Saturday, November 28, 2015

In The Canterbury Tales, which three morals best sums up "The Nun's Priest's Tale"?

The clear moral of this excellent story is the danger of
being overwhelmed by flattery. The fox of course shows himself to be a master of
flattery and is able to use this strategy to snatch Chanticleer away. Of course,
Chanticleer, once he has escaped, himself takes this lesson to
heart:



"You'll
not, with your soft soap and flatteries


Get me to sing
again, and close my
eyes!"



However, at the same
time, there seems to be a moral in the way that Chanticleer is able to turn the tables
on the fox by using flattery to secure his release. By pretending that the fox is so
worthy and mighty, he uses exactly the same strategy that was used against him to rob
the fox of his dinner. Thus a second moral could be said to be that our greatest
weakness can also be our greatest weapon.


Lastly, it is
important to remember that Chanticleer only goes out into the yard to strut and preen at
the behest of his beloved Pertelote, who berates him into ignoring the warning he has
been given. As such, Chanticleer is shown to be a victim of love. If it were not for
Pertelote, he would never have been seized by the fox. Therefore, another moral seems to
be that men need to be wary of paying attention to the advice of women. Let us remember
that in Chaucer's time women were traditionally portrayed as being the temptress figure
and responsible for man's Fall from the Garden of Eden.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Can (sec x - cosec x) / (tan x - cot x) be simplified further?

Given the expression ( sec x - csec x ) / (tan x - cot x) We need to simplify. We will use trigonometric identities ...