Week 13 Reading Notes: Canterbury Tales, Part B

Chanticleer (Wikimedia)

Week 13 Reading Notes: Canterbury Tales, Part B

Nun’s Priest’s Tale: The Cock, the Hen, and the Fox:

· Interesting perspective on the widow’s poverty, almost funny to imagine the flipside of not having things like the fact that she would never have to deal with gout. Reveals much about the culture, I am reminded of a certain sect of Christianity from about this time that was focused on making things as plain and unornate as possible in order to make it more holy

· Puritans, duh, I wonder if this woman is a puritan

· Oddly enough this is the first encounter this semester with stories of barnyard (esque) animals.

· I like the description of the fox in Chanticleer’s dream, creates a powerful defamiliarization and forces the reader to imagine a fox in a new way. This helps give the fox a sense of power in the mind of the reader and puts the reader into the perspective of the Cock. Might be interesting to try and include this kind of descriptive defamiliarization in one of my retellings

· The descriptions of humors and the medical understanding at the time are a nice way of bringing the reader back to that time, though there is now way the author would have intended that at the time. But for me, I can include pieces like this that reveal the time of a piece without directly stating it.

· Story within a story, interesting

· Chanticleer provides two strong examples of why one should concern themselves with the contents of dreams, then does exactly the opposite, interesting strategy

· The chaos that ensues when it seems like the entire village is running after the fox is hilarious, would be fun to add to a retelling

· Not really sure what to make of the ending, seems to lack a good moral punch, might be a good opportunity for expansion in a retelling.

Bibliography

The Chaucer Story Book by Eva March Tappan