A Comparison Between Chaucer S Knight, And The Knight From The Wife Of Bath S Tale Essay, Research Paper
In his prologue, Chaucer introduces all of the characters who are involved in this fictional journey and who will state the narratives. One of the most interesting of the characters introduced is the Knight. Chaucer refers to the Knight as a most distinguished adult male and, so, his study of the Knight is extremely complimentary. Another Knight seen in the Canterbury Tales is the raper knight in the Wife of Bath s Tale, who is non a really baronial knight and doesn T follow a knightly codification. This knight seems more realistic as opposed to the stereotyped ideal knight that Chaucer describes in the Prologue. It is difficult to believe that such a perfect knight existed during that clip.
Today we look back at knighthood, gallantry, and curteisye as romantic and unreal. It is true that a codification of behaviour did be, and Chaucer presents the Knight as a existent representative of the codification. However the Knight in the Wife of Baths narrative, is the complete antonym of this one, and violates all of the regulations of Knighthood. By manner of contrast the Knight in The Wife of Bath s Tale is more common during the Middle Ages, and narratives of colza by knights were non uncommon. Chaucer goes against the normal knightly ideal of a knight by showing a knight as he truly might hold been, which is the knight presented in The Wife of Bath s Tale.
As all of the different narratives reflect back on the characters of the pilgrims who tell them, the thoughts in the Knight s Tale are reflected back on the Knight. His narrative is a narrative of ideal love and gallantry, and fits the character of the Knight. Furthermore, suiting the Knight s character, his narrative has no incidents of coarseness, the love is a clean love, with no intimation of sensualness. The love exists on a high, Platonic degree.
In the article Costume Rhetoric in the Knight s Portrait: Chaucer s Every-Knight and his Bismotered Gyphon, by Laura F. Hodges, featured in the April 1995 edition of the Chaucer Review, Hodges examines the grounds behind Chaucer s determinations on the vesture of his Knight. Hodges said that the fact that the Knight was have oning dirty vesture is an allusion to the fact that the knight was soiled sacredly. However I think his shirt was much stained by where the armour had left his grade, and he merely arrived from service and went straight on his pilgrim’s journey.
The chief map of the knight in mediaeval clip was contending. Knights were trained to contend, and to travel to war. One of the ways that a Knight could gain the esteems of others, and be seen as really honest, was to turn out himself in glorious conflicts. The Knight s historical background of his contending calling is of import for it shows that all the wars that he fought in were all spiritual wars in some nature and non secular. These wars can be divided into three groups. Chronologically, the first includes the long battle to throw out the Moresque encroachers from S
hurting. The 2nd group, ( Alisaundre Lyels.Satalye ) occurred in the Grete See which is the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor. The 3rd group in which knights from everyplace in Christian Europe was involved took topographic point in Pruce, Lettow, and Ruce, which were all on the boundary line of eastern and western Europe. The Teutonic Knights had long been in struggle with the non-Christians in the E. The ceremonial referred to as the bord of Pruce was that of the Teutonic tabular array of award, a ritual assembly of knights at which those who had acquitted themselves good, like Chaucer s knight were placed at the caput.
After analyzing the debut of the Knight s character in the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, Hodges said that Chaucer intended his Knight to be the one true life portrayal of a knight of the fourteenth century an every knight of kinds. Chaucer says that the Knight is really brave, really prudent and really sage. He says that the Knight is, The really form of a baronial Knight.
The knight from the Wife of Bath s Tale shows a darkside of the glorious knighthood presented to us. However, the traits of his character are more existent than the Knight. He is guided by his desires, and doesn t think about penalty when he rapes the miss. However he follows the knightly codifications by maintaining his promise to make whatever the old beldam wants. He seems to populate merely for the present minute. He agrees to make anything she wants in return for hearing the reply he is looking for. True, if he doesn t acquire an reply, he will lose his life. However he doesn t think about the possibility that what the beldam will desire may turn out to even worse, sing the fact that award and personal unity were valued more than life in those times. He is besides thankless for even though the beldam saves him for a certain decease and petitions that he marry her, the knight should be thankful to get away decease, but alternatively he views the matrimony to his Jesus as another signifier of the same penalty. This manifests his knighthood qualities by maintaining his promise. This knight is more existent than Chaucer s knight, for he has defects, he is the antithesis of the qualities that a good and honest knight should hold.
It is extremely improbable that a knight such as Chaucer s dark lived and breathed in his times. As Chaucer does with all of his characters, he is bring forthing a stereotype in making the character of such and ideal adult male. Chaucer in depicting the Knight, is picturing a knightly ideal, when in fact the actions of the knight in the Wife of Bath s Tale is the existent portrayal of the knight that existed in those times. I pose that the kernel of Chaucer s Knight was no more existent in his twenty-four hours than it is today, and he was merely giving the people and ideal character to look up to. He ne’er intended his fictional star to be interpreted as a world, and he was merely giving his readers what they wanted. Today, our mass media delivers the same bundle and on a grander and even more fictional graduated table than of all time before.
