cheek Chaucer may have decided to have the Nun’s Priest liken his “trewe” tale to an obvious fable as a jest, but possibly Chaucer might have included this line as a colloquial touchstone for his own audience. Moore 8 Either way, Chaucer here channels his inner Malory, the author of the famous Le Morte d’Arthur, quoting the enigmatic “French book” which demanded reverence and commanded belief in the genre of romance. In romance, the most common if not defining chronotope is that of the journey. In this chronotope, an individual undertakes a quest or journey that takes them out of their home into a foreign, dangerous environment. At the end of this journey, the individual undergoes a test of character and, succeeding, returns back to their home. In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” Chauntecleer, after discussing a nightmare he had with his wife, walks around the yard outside his coop. As he wanders the yard, he encounters a fox who tricks him into singing for him. The fox in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” here administers the test of character to Chauntecleer, tricking him by playing to his vanity. After initially failing the test, Chauntecleer is able to rescue himself by learning from his mistake and using the same play to ego that caught him on his kidnapper. Having successfully freed himself, Chauntecleer concludes the text with a return to the status quo, roughly mirroring the common romantic chronotope. At the outset of The Canterbury Tales, the Host establishes the parameters of his contest, listing the criteria for judging the pilgrims’ stories as “best sentence and moost solaas.” In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” the Nun’s Priest states that the “moralitie” of his tale is that it is dangerous “to be recchelees / And necligent and truste on flaterye” (669-70). This lesson, however, is only learned at the end of the tale. The lion’s share of the text on the other hand is taken up by a lengthy discussion on the nature of dreams and visions following Chauntecleer’s nightmare. Dreams, not coincidentally, were popular literary ideas in medieval romances. Bakhtin writes that “in medieval literature, ‘visions’ are a very important organizing form” (Dialogic 154). Furthermore, he writes that in chivalric romance, a popular medieval form of romance, “dreams Moore 9 no longer function merely as an element of the content, but begin to acquire a form-generating function, in the same way that ‘visions’ are made analogous to dreams” (Dialogic 154). In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” Chauntecleer’s dream in which he sees “a beest / Was lyk an hound” becomes a prophetic vision of the “colfox ful of sly iniquitee” that enters the yard later in the story (132-3, 448). When accused of cowardice by his wife because of his nightmare, Chauntecleer defends the idea of dream visions by citing the Bible, philosophers, and classic tales of visions. In doing so, he also defends a romantic ideal and the tropes common in the genre. Besides romance, one of the most developed medieval English genres was epic. Epic literature, best remembered in Homer’s Iliad, is a genre that traces its roots to antiquity. Despite its ancient nature, the epic saw prevalence in Chaucer’s time, with English epics as recent as Piers Plowman and aged as Beowulf. In his book, The English Epic and Its Background, E. M. W. Tillyard asserts that there is “no cause for including Chaucer” in the scope of English epic (Tillyard 150). Tillyard reasons that Chaucer is a comic rather than an epic writer and points to the absence of religion as foundation in his writing as evidence, claiming that English epic poetry had to rely on religion as its metaphysic in order to reach the lofty universal ideals the epic seeks. Chaucer does, however, use religion in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” as part of Chauntecleer’s rebuttal to his wife’s admonishment. Chauntecleer references specifically the Old Testament stories of Daniel and Joseph as evidence to support his argument for the validity of dream visions (360-70). Additionally, Chauntecleer argues that while Cato may have said dreams were not important, the Bible says contrary (210). In these cases, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” does rely on religion as its metaphysic, forming the backbone of Chauntecleer’s argument. As a tale told by a man of the first estate, that of the clergy, it is unsurprising that Chaucer would rely on religious Moore 10 figures as sources of authority in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.” Still, though the Nun’s Priest cites religious sources in his tale, the tale itself is secular: it is a retelling of the folk fable of Chauntecleer the rooster. Here, the high ideal of religion is displaced in favor of a more lighthearted subject. In her understanding of the novel, Margaret Anne Doody adds that “the Novel is seen… as not only displacing but replacing myth, or religious narrative, or rather religion” as the metaphysical force in English literature (Doody 3). Bakhtin, however, disregards religion as a criterion for epic, instead focusing on “national tradition” (Dialogic 13). Epic, Bakhtin argues, is a genre locked within the “absolute past.” The absolute past according to Bakhtin is the overarching