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Warning: "The Knight's Tale" is not a children's story. It presents a terrible vision of the world. "The Knight's Tale" has shocked readers from Chaucer's time to ours. If you want something nice and non-controversial, please leave now.

The knight has always practiced "truth, honor, generousness, and courtesy". He has been a successful fighter and served with distinction in many campaigns. He is wise, modest, and polite to everyone. By chance or design, he draws the lot to tell the first story, and does so graciously. Later in the book, he emerges as the voice of reason, common goodness, and common sense, and is accepted by the rest of the pilgrims as their moral authority.

Theseus, king of Athens, marries Hippolyta, an Amazon lady he has defeated in battle. The king of neighboring Thebes (Creon) is a tyrant who impiously forbade the burial of enemy dead. Theseus marches on Thebes and defeats the tyrant. After the battle, he condemns two prisoners of war, Arcite (arr-KEE-tay) and Palamon to life in prison for no evident reason.

In prison, Arcite and Palamon both fall in love with Emily, Hippolyta's sister. Arcite is eventually released and returns in disguise to court Emily. Palamon eventually escapes. The two men meet by accident in the woods and are fighting viciously when Theseus finds them. He decides to let them fight for Emily's hand.

To prepare for the fight, Theseus builds an amphitheater with shrines to Mars (god of war), Venus (goddess of love), and Diana (goddess of hunting, the moon, and celibacy). Arcite prays to Mars to win the battle. Palamon prays to Venus to marry Emily. (Interestingly, Emily prays to stay celibate.) The god Saturn comes up with a plan by which both Mars and Venus can grant the prayers of their supplicants.

Arcite wins the battle, but his horse then throws him and his chest is crushed. Dying, he wishes Palamon to wed Emily. Theseus says that in a world of blind luck ("Fortune") and much sadness, we should try to find happiness and to love each other when we can. Palamon and Emily are married and live out their days in complete happiness.

The story comes from a tale by Boccaccio, and it includes philosophical musings on fortune, the power of the stars (astrology) and predestination in general, etc., etc. Medievalists talk about what category of work "The Knight's Tale" represents. You can find plenty of this in the links.

There will be more of this here when the site is complete.

But there is something more to "The Knight's Tale." Did you notice?

Here is what is represented in the Temple of Venus, Goddess of Love.

• sleeplessness, sighs, sad songs, and everything else that happens to those who "suffer love"


• allegorical figures including lasciviousness (sex for its own sake), largesse (wasting your money looking for sex), philtres (have you heard of today's "date rape pill"?), force (rape itself), falsehood, flattery, extravagance, intrige, and jealousy (with a gold crown, and a cuckoo, symbol of adultery), and idleness (as a teacher, I've seen how grades often plummet when a student enters into a "relationship")


• Narcissus gave up his life from falling in love with his own reflection; this was a punishment inflicted by Venus for his refusing to gratify a woman who loved him;


• Medea murdered her rival and her own two children to get back at their father


• Solomon's wives led him away from God's service


• Circe turned men into pigs


• Ask your classics instructor about Turnus and Croesus


• These and thousands of other people are depicted as captured in Venus's noose, crying out for help in vain. (Been there, done that -- Ed.)

Here is what is represented in the Temple of Mars, God of War:

• A forest without people or animals, with the ground quaking and rumbling, as in a post-nuclear holocaust scenario


• Premeditations of violence by criminals, kings, and more criminals


• Fake friends with concealed weapons, murder of people who are asleep


• A suicide "with all his heart's blood matted in his hair"


• A nail driven into a person's forehead for torture and execution (this was used both by the Viet Cong and by Ferdinand Marcos, and surely others)


• Allegorical figures of mental illness, armed uprisings, and others


• Dead bodies, their throats cut, in the undergrowth


• A warlord-tyrant looting and raping


• A flattened city, ships on fire crashing into each other


• An unlucky hunter being killed by bears


• A sow munching a baby in its cradle (!)


• A road fatality (yesterday's cart-operator might be killed just as today's driver)


• The allegorical figure of Conquest, under the sword of Damocles, suspended above his head by a hair, ready to kill him unexpectedly at any time.


• Julius Caesar's murder, Mark Antony's suicide, and so forth, with a comment that this is predestined in the stars


• Finally the allegorical figure of Mars himself, eating a man

Here is what is depicted in the temple of Diana, Goddess of Celibacy

• Several characters from mythology who were killed by Diana for no good reason. Actaeon merely had the bad luck to see her using the toilet. She turned him into a deer and he was eaten by his own dogs.


• A woman crying out for help in childbirth, which was often fatal in ancient and medieval times.


• The statue of Diana shows her other roles as goddess of hunting, goddess of the moon, and goddess of the dismal underworld (as Hecate).

Here is how old Saturn, earth-god, eldest and most powerful of the gods, describes his portfolio:

• drownings


• prisoners in dungeons


• both the neck and the noose that strangles it


• serf uprisings


• secret hatreds and secret poisonings


• buildings collapsing and killing people


• fatal disease, and the sensation of cold that goes with the approach of death

Do you see a pattern? I thought you would. What the Knight Could Not Say Openly

To discern the knight's intent in telling the story, we need to do as we usually would, and look for material in the text which does not really further the plot or please the readers. The knight reveals his own mind twice. First, there are the scenes of unmitigated horror in the three temples. Second, there is the passage at the death of Arcite:

His spirit changes its house and went away
Where I came never -- where I cannot say,
And so am silent. I am no divine
Souls are not mentioned in this tale of mine.
I offer no opinion. I can tell
You nothing, though some have written where they dwell.

The knight has travelled around his world, and seen a great deal. For Chaucer's knight, the universe is not friendly to human beings. It is at best indifferent, and at worst actively hostile.

We enjoy more freedom of, and from, religion than Chaucer's pilgrims did. In Theseus's famous "fair chain of love" speech, the king offers the Boethian hope that there is some benevolent plan behind the horror of life. Today's secular humanists talk openly about humankind standing alone in a godless universe. For such people, the challenge is to live wisely and well, to do good, and to love one another. Some keep up some form of religious observance out of deference to the feelings of their neighbors.

I do not believe the knight is speaking for Chaucer, but rather that Chaucer painted him from real life. People often notice that Chaucer's pilgrims present a cross-section of his countryfolk. The knight is struggling to live a good life although (or perhaps because) he no longer believes in the comforts of religion.

To include this page in a bibliography, you may use this format: Friedlander ER (1999) Enjoying "The Knight's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer Retrieved Dec. 25, 2003 from http://www.pathguy.com/kttale.htm

For Modern Language Association sticklers, the name of the site itself is "The Pathlogy Guy" and the Sponsoring Institution or Organization is Ed Friedlander MD.

Links

The Knight's Tale

Harvard -- large site, this link is to "The Knight's Tale"
The Plot -- at Harvard's site
Goucher --notes

Chaucer Resources

Harvard Chaucer Site
Anglican Site,
Jane Zatta

Boethius

Consolation of Philosophy

Susan Crane -- a much more reasonable women's perspective on "The Knight's Tale"

Julian of Norwich
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
The Lady of Shalott
Moby Dick
Oedipus the King
Prometheus Bound
The Book of Thel
The Seven Against Thebes
The Tyger
Timbuctoo

I'm Ed. I'm an MD, a pathologist in Kansas City, a mainstream Christian. a modernist, a skydiver, an adventure gamer, the world's busiest free internet physician, and a man who still enjoys books and ideas.

I hope you like The Knight's Tale, and that I've been of some help.

Visit my home page
Belief in God -- I do not share "The Knight's Tale"'s dark vision, but understand why others do.
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