Poverty and Plenty : Chaucer's Povre Wydwe and Her Gentil Cok
- Author / Editor
- Hazell, Dinah.
Poverty and Plenty : Chaucer's Povre Wydwe and Her Gentil Cok
- Published
- Mediaevalia 25 (2004): 25-65.
- Description
- The widow's poverty in NPT indicates the cloistered clergy's failure to practice humility, poverty, and charity. Altering his source materials, Chaucer highlights the contrast between the lifestyle of the Prioress and that of the widow and creates links between the Nun's Priest, on the one hand, and Chauntecleer, the Monk, and the Friar, on the other. Reference to the "Peasants' Revolt" and the ambiguous moral of NPT reflect clerical insensitivity to the impact of extravagance on the impoverished.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Nun's Priest and His Tale.
- Prioress and Her Tale.
- Monk and His Tale.
- Friar and His Tale.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.