chronotope of the epic genre, the barrier that walls off the epic “from all subsequent times” (Dialogic 16). The epic can only be accepted by its readers through “reverence,” as if it were “beyond the realm of human activity” (Dialogic 17). In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” the reader sees a decisive shift in subject from the lofty to the “low.” The “povre wydwe” who is the tale’s first subject is not a part of epic ideal (55). Chaucer’s decision to begin the tale with a widow rather than a prince or supplication to a muse condemns the tale to a non-epic existence. Despite this initial decision, Chaucer couches the “low” within the “high,” describing Chauntecleer’s physical qualities in artistic detail. In writing “in al the land of crowyng nas his peer,” Chaucer revisits the epic idea of “firsts” and “bests” referenced by Bakhtin as part of the absolute epic ideal (84). Chauntecleer’s physicality is the most frequently used vehicle for artistic license in “The Nun’s Priest Tale.” Often given epic qualities, Chauntecleer is at one point even likened to Achilles by being described “as it were a grym leoun,” the image of a lion being representative of Achilles in the Iliad (412). Following his nightmare, Chauntecleer describes lengthy description of what the reader knows is a fox (131-40). The language Chaucer uses, however, describing the fox’s fur as Moore 11 “betwixe yelow and reed” with a tail tipped “with blak,” is purposefully roundabout (135, 7). Rather than outright state that the beast Chauntecleer dreamt of was a fox, Chaucer uses descriptive language reminiscent of epic monsters like Scylla and Charybdis in epic poetry to convey the terrifying nature of Chauntecleer’s dream. The Nun’s Priest continues to valorize the fox’s villainy by calling him a “newe Scariot, newe Genylon” and “Greek Synon,” each a Biblical or epic traitor, magnifying a hungry fox’s treachery to epic proportions (460-1). Continuing to frame the low within the high, Chaucer establishes his epic in the cramped chronotope of the “grene,” a contemporary commonplace, as the reader’s first glimpse into the world of Chauntecleer. From there, Chaucer further limits the scope to the widow’s enclosure wherein her animals are kept. Only when Chauntecleer is stolen away by the fox into the woods does this setting change, providing the reader with what is ultimately an extremely claustrophobic environment for his “epic” tale. Ian Watt, in his book The Rise of the Novel, explains that “one aspect of the importance which the novel allots the time dimension” is “its break with the earlier literary tradition of using timeless stories to mirror the unchanging moral verities” (Watt 22). “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” clearly retains this tradition, using the folk fable of Chauntecleer as the vehicle for moral inquiry. Furthermore, Watt adds, “the novel’s plot is also distinguished… by its use of past experience as the cause of present action” (Watt 22). While both Chauntecleer and Pertelote include several sources as citations of experience, these experiences do not form the cause of the action in the tale. Instead, the timeless tradition of dream visions moves the plot forward. Finally, Watt writes that “ancient, mediaeval and renaissance literature” restricts “the action of tragedy to twenty-four hours” (Watt 23). “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” restricts itself to less than twenty-four hours and relies heavily on “disguises and coincidences,” devices Watt identifies as belonging to romance (Watt 22). Just as Chaucer Moore 12 restricts the space of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” literally with a fence, he creates a similar compression of time, squeezing the events of the tale into a single 24-hour timeframe. Critically, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is considered a “mock-epic.” As genre of satire which parodies common stereotypes of epic and heroic literature, the mock-epic holds special significance to Bakhtin. Bakhtin’s rules regarding what is and what is not epic are strict and inflexible. While “other genres” are “more or less fixed pre-existing forms into which one may then pour artistic experience,” this only proves true when the artistic experience conforms to the pre-existent form for the genre (Dialogic 3). Epic, having “long since completed its development” and become “hardened” with a “no longer flexible skeleton,” can only indulge in artistic experience which does not try to bend any of its rules (Dialogic 3). As evidence, Bakhtin argues that the sonnets within Don Quixote do not, despite their structure, function generically as sonnets. In a similar way, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” fails to operate as an epic poem despite its technical elements. Bakhtin lists two problems in considering the sonnets of Don Quixote generically as sonnets: first, these sonnets belong to a larger text, and second, the sonnets are in reality only images (Dialogic 51). “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” functions within The Canterbury Tales much as these sonnets do. Therefore, although the tale has multiple epic elements, particularly in regards to its formal tone and lofty theme, the humor inherent in the text cannot fit the epic model. The third