Chaucer and His Times

by Grace E. Hadow

It will be seen that Chaucer tends to reduce descriptive passages pure and simple to a minimum, and so far to condense the actual narrative that it moves quickly and straight-forwardly, while at the same time he expands any situation which affords opportunity for the display of character, adds dialogue and intensifies emotion, and also shows a disposition to comment on what he is describing.

The Nonne Preestes Tale is based on Marie de France’s fable of the Cock and the Fox, though it is possible that Chaucer’s more immediate source was an enlargement of this, called the Roman de Renart. The Cock and the Fox consists of but thirty-eight lines, and the Roman de Renart of 453, whereas the Nonne Preestes Tale consists of 626 lines, so that here we have a case in which Chaucer enlarges his original very considerably. In fact he can hardly be said to have borrowed more than the bare outline of the story.

In the first place, the whole description of the “poore widwe” and her poultry-yard is entirely Chaucer’s. There is nothing in the French to correspond to the delightful picture of Chauntecleer strutting among the submissive hens—

Of which the faireste hewed on hir throte
Was cleped faire damoysele Pertelote,

or singing “my lief is faren in londe”[69] in sweet accord with his love. Then the incident of the dream is entirely altered. The French author makes dame Pinte, the hen, expound the dream to her husband and warn him of the danger which lies before him. Chaucer draws inimitable portraits of the fussy, self-important cock, thoroughly frightened and yet too conceited to accept his wife’s simple and prosaic suggestion that his terrors spring from indigestion, and of the sensible, practical hen with her scathing contempt for the husband who though he has a beard has yet “no mannes heart.” And here follows a lengthy disquisition on dreams, the cock overwhelming his sceptical wife with examples of warnings which have been fulfilled, and illustrations drawn from the most varied sources. Having restored his self-esteem by reference to the histories of Joseph, St. Kenelm, Crœsus, Andromache and others,

Royal he was, he was namore aferd.

The advent of the fox gives Chaucer another opportunity to discuss fore-knowledge, and suddenly, in the midst of this lightest and most amusing of skits, we find him gravely considering the question of predestination and free-will. He comes to no conclusion, but after stating various learned opinions, shrugs his shoulders and turns aside with a dry:—

I wol not han to do of swich matere;
My tale is of a cok, as ye may here ...

The dialogue between the cock and the fox is much the same in both versions, though as Dr. Furnivall points out (Chaucer’s Originals and Analogues, p. 112), Chaucer improves the story by omitting the spring made by the fox before he begins to flatter Chauntecleer; but Pinte shows none of the extremely proper feeling displayed by Pertelote when she sees her husband carried off before her eyes:—

But soverynly dame Pertelote shrighte
Ful louder than dide Hasdrubables wyf,
Whan that hir housbond hadde lost his lyf,
And that the Romans hadde brende Cartage.