Analytical Essay: The Character of the Nun in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

There also was a Nun, a Prioress.

Her way of smiling very simple and coy.

Her greatest oath was only "By St.

And she was known as Madam Eglantyne.

5

And well she sang a service, with a fine

Intoning through her nose, as was most seemly,

And she spoke daintily in French, extremely,

After the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe,

French in the Paris style she did not know.

10

At meat her manners were well taught withal;

No morsel from her lips did she let fall,

Nor dipped her fingers in the sauce too deep;

But she could carry a morsel up and keep

The smallest drop from falling on her breast.

15

For courtliness she had a special zest,

And she would wipe her upper lip so clean

That not a trace of grease was to be seen

Upon the cup when she had drunk; to eat,

She reached a hand sedately for the meat.

20

She certainly was very entertaining,

Pleasant and friendly in her ways, and straining

To counterfeit a courtly kind of grace,

A stately bearing fitting to her place,

And to seem dignified in all her dealings.

25

As for her sympathies and tender feelings,

She was so charitably solicitous

She used to weep if she but saw a mouse

Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bleeding.

And she had little dogs she would be feeding

30

With roasted flesh, or milk, or fine white bread.

And bitterly she wept if one were dead

Or someone took a stick and made it smart;

She was all sentiment and tender heart.

Her veil was gathered in a seemly way,

35

Her nose was elegant, her eyes glass-gray;

Her mouth was very small, but soft and red,

Her forehead, certainly, was fair of spread,

Almost a span across the brows, I own:

She was indeed by no means undergrown.

40

Her cloak, I noticed, had a graceful charm.

She wore a coral trinket on her arm,

A set of beads, the gaudies tricked in green,

Whence hung a golden brooch of brightest sheen

On which there first was graven a crowned A,

45

And lower, Amor vincit omnia.