genre to consider in this equation is novel, the genre Bakhtin focuses most on. Most critics, including Doody, Watt, and Tillyard, mark the time around Defoe as the formal rise of the English novel. Bakhtin, however, points to several “eras” in which he believes the novel rose to dominance, claiming that “any strict adherence to a genre” during these eras trended toward “stylization taken to the point of parody” regardless of authorial intent (Dialogic 5). While Moore 13 Chaucer more than likely understood what he was doing in his text with his parodic elements, Bakhtin argues that whether in reality he comprehended his decision or not makes no difference. The existence of parody, deliberate or otherwise, forces the text into a specific, novelistic framework. “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is a parody of the epic genre in that it transforms the folk tale of Chantecler into an epic poem. Bakhtin refers to these proto-novelistic “parodies” as “companions” to the novel (Dialogic 6). One area in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is still contested by critics due to the parodic nature of the text as a whole. Fraught with contention, the phrase “heigh ymaginacioun” has an ambiguous subject (450). Most editors suggest that the Nun’s Priest here is referencing God’s ability to foresee events. If, however, the Nun’s Priest refers to Chauntecleer’s dream as the “heigh ymaginacioun,” the text’s parodic nature is only magnified, as the Nun’s Priest is once again using hyperbole to describe Chauntecleer’s features and actions. Bakhtin asserts that the novel rose as a result of Europe’s “emergence from a socially isolated and culturally deaf semipatriarchal society” and “entrance into international and interlingual contacts and relationships” (Dialogic 11). “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” remains patriarchal, or at least socially conventional, with Chauntecleer possessing numerous wives of which Pertelote is his favorite, clearly referencing his identity as a farmyard rooster but also harkening back to the Bliblical and Classical eras where polygamy was common. Perhaps Bakhtin’s belief that “the novel gets on poorly with other genres” explains the seeming uniqueness of Chaucer’s work (Dialogic 5). After all, due to its language and characters, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” behaves belligerently as a text under the umbrella of epic and romance. Bakhtin insists that the novel as a genre cannot be characterized without reservations, explaining that no single element of a novel holds for all novels (Dialogic 8). Still, Bakhtin lists several characteristics as prerequisite for the novel: Moore 14 “The novel should not be ‘poetic...’ the hero should not be ‘heroic…’ the hero should not be portrayed as an already completed and unchanging person... [and] the novel should become for the contemporary world what the epic was for the ancient world” (Dialogic 10). While “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is written in verse, Bakhtin’s understanding of what is poetic focuses more on representation in the text. Poetry as a genre, he explains, uses metaphor and language as “primary means of representation” (Dialogic 44). In other words, poetic texts are written with only one intended representation of an idea in mind. Novels, conversely, are able to express multiple ideas simultaneously in one metaphor or line of text. When Chaucer writes of Chauntecleer “And with a ‘chuk’ he gan hem for to calle / For he hadde found a corn lay in the yerd” followed immediately by “Real—”read regal—“he was,” he writes with two intended representations of the rooster (407-9). In one sense, Chaucer writes poetically and more or less seriously, characterizing Chauntecleer as royal and magnificent. At the same time, Chaucer understands as well as his reader that the idea of a chicken pecking at corn being noble is humorous and parodic. Here, the text has two meanings and thus fails to be truly poetic in a Bakhtinian sense. Likewise, Chaucer frequently describes the characters within “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in unfitting terms, referring to the hen Pertelote as a “damoysele” (103). Without a doubt, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” much like its parent text, provided for its contemporary readers “what the epic was for the ancient world” (Dialogic 10). Rather than using tales of heroic battles and divine intervention, Chaucer relies on the convention of storytelling to convey his ideas and morals. Rather than write an atmosphere of reverent attention to moral, Chaucer has the Host not comment on the Nun’s Priest’s tale’s “sentence” or “substance,” qualities he deems important when chastising the Monk for his tragic stories (36-7). Instead, the Moore 15 Host describes the Nun’s Priest’s tale as “murie,” echoing his command to John for “swich thyng as may [their] hertes glade” (682, 45). Even in his second requirement for the tales, “moost solaas,” the Host reveals that the rest of The Canterbury Tales will focus not only on educating morality but also entertaining. This blending of instruction and enjoyment comes from what Bakhtin identifies as parody, possibly the most important element of the novel as a genre. Bakhtin writes that the novel not only “parodies