'A Yeerd Enclosed Al About': Literature and History in the 'Nun's Priest's Tale'

Author / Editor
Fehrenbacher, Richard W.

Title
'A Yeerd Enclosed Al About': Literature and History in the 'Nun's Priest's Tale'

Published
Chaucer Review 29 (1994): 134-48.

Description
With the introduction of "Jakke Straw" into NPT, Chaucer returns to the English setting of the early Canterbury stories. By alternating styles in the peasant passages and the chicken passages, he both addresses the historical turmoil of the day and, ultimately, retreats from it. Such vacillation reflects the unwillingness of Chaucer's contemporaries to take seriously the voice of the third estate.

Chaucer Subjects
Nun's Priest and His Tale.