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Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer's Knight's Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Charles Muscatine
Charles Muscatine*
Affiliation:
University of California Berkeley 4
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Extract

Despite the fact that the interpretive literature on Chaucer's Knight's Tale is extensive, the poem has remained one of the most baffling of the Canterbury Tales. It has resisted satisfactory interpretation where poems of much more complicated structure—as the Merchant's Tale—and much more varied style—as the Nun's Priest's Tale—-have yielded brilliant results to criticism. The critics of the past fifty years have lacked neither learning nor ingenuity, but somehow their interpretations remain marked by a characteristic indecisiveness—made particularly evident where equally acute analyses produce conflicting and contradictory results—and by a simplicity that does not do justice to the poem and its five hundred years of popularity. It is possible that this critical unsuccess is owing to an error of perspective, that the poem has been generally examined and evaluated in the light of assumptions which are not central to its method. It is the purpose of the present essay to establish this as more than a possibility, and to suggest a viewpoint from which the poem may be seen to have a coherence and fullness of meaning which the traditional critics have hardly touched upon.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 5 , September 1950 , pp. 911 - 929
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

1 R. K. Root, The Poetry of Chaucer (Boston, [1906]), p. 170; H. N. Fairchild, “Active Arcite, Contemplative Palamon”, JEGP, xxvi (1927), 285–293.

2 Fairchild, pp. 290–292. See also P. V. Shelly, The Living Chaucer (Phila., 1940), pp. 236237; C. D. Baker, “A Note on Chaucer's Knight's Tale”, MLN, XLV (1930), 460–462; Huber-tis M. Cummings, The Indebtedness of Chaucer's Works to the Italian Works of Boccaccio, Univ. of Cincinnati Studies, Ser. II, Vol. x (Cincinnati, 1916), pp. 139, 141; William Frost, “An Interpretation of Chaucer's Knight's Tale”, RES, xxv (1949), 295–297. Frost's article seems to me to contain the best general interpretation of the poem that has yet appeared. I regret that owing to the recency of its publication I have not been able to give it due recognition above, nor to record in detail the several important respects in which the present essay and his coincide with and supplement each other.

3 J. S. P. Tatlock, The Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works (London, 1907), pp. 232–233; W. G. Dodd, Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower (Boston, 1913), pp. 238–239, n. 1; H. R. Patch, On Rereading Chaucer (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), p. 206.

4 Albert H. Marckwardt, Characterization in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Univ. of Michigan Contributions in Modern Philology, No. 5 (Ann Arbor, 1947). Similarly H. B. Hinckley, Notes on Chaucer (Northampton, Mass., 1907), p. 53, mentions “the madcap Palamon and the equally ardent but more rational Arcite.”

5 See also [C.] Looten, Chaucer, ses Modèles, ses Sources, sa Religion, Mémoires et Travaux Publiés par des Professeurs des Facultés Catholiques de Lille, Fasc. 38 (Lille, [1931]), pp. 56, 69–72.

6 “What was Chaucer's Aim in the Knight's Tale?” SP, xxvi (1929), 375,377, 380, 385.

7 “Characterization in the ‘Knight's Tale,‘ ” MLN, XLVI (1931), 302, 303, n. 2.

8 Tatlock, pp. 232–233; Hulbert, p. 385, n. 20; Patch, op. cit., pp. 208–209; see “1949 Research in Progress”, PMLA, LXIV (1949), 121, no. 807.

9 Two clear examples of the application of the canons of rigid realism to the poem are Henry J. Webb, “A Reinterpretation of Chaucer's Theseus”, RES, xxIII (1947), 289–296 (“ … Theseus, even at the time he was performing his most knightly deeds, was possessed of those frailties which, in later life, caused him to be damned” [289]); and F. Torraca, “The Knightes Tale e la Teseida”, in his Scritti Vari (Milan, 1928), pp. 89–107 (“II com-battimento accadrà in capo a cinquanta settimane, meno di un anno. Sarà sufficiente questo tempo alia costruzione del teatro, il quale dovrà avère la circonferenza d'un miglio, e sarà tutto in pietra,con fossati intorno,e pieno di gradini sino all' altezza di sesanta passi … ?” [101]).

10 Quotations are from The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson (Boston, [1933]).

11 See Robinson, p. 781, n. to 2217.

12 “Chaucer's Use of the Teseida”, PMLA, LXII (1947), 615, n. 60.

13 KnT, 1033, 1187, 1381, 1446, 1452, 1457–58, 2967.

14 KnT, 875–885, 994–1000, 1187–88, 1198–1201, 2197–2207, 2919–64.

15 KnT, 1995,2005,2011,2017, etc. This is one of the many obvious examples in Chaucer of the breach of dramatic verisimilitude for the sake of more important effects.

16 KnT, 900–904, 913, 949, 954, 995–996, 1078, 1221–22, 1277–80, 1299–1302, 1361 fi., 1572, 1748–50, 1758, 1875, 2341–42, 2664–66, 2817–19, 2831–34, 2878–81, 2943.

17 See Pratt, p. 615.

18 As, e.g., Chaucer's additions of the character Emetrius, of the parallel descriptions of Lygurge and Emetrius, and of the description of Diana's temple. See Pratt, pp. 617–618.

19 In the supernatural signs, KnT, 2265–67,2333–40,2430–33, and particularly in Saturn's speech, KnT, 2453 ff., where the nature of Arcite's death is forecast.

20 Cf. B. ten Brink, History of English Literature, trans. H. M. Kennedy, W. C. Robinson and L. D. Schmitz, 2 vols. (New York, 1889–96), II, i, 71–72.

21 KnT, 1881–86, 1900, 1903, 1907, 1913, 2089–93, 2853–81, 2887–89. See also 11961200, 1673–95, 1760–81, 2190–2207, 2523–32, 2561–64, 2569, 2700–04, 2715–18, 2731–38, 2981–86.

22 See Baum, pp. 302–303, n. 2; Patch, op. cit., p. 208.

23 Agnes K. Getty, “Chaucer's Changing Conceptions of the Humble Lover”, PMLA, xxIv (1929), 210–212.

24 See note 2, above.

25 It should be noted that Saturn's rôle is purely Chaucer's addition to the story, as are also many of the unfortunate exemplary figures in the temple-descriptions, viz., Daphne, Meleager (Diana's temple); Idleness, Narcissus, Solomon, Medea, Circe, Turnus, Croesus (Venus' temple); Julius, Nero, Antonius (Mars' temple). See Pratt, p. 618.

26 In the Knight's Tale itself the Theban background is never quite forgotten: 931–947, 1110–11, 1543–62, 1880. See also Anelida and Arcila, 50–70; Man of Law's Tale, 200. 289-Wife of Bath's Prologue, 740–746; Troilus and Criseyde, II, 100–105, v, 599–602, and par-ticularly v, 1457–1510.