other genres” but parodies specifically their role as genres (Dialogic 5). Thus, the novel “exposes the conventionality of their forms and their language” as well as “incorporates” other genres “into its own peculiar structure” (Dialogic 5). While “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” incorporates the epic form, including romantic elements, it does so in order to expose their conventionalities. The direct product of parody in literature is, according to Bakhtin, comedy. In the “plane of laughter,” says Bakhtin, “the back and rear portion of an object” as well as its unseen innards, “assume a special importance” (Dialogic 23). By parodying subjects, a writer is able to displace them from any possible “absolute” perspective and open them to new interpretation. Chaucer relies on humor to achieve parody in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.” For instance, while Chauntecleer cites the dream of Croesus as evidence of the validity of dream visions, he pairs his evidence with a story of a traveler who is killed and whose corpse is thrown in in “a carte ful of dong” while his friend dreams about it during the night (251). Though Chaucer is citing Cicero here, the imagery the Nun’s Priest uses in his story is reminiscent of rural England, resulting in a contemporary reading of classic literature. On the contrary, however, one genre critic, Ian Watt adds a stipulation to Bakhtin’s theory, saying “if the novel were realistic merely because it saw life from the seamy side, it would be an inverted romance” (Watt 10). “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” despite its chivalric Moore 16 language and imagery, is not a romance, not even an inverted one. Watt instead argues that novels arose as a rejection of the universal ideals that plagued literature’s “classical and mediaeval heritage” rather than simply as a consequence of parody (Watt 12). Watt argues that “the novel’s realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents, but in the way it presents it” (Watt 12). While the first glimpse the reader is given into the world of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is of a “povre wydwe somdeel stape in age” who lives in a “sooty... bour” eating “ful many a sklendre meel,” this representation of peasant life quickly gives way to the epic description of Chauntecleer (55, 66-7). Even Chauntecleer, however, cannot escape Chaucer’s colloquialisms. Throughout the text, Chaucer includes references to other contemporary elements, including a song popular at the time of publication, “My Lief Is Faren in Londe,” and a form of currency, the “grote” (12, 191). These colloquial ideas, traditions, and objects ground “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in a contemporary setting that can be judged and understood by its audience. Despite these colloquial items, the language of the Nun’s Priest’s tale fails to present Chaucer’s contemporary life in its own terms, instead parodying epic poetry. Watt also claims that novels attempt to “portray all the varieties of human experience, not merely those suited to one particular literary perspective” (Watt 11). While this variety is abundant throughout The Canterbury Tales, it is extremely prevalent in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.” Following the Host’s suggestion for a lighthearted tale to lift the mood, the Nun’s Priest tells a tale approachable by all classes while still involving philosophical discussion and figures of historic importance. Due to its careful blend of comedy and philosophy, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” mirrors the variety of thought present during Chaucer’s time. Focusing on a rooster belonging to a “povre wydwe” and taking place in a common “grene,” the text grounds itself in peasant life. At the same time, the Nun’s Priest uses this peasant stage to explore philosophies Moore 17 and thoughts that would only be discussed by educated nobility. Watt explains that “general tendency of... culture” during the medieval age is “to make conformity to traditional practice the major test of truth” (Watt 13). At the conclusion of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” the Nun’s Priest begs his audience not to consider his tale “a folye” and to “taketh the moralitie,” citing religious tradition and asking the pilgrims to “lat the chaf be stille” (671, 3, 6). In other words, the Nun’s Priest returns his audience to traditional convention, dismissing his own tale as frivolous and showing deference to existing religious beliefs on the purpose of literature. While the Nun’s Priest’s tale is undoubtedly “based on… fable” as Watt claims medieval literature was, the prologue to “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” adds another dimension to the text (Watt 13). Almost serving as a type of marginalia, the reader is forced to frame “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” with the knowledge of a speaker, the Nun’s Priest, and an established audience, the rest of the pilgrims. Chaucer does not write “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” into a vacuum. Instead, he writes it as a reaction to the Host’s displeasure with the Monk and demands for a cheerful story. Rather than independent narrative choice, every decision the Nun’s Priest makes in telling his