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¶ … Knight's Tale" from "Canterbury Tales," by Geoffrey Chaucer.
THE KNIGHT'S TALE
The Knight's Tale" is one of the most memorable in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales. It tells the story of two young knights, Palamon and Arcite, who are imprisoned together in a tower, and both fall in love with the same girl, Emelye. Chaucer wrote it in Middle English, which, unlike Old English, is fairly easy to read and understand by modern readers.
For example, at the end of the story, Chaucer has the lines, "The Firste Moevere of the cause above, / Whan he first made the faire cheyne of love, / Greet was th'effect, and heigh was his entente./... For with that faire cheyne of love he bond / The fyr, the eyr, the water, and the lond / In certeyn boundes, that they may nat flee" (The Knight's Tale, 2987-2993). They show Emelye why she must marry Palamon, and they are extremely poetic in their talk of "air, water, and land, and the fair chain of love." The meaning is not lost, even though the words may look unusual.
The story is a classic romance about courtly love, where one knight dies (Arcite), and the other loses in a tournament, but wins the girl in the end when Arcite dies. Many critics believe Chaucer based it on a similar story by Boccaccio, the Italian writer. "The Knight's Tale" is the first story...
"The symmetry of the Knight's Tale is always and justly praised. It inheres in the plot, which may be diagrammed as a double isosceles triangle, with Palamon and Arcite at the common base and Theseus at one peak and Emelye at the other. There are two equal lovers, blood cousins and sworn brothers, discovered by and by when they first appear" (Baum 96).
He also approves of the way Chaucer brings the reader into the story, and while the reader always understands that the knight is telling a story, and it is unreal, there is sill a drawing in, and feeling that the story could, for just a moment, be real. "In truth, throughout the Knight's Tale there is implicit understanding between poet and reader that this is a story and therefore somewhat unreal. This is not because the scene is legendary Athens, a place which exists only in books, for there is plenty of minute realism of a sort in the details, and the never-never land of romance…
Works Cited
http://www.questia.com/PageManagerHTMLMediator.qst?action=openPageViewer&docId=9206472"Baum, Paull F. Chaucer: A Critical Appreciation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1958.
Benson, Larry, ed. The Riverside Chaucer. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987.
Lambdin, Laura C., ed. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.
The Bible, he argued, cites the creation of Eve for Adam as proof that a wife is man's support, as well as many other examples of humble and devoted wives. The knight told his brother that he desired a young wife, who was no older than thirty, for she would be more pliable. Placebo cautioned that it takes great courage for an older man to marry a young woman (Classic
But while it is true that he loved the funny side of life, he was also quite genuine and sincere in his purpose to expose the superficialities of social roles. "If we look at the whole corpus of his work, we see his tragic poems all interrupted, unfinished, or transfigured into celestial comedy" (Garbaty173). Chaucer unlike some tragedy masters of his time was not too concerned with gloom and sadness
http://find.galegroup.com/gps/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=IPS&docId=A21240794&source=gale&srcprod=ITOF&userGroupName=va0035_004&version=1.0 Works Cited Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Trans. Neville Coghill. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.
Chaucer's Friar In the Canterbury Tales, the Friar's Tale and the Summoner's Tale are intended to be satires about the corruption of the church in the Middle Ages, and would have been considered comedic by the audience, but also as being quite close to the truth. Chaucer was very likely sympathetic with the early-Protestant Lollards and Reformers and intended this to be a humorous commentary on "the abuse that infected the
Knights in the Canterbury Tales, The Knight's Tale, And The Miller's Tale The narrator in the Prologue of "The Canterbury Tales" paints a noble view of the Knight. For instance, we are told that the knight is a distinguished man who practiced "chivalry,/Truth, honour, generousness and courtesy" (20). We are also told he is wise, and he fought in "fifteen mortal battles" across the world. (21) While the narrator may have an
Thomas's gift turns out to be a giant fart, which Chaucer describes using richly comedic imagery: "Ther nys no capul, drawynge in a cart, / That myghte have lete a fart of swich a soun," ("Summoner's Tale," lines 486-487). The humor continues to enliven the Summoner's tale; toward the end the characters seriously debate how to divide up a fart. Chaucer's use of comedy and farcical imagery parallels his mockery