36THE ANIMAL IN ALLEGORYalso reflects something of the actual animals involved and human
responses (such as fear and pity) to these animals. And like many alle-
gorical poems about animals, it invites us to think of humans as being
a lot like animals.
Probably the most complex animal fable poem in English is Geoffrey
Chaucer’s “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” which predates Henryson’s fables
by nearly a century. It has received far more critical commentary than
Henryson’s poem, including on its use of the fable genre. Not much,
however, has been written about its representation of actual animals;
the critical assumption is that animals in fables and medieval
literature will always be entirely figurative in meaning. The poem is
perhaps the most self-reflexive of all of Chaucer’s tales, with several
levels of narration concerning what it means to use one person or being
to represent another. Thus Chaucer reveals the stresses and joys of story-
telling through the pressures put upon the nun’s priest by the host and
the dullness of the preceding story, which the knight has interrupted
because of its monotony. The nun’s priest chooses the familiar Aesopic
fable about the cock and the fox, which he elaborates so extensively that
the narrative act of elaboration itself becomes one of the tale’s comic
themes. The animals of the tale are allegorical in multiple ways. Chaunte-
cleer and Pertelote, whose dialogue occupies most of the poem, repre-
sent Adam and Eve, disputing scholars, a married couple, and the nun’s
priest and the prioress (his “boss,” whom in the tale he vanquishes sexu-
ally and intellectually). These allegories complement each other insofar
as they all reflect the difficulty of accepting authority, the deconstruc-
tion of accepted hierarchies, and the tension between free will and fate.
“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is an important animal poem because it
does so much to draw attention to the animality of its characters and to
connect its allegorical meanings to the unstable divide between human
and animal. The narrator begins by describing “this wydwe, of which I
telle yow my tale,” but quickly slips into an extensive description of her
animals, already suggesting that this is not a standard animal fable.^17 The
narrator spends twenty lines on an initial description of Chauntecleer,
on the accurate timing of his crowing, on his intense coloring (white,
black, red, blue, and gold), and on his flock of seven adoring hens. The