The Nun’s Priest Tale is one of the 24
tales that we find in CR’s The Canterbury Tales. This tale has been called ‘the
first Mock heroic poem’ in English Literature. To find out whether this
statement is true or not; we must have a clear conception on the term ‘Mock
heroic poem.’
The term ‘Mock heroic’ poem is closely
related with the term ‘heroic poetry’. A heroic poem is one that tells the
story of a hero whose adventures and exploits have a great, recognized
significance. It is a long narrative poem written in a elevated style. Homer’s
The Iliad and Odyssey are the best known examples of heroic poem. A Mock heroic
poem or mock-epic is narrative poems which aim at mockery and laughter by using
almost all the characteristic features of an epic but for a trivial subject.
The author of such a poem makes the subject look ridiculous by placing it in a
framework entirely inappropriate to its nature.
The first great English writer,
Geoffrey CR, created The Canterbury Tales which is a story of pilgrims of an
expedition to visit the shrine of Tomas A; Beckett. Each pilgrim must tell four
stories for the reward of a meal and entertainment. “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”
is told in the form of a fable, defined as a narration in which animals speak
and act like humans. The priest tells of a roster in charge of hens closely
relating to his own authority over woman. The fable is a mock heroic, which is
a story that relates to an epic, taking a trivial subject and blowing it out of
proportion. To achieve this style, CR uses allusions or references to people,
places, or events in history that appeal to a reader. CR uses references of the
Trojan War, the story of Adam and Eve, and cries from Roman matrons to
demonstrate the trivial problems of Chaunticleer and Pertelote, face in “The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale”.
The subject in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
is the carrying off by a fox of cock and the cock’s escape from the fox’s
clutches. Evidently it is a trivial subject because a cock and a fox can under
no circumstances be regarded as having much importance or significance. But the
style which CR employs to deal with this subject has a certain dignity, and it
is the application of this elevated style to a trivial subject which makes The
Nun’s Priest Tale a Mock heroic poem.
The Mock heroic tome is established at
the very beginning, with the description of Chaunticleer. The author employs a
series of superlatives in giving us this description. In all the land, no one
was Chaunticleer’s equal at crowing his voice was merrier than the Church-organ
of feast days’ his crowing was more reliable than the abbey-lock; his comb was
redder than final coral; his legs and his toes were like azure (blue/ indigo);
his spurs were whiter than the lily; and his colour was like burnished gold.
The poet describes it as follows:
“His comb was
redder than the fyn coral
and batailled
as it were a castel wal;
His hyle was
black; and as the jeet it shoon;
And lyk the
burned gold was his colour.”
The diction used in this description
has deliberate courtly overtones, and the colours surest all the splendours of
medieval heraldry. And yet for the seeming extravagance of Chaunticleer’s
appearance, CR was describing an actual type of rooster, one known to the
experts by the name of Golden spangled Hamburg
In the dialogue also the Mock heroic
tome prevails. There are firstly, the polite modes of address (“Madame, “Sire”,
“fair Pertelote,” “so dear” “dear heart”) used by the animals, and there are,
besides, the frequent invocation to God, the earnest moralizing, and the profundity
of the learning displayed in appropriately mock-serious:
“Mordre wol
out, that se we day by day
And certes in
the same book I rede,
Right in the
nexte chapitre after this…
By God! I hadde
levere than my sherte.”
There is a joke in almost every line
of Chaunticleer’s long speech.
The narrator heightens the Mock heroic
effect of his story by a comic use of lofty similes. True heroic poetry
acquires much of its grandeur and stateliness from its use of metaphorical
language. But in Mock heroic poetry, such language becomes comic because of its
use in relation to the pettiness of the subject. There are several examples of
this element in the present story. Perhaps the best example of this element is
the three-fold simile in the lines which are a climax of the narrator’s last
interruption between the fox’s seizing of Chaunticleer and the beginning of the
chase the terrified hers produce a loud clamour (outcry) as they see their lord
and master being carried off. Neither the fall of Troy Carthage Rome