tale has to account for his own desire to please the company, especially after so tense an argument. Watt believes that “it is surely very damaging for a novel to be in any sense an imitation of another literary work” (Watt 13). “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is a retelling of the story of Chauntecleer the rooster, one part of a cycle of tales surrounding Reynard, the trickster fox. Rather than focus on the fox, however, the Nun’s Priest shifts his attention to Chauntecleer. While he relies on an established canon of folklore to provide him with his characters, the Nun’s Priest alters the tale to fit his purpose, exploring philosophical arguments around dreams and warning his audience to avoid vanity. Watt adds that “the novelist’s primary task is to convey the Moore 18 impression of fidelity to human experience” (Watt 13). In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” Pertelote, seen only in her relationship as wife to Chauntecleer, reminds the reader more of Volumnia from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus than of Andromache or Creusa. Like Volumnia, Pertelote extolls the epic ideal of manhood to the point of parody, telling Chauntecleer “Now han ye lost myn herte and al my love” when he tells her about his nightmare (143). Though the Nun’s Priest describes Pertelote as “curteys… discreet, and debonaire / And compaignable, and bar her hyrself so faire” to the point she “hath the herte in hold / Of Chauntecleer, loken in every lith,” Pertelote does not behave demurely or subserviently (104-8). Instead, she speaks like a nagging wife, insulting Chauntecleer and condemning him and asking “Have ye no mannes herte, and han a berd?” (153). Here, the reader can also see Chaucer’s humor in having Pertelote ask her rooster husband whether or not he has a beard, a traditional symbol of masculinity in the epic genre. Blaming his dream on “replecciouns” and “fume,” or indigestion and stomach-gas, Pertelote provides the first voice of authority in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” (156-7). This voice, however, is not the same as Chauntecleer’s during his rebuttal. Quickly dismissive of Chauntecleer, Pertelote characterizes herself in lines such as “For Goddes love, as taak som laxatyf!” (176). Here, rather than sounding instructive, Pertelote plays almost a motherly role, beating her advice into Chauntecleer through insult. Using Defoe and Richardson as his models for the novel, Watt writes that originality, or the absence of imitation, is not seen in Chaucer (Watt 14). Although Chaucer’s use of the Chauntecleer fable could be called unoriginal due to its preexistence in folklore, the Nun’s Priest’s alterations and the pilgrimage which frames the tale transform the tale into an original text. In the Renaissance according to Watt, “individual experience” began to replace “collective tradition” as the basis of the “reality” which texts sought to embody (Watt 14). Through all of his Moore 19 sources and citations, the Nun’s Priest certainly evokes “collective tradition” rather than “individual experience.” Still, the Nun’s Priest cannot help but interject into his own story, Watt argues that narratives in novels ought to “spontaneously flow” from the author’s senses of what their characters would plausibly do instead of adhere to traditional plots (Watt 15). While it has been shown that the narrative of “The Nun’s Priest Tale” follows somewhat consistently to traditional epic and romantic plots, the prologue and epilogue indeed come about spontaneously. The Knight’s interruption of the Monk, rather than some adherence to traditional form, comes from the character’s distaste for hearing tales about men of his station falling from grace. The Nun’s Priest’s tale begins at the behest of the Host who is eager to keep his game going so as to make sure that the company will stay at his inn again. Watt claims that the plot of novels “had to be acted out by particular people in particular circumstances” rather than “by general human types against a background primarily determined by the appropriate literary convention” (Watt 15). To better explain his theory, Watt identifies two “aspects of narrative technique” in the novel that he deems “of especial importance:” “characterization” and “presentation of background” (Watt 17). “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” fairly clearly uses a background determined by the conventions of epic and romance; however, he does so through parody. Instead of using the castle halls of romance, Chaucer sets his stage on the great “perch” in the “halle” that is the widow’s chicken coop (117). Furthermore, instead of the battlefield of the epic, Chaucer uses a “grene,” a common area in medieval villages for individuals to use for small agricultural activities (57). In terms of characterization, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” lacks the degree of character dynamism Bakhtin argues characters in novels must have. Instead, Chauntecleer is written in the same manner of epic heroes, his characteristics unchanged at the end of the tale. While the characters within the tale itself are rather general, Moore 20 possessing similar voices and sharing a language, the audience—the characters in the prologue and epilogue—are most definitely “particular.” As mentioned, one criterion for the novel listed by Bakhtin is that the hero must fail to be ‘heroic.’ Bakhtin explains that novels incorporate “extraliterary heteroglossia” (Dialogic 7); “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is no different, especially considering the banter of the pilgrims in the prologue. Bakhtin explains that novelization “dialogizes,” infusing texts with “irony, humor, elements of self-parody” and “inserts… a living contact with… contemporary reality” (Dialogic 7). There are many voices in the prologue to “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” each serving to parody the characters they come from. As the transitional point between the Monk’s tale and the Nun’s Priest’s, the Host is permitted to speak and direct the conversation. The prologue begins, however, with an interruption by the Knight who is unsatisfied, offended even, by the Monk’s tales of tragic falls. The Knight speaks properly, in a courtly manner, and most certainly defensively. As a man of high station, the Knight sees himself reflected in the Monk’s tragedies, and as a result tries to use his authority to quiet the Monk. While he takes issue with the tragic nature of the Monk’s tales, he takes specific issue with hearing of the “sodeyn fal” of men who were “in greet welthe and ese,” men who resemble the Knight in station (6-7). According to Bakhtin the epic genre relies on monoglossia as opposed to the heteroglossia of the novel. Demonstrated in such works as The Iliad and Beowulf, the epic uses one unified language to approach different subjects. Every character speaks in the same tone with the same language, mimicking the narrator himself. In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” however, multiple, distinct languages are used to appreciate singular subjects through various lenses. The Host provides the best example of self-contained polyglossia, or multitude of voices, speaking in three distinct manners according to his listener. In referencing the Knight and Monk, the Host Moore 21 uses the second person plural, “ye” and “yow,” to denote his reverence to their titles and status. His first lines within the text are directed at the Knight and are appropriately conciliatory. The Host claims to agree wholeheartedly with the Knight’s opinion of the Monk’s tale, speaking in a similar manner to the Knight by referencing the negative aspects of the Monk’s tragedies. In both the Host’s conversations with the Knight and the Monk, he peppers his speech with references to praying, displaying his education. At the end of the epilogue, having been cheered up since the interruption of the Monk’s tale, the Host has become so enamored with the Nun’s Priest that his language changes, addressing the Nun’s Priest with the formal “yow” (693). The Host’s references to the Nun’s Priest’s “breche and every stoon” deviate in tone from that of his conversation with the Knight, broadening the reader’s understanding of how the Host interacts with the members of the company, especially those beneath him in status (681-2). Furthermore, the Host’s references to the Nun’s Priest’s body in general invite a reevaluation of the Host and perhaps his sexuality, since the prologue does not prepare the reader to expect this from his character. The Monk offers up only two lines of dialogue, but notably provides the first pushback to the Knight’s original complaint. Though the Host is in agreement with the Knight, giving the reader the impression that the Knight correctly judges the Monk’s Tale, the Monk’s refusal to satisfy the Host’s demands illustrate a disunity of opinions among the company. This unapologetic refusal marks the point in the text where the company’s composition is redefined; from here, the Host abandons his courteousness in an attempt to save face. When the Monk refuses to play the Host’s game, the Host “with rude speche” commands the Nun’s Priest to tell a merry tale (43). Here, he uses second person singular pronouns such as “thee” and “thou,” underscoring the two characters’ class disparity and the Host’s dissatisfaction with the Monk. Moore 22 Whereas the Host attempts to goad the Monk into telling a hunting tale logically, citing the wisdom of “clerkes,” the Nun’s Priest is merely forced into the speaker’s position as a means of cleansing the company’s palette of the Monk’s tale (34). In the final lines of the prologue, the Narrator is given a chance to speak. Here, we see an opinion of the Nun’s Priest not seen in the Host’s brusque command. While the Host refers to the Nun’s Priest’s horse as “a jade… bothe foul and lene” and does not make a polite request of him, the Narrator characterizes the Nun’s Priest as “sweete” and “goodly” (Prologue 46-7, 54). After all the blustering of the Knight and Host, the Narrator provides a more moderated, amiable perspective on the members of the company. The Nun’s Priest, silent and unnoticed up until this point in The Canterbury Tales now provides a voice made distinct by its supplicant tone. Unlike the Knight, Monk, and Host who seem to be of relatively equal station, at least in regards to conversational courtesy, the Nun’s Priest refers to the Host as “sire.” Additionally, the Nun’s Priest’s first voice in the text is one of preemptive apology. The Nun’s Priest’s voice in the text only truly comes through