The Canterbury Tales and the Nonnes Preestes Tale

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The Nun’s Priest’s Tale The Canterbury Tales is a collection of poems by Geoffrey Chaucer written towards the end of the 14th Century. The tales are fundamentally part of a story-telling competition of a group of travellers on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury. This competition is one that was proposed by the publican of the Southwark tavern that is the starting scene of the entire narrative. The host’s plan is ambitious: he has everyone agree that they each narrate two tales – one Canterburywards, and one homewards. However, the reality of the matter is rather different, and a number of factors (including listeners growing bored) play upon the actual number of tales recounted. Nonetheless, the poem as we the readers perceive it is aesthetically complete. The cast of characters in Chaucer’s Tales is a delightful cross-section of medieval society. The dramatis personae include a knight and squire, miller, reeve, and cook. We see a Man of Law, an oversexed Wife, a friar, and Franklin; there is a monk and a friar, a group of guildsmen, a physician, a prioress, a second nun, and even a priest. Two yeomen and a parson equally feature; a summoner and pardoner play their parts. Chaucer deliberately left out the two other prevailing sections of society at the time: the ecclesiastical and noble aristocracy, and serfs. Chaucer begins his Tales with a prologue, establishing (i) who he is, (ii) where he happens to be, (iii) what is about to happen, and (iv) why it is about to happen. We see some striking imagery, both of nature and of comradeship: “The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale fowles maken melodye, That slepen al the night with open ye” “And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste, So hadde I spoken with hem everichon, That I was of hir felawshipe anon, And made forward erly
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