"I ne kan nat bulte it to the bren . . . "

Most readers today would agree, I think, that Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale is a jumble. It is ostensibly a fable about Chauntecleer's encounter with the fox. But the events that constitute the plot are only a fragmentary part of the poem: a comparatively small number of lines are given to the fable's narrative, broken up into separate episodes divided by digressions, apostrophes, equivocal comments, and so on, much of which seems tangential to the story. The opening description of the frugal widow might be read as a frame inviting an allegorical reading, but then the elaborate description of Chauntecleer, with his astute ability to tell time and his love for Pertelote, seems to move in a different direction. The dream is troubling and quite enigmatic to Chauntecleer, however clear it might be to some readers. But then Pertelote's response is disparaging and, curiously, materialistic, a diagnosis of trouble with Chauntecleer's digestion. Chauntecleer's rebuttal, the longest passage with a consistent point in the poem, establishes that dreams do have meanings - most of the time - but then Chauntecleer concludes with a non-sequitur and a mistranslation, declaring his love for Pertelote. The narrator provides an enigmatic indication of the date of these events, followed by an equally enigmatic remark about the truth of his tale. The appearance of the fox in the barnyard then leads to a declamation against traitors, followed by an account of the philosophical debate about divine foreknowledge and human free will, but the narrator cannot "bulte it to the bren" and so he moves on to lamenting women's advice and then a disclaimer of that position. Back then to Chauntecleer, who is startled by the fox, yields to his flattery, and is abducted, which occasions exclamations about destiny, Venus, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, and a series of comparisons between the distraught hens and the women of Troy, Carthage, and Rome lamenting the deaths of their men. The whole dairy farm takes chase, as noisily as Jack Straw's mob. But Fortune takes a turn when Chauntecleer tricks the fox and escapes; the fox apologizes, though to no effect. And so the tale draws a number of morals, about learning from experience, the foolishness of jangling when one should be silent, and the dangers of flattery, ending with an invitation to take "the moralite" of the tale, for Saint Paul said that "al that writen is / To oure doctrine it is ywrite, ywis," and so we should take "the fruyt, and lat the chaf be still" (VII 3438-43). But what exactly is the "fruyt" or the "chaf" that we should leave alone seems quite problematic.² Moreover, reading the tale becomes even more problematic owing to a lack of information about the Nun's Priest himself. Without a description of him in the General Prologue or much about him in the Prologue or Epilogue to the tale, we have very little to go on to sort out anything about his character or personality or to decide whether this tale is suited to its teller—as dubious as that sort of critical reading might be to some.

Critics have, of course, read the Nun's Priest's Tale in multiple ways—its complexities are irresistible—as Derek Pearsall indicates in his Critical Commentary in the Variorum Edition of . . . The Nun's Priest's Tale (1984). Pearsall himself, with his particular leanings, is adamantly opposed to the idea of a dramatic reading of the tale as a response to the Monk or any other character on the pilgrimage. Indeed, alluding to the narrator's comment that we ought to take the "moralite" of the tale, Pearsall maintains not just that the tale has no moral or point but rather "that the fact that the tale has no point is the point of the tale," a provocative representation of how the Nun's Priest's Tale works.³ Pearsall seems a bit surprised, perhaps, that "a number of dominant critical themes demand attention" which he organizes into specific sections in his introductory comments: "the appropriateness of the tale...