ABSTRACT
The reader of the Nun's Priest's Tale is never on firm ground. Its style fluctuates from homely description, 'A povre wydwe, somdeel stape in age' to rhetorical flights of the most bombastic kind. There are sufficient allusions to Adam's story in the Nun's Priest's Tale to be sure that it is a source of significance, providing one of the tale's many morals. Such is the frequency of reference to the fall of Adam and Eve that it is as well to have a vivid idea of how Chaucer's readers might have imagined the biblical episode. Thus the comic 'sacrilegious' perspective of the Nun's Priest's Tale makes the tragic 'orthodox' perspective of the Monk's Tale, based as it is on the pagan idea of the revolutions of Fortune's wheel, look two-dimensional and utterly inadequate. The closing lines of the Nun's Priest's Tale are sufficient warning against solemn speculations on the nature of comedy.