when he interrupts his tale briefly to give his own opinion. After lamenting Chauntecleer’s decision to ignore his dream, the Nun’s Priest admits that “what that God forwoot moot nedes bee,” that what God predestines must come to pass, but confesses that he “kan nat bulte it to the bren,” that he himself is incapable of understanding the philosophy behind predestination (467, 75). Here, the Nun’s Priest reveals more about his character and his flaws. Rather than explain his deficiencies, however, the Nun’s Priest says that he “wol nat han to do of swich mateere. / My tale is of a cok” (484-5). From here, the Nun’s Priest reveals eagerness to compromise and entertain without insulting his companions. He explains that Chauntecleer’s peril stemmed from listening to his wife, warning the pilgrims that Moore 23 “wommennnes counseils been ful ofte cold,” or bad, using Adam’s fall from grace as an example (489). In this line, the Nun’s Priest parrots the traditional patriarchal belief of medieval England. Still, because he does not know “to whom” this opinion “myght displese,” he asks his audience to “passe over” as he said it merely “in [his] game” (493, 5). Encouraging his audience to “rede auctours where they trete of swich mateere,” he concludes his interruption proclaiming “thise been the cokkes wordes and nat myne!” (496, 8). Here, Bakhtin would argue Chaucer is using heteroglossia, a technique where a writer fits two voices into one line of text. While the reader can read the Nun’s Priest’s line as him passing blame for any dissatisfaction with the tale onto Chauntecleer, one could also understand the Nun’s Priest’s words to be Chaucer’s. In having the Nun’s Priest recant the words of one of the characters in his tale, Chaucer is allowed to present the same idea in reference to himself, suggesting to the audience that he not be held accountable for anything they find displeasing about any of the tales. While the Nun’s Priest claims he cannot understand the philosophy behind predestination and free will, his author most certainly did. Chaucer responds directly to Boethius, the philosopher who wrote about predestination, in his poem Troilus and Creseyde. Perhaps the most significant section of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” Chauntecleer’s argument with Pertelote over the nature of dreams is filled to the brim with references to texts and historical figures. This intertextuality, or presence of other texts within a text, is an important concept in Bakhtin’s understanding of the novel. These texts, Bakhtin argues, open a work up to the possibility of polyglossia and heteroglossia, to a discussion that the present can engage in. Pertelote, in her recantation of dream visions, references Cato, a Roman philosopher (173). This is the first reference to a text outside “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” within the work. This reference establishes Pertelote as the first identifiable authority in the text, an identity which Moore 24 Chauntecleer’s ready use of sources and the Nun’s Priest’s interruption undermines later in the text. Chaucer relies frequently on both Biblical and classical literature, referencing the Iliad numerous times over the course of the tale. For instance, Chauntecleer references the story of Andromache’s dream about Hector, and the Nun’s Priest pauses to cite evidence for his case, referencing the scholarly debates on predestination that rose in popularity during Chaucer’s time and philosophers such as Augustine, Boethius, and Thomas Bradwardine, the Archbishop of Canterbury (374, 467-483). Chaucer does not limit himself to classical sources, however, and mixes his references with more recent ones. Alongside Cato, Chaucer makes reference to the Lyf of Seint Kenelm, an English story of a saint’s life, a popular genre in his time (343). Chaucer does not include references to other texts merely to prove his education or that of the Nun’s Priest but rather to make a commentary on philosophical discussions being held during his time. In particular, he parodies the idea of misinterpretation and misquotation. For instance, Chauntecleer misinterprets Scipio’s name when referencing Macrobius (355). In a Bakhtinian sense, these intertextual errors within “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” are extremely significant, signaling an intention of the author to engage with his audience. One questions posed by these errors is whether we take these misquotations to be reflective of Chauntecleer’s character or the Nun’s Priest’s. If the former, then Chauntecleer’s ignorance is a purposeful part of his character, another vehicle for parody within the text. If on the other hand the latter, then Chauntecleer’s character only suffers from an incompetent narrator. In other words, these errors further develop the Nun’s Priest’s character as a somewhat educated but possibly illiterate. Having only heard names and stories from more reputable sources, the Nun’s Priest can only parrot philosophy and intelligence, a characterization which contradicts his frequent use of Moore 25 textual citation and forces the reader to reconsider his arguments throughout “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.” In addition to including texts from outside The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer refers