40THE ANIMAL IN ALLEGORYurges. Though on the one hand this passage is a kind of burlesque, on
the other it is high comedy—celebrating with complex irony the tragedy
of human self-delusion. Indeed, Chauntecleer is most appealing as a
rooster, getting what he wants, looking absurdly like a lion, even as he
struts on his claws.
There are several more moments in the poem where the normal
human and animal hierarchy is inverted or the categories blended so
that we see humans as animals too. In the tale’s second beginning (3187),
Chauntecleer sings because the sun has risen twenty-one degrees, “and
knew by kynde, and by noon oother lore / That it was pryme, and crew
with blissful stevene” (3196–97). The narrator explains that the rooster
sings because he is driven by instinct. And yet the next words out of the
rooster’s mouth refer to the number of degrees the sun has risen (now
forty-one, midmorning), signifying conscious knowledge of when to
begin and end the singing. Moreover, he is filled with joy not at his
own singing but by that of “thise blissful briddes... , / And... the
fresshe floures” (3201–2). He is an animal filled with joy at the singing of
other animals, which is presumably a privilege of humans alone (though
it has long been thought that birdsong might signify animal emotion or
aesthetic appreciation).^19 The melancholy he falls into immediately after-
ward is both a philosophical trope of the human condition (“For evere
the latter ende of joye is wo” [3205]) and a change of mood as physical
and inexplicable as joy, desire, or instinct. Another interesting moment
of animal confusion occurs when the narrator, in a later digression on
traitors and predestination, notes that his tale is about a “cock... that
tok his conseil of his wif, with sorwe” (3253). He then begins to blame
women in general as the source of original sin, as though they were a
separate species. Recognizing that he may be offending several in his
audience, including the prioress, the priest insists that “thise been
the cokes wordes, and nat myne” (3265). Though he is backtracking
here, making explicit that animal allegory can be a way of saying what
otherwise cannot be said, it is nonetheless striking that the narrator of
an animal fable should insist on the animal origin of his language.
The confusions of the tale reflect the inclusion of nonhuman animals
in a concept of community. Animals can signify humans and humans