Introduction

The ‘Knight’s Tale’ in Context

Do you really want to believe that all men speak with equal validity? Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, I, xi: 3

i. The ‘Knight’s Tale’: the Critical Debate

Arriving at an agreed reading of any work of literature is always a dif- ficult matter but doing so is particularly problematic when, as in the case of Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale’, that work was produced over six centuries ago in a society whose culture and values were radically different from our own. It is hardly surprising, then, that the mean- ing of the ‘Knight’s Tale’, which has been described as ‘the most often and the most variously interpreted of The Canterbury Tales’, has been the subject of a running battle between modern literary critics. It is a battle in which Chaucer’s words are cited as evidence for mutually exclusive and diametrically opposite conclusions and to which no reso- lution is in sight.1 It would seem that, as Gerald of Wales said, ‘Nature upholds as many views as men: and each to his own view holds’.2 Most scholars would probably accept that the ‘Knight’s Tale’ does not seek to explore Theseus, the duke ofAthens whose actions are central to the tale’s narrative, as a psychologically-rounded character. Rather, as Spearing notes, the tale presents the duke to us ‘as part of a literary structure embodying . . . a certain view of life’, a literary structure which conveys its content to us through ‘emblematic symbolism rather than naturalistic characterization’.3 Where the critics have been unable to

1 hieatt, Chaucer, 3; Schweitzer, ‘Fate’, 13; McAlindon, ‘Cosmology’, 41. 2 gerald of Wales, Journey Through Wales, 63. See also Honoré Bonet’s quotation of the decretal which said ‘There are as many opinions and wills as there are men’ (Tree of Battles, 119), a phrase also used by Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, I, xi: 2. 3 Muscatine, Chaucer, 176–7; Spearing, ‘Introduction’, 27–8; Brooks, ‘Meaning’, 124; Kean, Chaucer, II, 3; Cameron, ‘Heroine’, 119–22, 127; Halverson, ‘Aspects’, 620–1; Hieatt, Chaucer, 3; Burlin, Chaucerian Fiction, 97–101. 2 introduction arrive at a consensus is on which specific view of life the tale’s literary structure embodies. In particular, the critical debate about the ‘Knight’s Tale’ raises the question of how Chaucer’s work should be positioned in relation to the political culture of the late fourteenth century. The last three decades of the century were a time of political conflict and crisis.4 As a result, some critics have been tempted to see the narrative of the ‘Knight’s Tale’ as a roman à clef in which Chaucer refers to particular historical characters and events of the period, so that Theseus is equated with John of Gaunt (or, alternatively, with Richard II) whilst Palamon and Arcite are figures for Richard II and Thomas, duke of Gloucester.5 One problem with this approach is the difficulty of establishing the date of the composition of the ‘Knight’s Tale’, suggestions for which range from 1372–6, through the early, mid and late 1380s, to the early 1390s and even to as late as the final years of Richard II’s reign.6 Both ver- sions of the ‘Prologue’ to the Legend of Good Women list the story of ‘the love of Palamon and Arcite/Of Thebes’ amongst Chaucer’s works, which may mean that the ‘Knight’s Tale’ was already in existence by 1386 because, although the dates of the two versions of the Prologue are themselves a matter for debate, the earlier F-version of the ‘Prologue’ is often ascribed to the period from 1386 to 1388.7 Thus, if Chaucer began work on the Canterbury Tales from the late 1380s, the ‘Knight’s Tale’ seems to have been an earlier, independent composition which the poet then adopted as the first of his pilgrims’ tales, although we have no way of knowing how similar the original version was to the

4 on the political history of the period, see Ormrod, Reign of Edward III; Harriss, Shaping; Saul, Richard II; Bennett, Richard II; Waugh, ‘England’; Horrox,‘England’. 5 For Chaucer’s work as a commentary on particular events, see Astell, Political Alle- gory, chapter 4. For this approach applied to the ‘Knight’s Tale’, see Brown and Butcher, Age of Saturn, 206–11; Bennett, Commentary. 58. For a critique of this approach, see Middleton, ‘Idea’, 95; Rigby, Chaucer, 4–5. 6 McAlpine, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, Pearsall, Life, 153; Patterson, ‘Court Politics’, 9; Simpson, Reform, 161; Rudd, Geoffrey Chaucer, 110; Aers, Powers, 219; Brown and Butcher, Age of Saturn, 210; Bennett, Commentary, 58. 7 chaucer, Legend of Good Women, F: 420–1; G: 408–9; Cooper, Canterbury Tales, 5, 61–2; Minnis, Shorter Poems, 327–8; Gellrich, Discourse, 228. Some of the material from Statius’s Thebaid and Boccaccio’s Teseida adopted in the ‘Knight’s Tale’ was also used by Chaucer in his Anelida and Arcite although the precise date of this work is also uncertain, with suggestions ranging from 1373 to 1390 (Benson, Riverside Chaucer, 991).