to texts previously mentioned throughout his work. Intratextuality, or the textuality of works within a singular text, can be found when Chauntecleer cites the dream of Croesus. Here the narrator—the Nun’s Priest—references a text previously mentioned by the previous storyteller, the Monk (371). Significantly, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” begins in the prologue because the audience is displeased with the Monk’s choice of tales. Thus the Nun’s Priest references the same source material as the Monk despite the poor reception of the Monk’s tale. Unlike the Monk, however, the Nun’s Priest relies on the dream of Croesus to support his argument about dream visions, dismissing the tragic nature of the story. Within “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” Chaucer relies on a device Bakhtin calls polyglossia. Polyglossia, according to Bakhtin, is “the interanimation of major national languages” (Dialogic 66). Each of these languages, he adds, must be “fully formed and unitary,” with a complete vocabulary and literary history as well as detached from all other languages (Dialogic 66). Chaucer, however, plays with polyglossia, often using it incorrectly on purpose. In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” Chauntecleer attempts to use both French and Latin, the two dominant languages of literature at the time. First, he tries to use French by saying “graunt mercy” (203). Here, Chaucer is not only adding humor to Chauntecleer but also parodying romance as a genre, as reliant on French sources and terminology as it was. Chauntecleer’s use of French also pokes fun at the English aristocracy during Chaucer’s time. In context, Chauntecleer responds to his wife’s harsh advice, saying “Madame… graunt mercy of youre loore!” (203). While the translation of his French has Chauntecleer giving Pertelote thanks, a common English-speaker might easi;y Moore 26 read “graunt mercy” as “grant mercy,” a plea to stop. Considering Chauntecleer’s frequent misquotations and misinterpretations, Chaucer invites the reader to understand Chauntecleer’s words in two ways simultaneously. In addition, Chauntecleer misquotes Latin, interpreting “Mulier est hominis confusio” as “Womman is mannes joye and al his blis” when in reality the phrase translates to “Woman is the confusion of man” (397, 9). Here, Chaucer once again invites Chaucer does not only rely on other national languages in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” but rather uses a mix of vernacular and colloquialisms, or common sayings. Bakhtin explains that “the naïve and stubborn coexistence between territorial dialects, social and professional dialects, and jargon, literary language, generic languages within literary language” dissolve in the novel due to its inherent polyglossia (Dialogic 12). In plainer words, Bakhtin argues that regional dialects, professional modes of expression, and common literary language are all blended within a novel through polyglossia. For instance, Chauntecleer uses a colloquialism when he proclaims “By God, I hadde levere than my sherte / That ye hadde rad his Legende as have I” (353-4). These colloquialisms, mixed in with the poetic imagery and lofty ideals, transform the text into a conversation between languages that defined the English vernacular since its conception. Chaucer’s brilliance in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” can best be observed through a Bakhtinian lens. Both authors have found fame in their keen awareness of the cultural movements surrounding them. While seemingly a mess of genres and literary devices, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” can best be understood by the way it works according to Bakhtin’s literary models. Its consistent use of parody throughout and relationship within The Canterbury Tales as a whole are best explained through Bakhtin’s ideas on heteroglossia and chronotopes. Hopefully, the entirety of Chaucer’s magnum opus can find its way under a Bakhtinian microscope so that new revelations about the text and its author can be brought to light. Although the texts can Moore 27 oftentimes stump new readers with their language, by understanding both Chaucer and Bakhtin, readers can gain a new appreciation for the elasticity of the English language and the variety of its literature. Moore 28 Works Cited Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination. Trans. Caryl Emerson, Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981. Print. Besserman, Lawrence. Chaucer and the Bible. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1988. Print. Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Nun's Priest's Prologue and Tale.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Medieval Period. Ed. Joseph Laurence Black. 3rd ed. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2006. 569-582. Print. Doody, Margaret Anne. The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1996. Print. Peterson, Kate Oelzner. On the Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale. New York, NY: Haskell House. 1966. Print. Tillyard, E. M. W. The English Epic and Its Background. London: Chatto and Windus, 1954. Print. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel; Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Berkeley: U of California, 1957. Print.