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Essay / The Nun's Priest's Tale in The Canterbury Tales traditions of courtly love. To this end, Chaucer uses several stylistic techniques involving both framing and content. The tale begins and ends with "a poor widow of a certain age" (line 1), but the majority of the content involves not the widow but the animals on her farm, particularly an arrogant rooster named Chauntecleer. The first mention of the main character does not occur until the twenty-ninth line, after twenty-eight lines of careful description of the widow and the farm. Spending a lot of time on details slows down the plot of the story; this plot is further prolonged by the priest-nun's constant interjections, most of which are spoken in very formal language. Chaucer's use of abundant narrative intrusion and keen attention to detail creates a story in which plot is marginalized and traditional structures broken down, resulting in a mood where the absurdity of fable and courtly love can easily be revealed. begins with the mention of a poor old widow living in a cottage. The majority of the first page of the short story deals with the details of this woman's life. Only after every detail of his person and his farm has been revealed is the main character, Chauntecleer, introduced. The story also brings the focus back to the woman at its end. The framing of the story is such that the events of the story all take place within the confines of this woman's life. This clever framing does not allow the reader to adequately understand the characters in the story; they are, at any point in history, less than human. The high language and confusion... middle of paper ... So, with the denigration of Chauntecleer, Chaucer makes a point of showing the idiocy of deriving morals from a tale about animals, which lack of moral reason. Endless and ultimately inconsequential, painstaking paragraphs only reinforce the depiction of barnyard events as mundane, and the narrator's formal interjections overapply elevated allusions and upper-class sentiments, emphasizing the irony of pay close attention to the story of an ordinary day in the life of a farmyard animal. Using these rhetorical and stylistic tactics, Chaucer cleverly mocks the writing styles and conventions of his time, creating a story that is on the surface very traditional but on closer inspection is distinctly satirical. Work citedChaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales”. The progress of nonsense. Ed. Doug O'Keefe. Evanston: Northwestern University, 2006.
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