week 13

Question 1

the nuns priest tale (NPT) in a nutshell

Answer 1

• genre: beast fable (short story with animals on moral)
• plot: fox tricks cock, cock tricks fox
• moral: that it what you get when you trust flattery

Question 1

auctoritas in NPT

Answer 1

Debate about dreams between Pertelote and Chauntecleer
- Pertelote: uses a classical author
- Chauntecleer: cites multiple auctoritas
The narrator:
- uses all available sources
- some references are faulty
- referred to a book that is known to have untrue stories
–> mermaids sing to kill, so is it a complement that someone sings like a mermaid?

Question 2

auctoritas

Answer 2

= you need secondary sources to be credible
sources of auctoritas:
- bible: Gods word
- Nature: bestiaries (Gods second book)
- scholars: boethuis, bede, Augustine
- classical authors: plato, aristotle, cato
- tradition: provebs such as men seyn thus, sende the wise and sey no thyng (wise people do not need an explanation)

Question 3

astronomy + chaucer

Answer 3

Chaucer wrote two handbooks on astronomy
Astronomical knowledge in CT
- fancy description of dates
- astronomy and medicine are connected (zodiac man)
–> the taurus sign is around the neck/shoulders –> the fox grabs the cock by the neck

Question 4

liberal arts in NPT - arithmetic, geometry, astronomy

Answer 4

Chauntecleer knows when to crow, because he knows whenever the sun has moved 15˚C degrees

Question 5

liberal arts in NPT - music

Answer 5

the ‘musica’ Boethuis –> you should not approach music with feeling, but it is mathematical
- the fox tells the cock that he has more feeling for music than Boethuis (offensive joke)

Question 6

liberal arts in NPT - grammar

Answer 6

reading and translating Latin
–> Chauntecleer has one, but gives his favourite hen a compliment in Latin and then translates it
—> mistranslates it, a woman is a man’s ruin

Question 7

liberal arts in NPT - logic/dialectic

Answer 7

‘disputatio’ between Chauntecleer and Pertelote (about dreams, free will) –> university type debate
–> Chauntecleer wins the debate, but he doesn’t listen to his own arguments

Question 8

mock epic

Answer 8

a mock epic is a long, heroic-comical poem that merely imitates features of the classical epic. The poet often takes an elevated style of language, but incongruously applies that language to mundane or ridiculous objects and situations

Question 9

liberal arts in NPT - rhetoric

Answer 9

‘descriptio’ = the best way to describe a woman is from top to bottom, you should use similes (compare her features to nature)
- Geoffrey de Vinsauf
–> used to describe Chauntecleer the cock