The Knight: The First Mover in Chaucer's Human Comedy

Richard Neuse

10 citations0/0 files storedUniversity of Toronto Quarterly

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Medieval Literature and History Renaissance Literature and Culture Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies

Abstract

In recent years there seems to have been general agreement that the Knight's Tale is a "philosophical romance" which raises the problem of an apparently unjust and disorderly universe. By this reading the Tale emerges as a philosophic theodicy culminating in Theseus' speech on cosmic order. The latter implicitly denies the final reality or rule of an arbitrary Fortune, but at the same time stoically accepts the inscrutable workings "in this wrecched world adoun" of an eternal cause. The Tale is thus seen as the Knight's—and Theseus'—somewhat wistful "consolation of philosophy," the affirmation of an ultimate order that actual experience seems, often sadly, to deny.

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References

1957The Works Of Geoffrey Chaucer 1960Homer and the Heroic Tradition 1975Chaucer's Poetry: An Anthology for the Modern Reader 1991The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy 1928The Perfect Prince: A Study in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Ideals 1950A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.1950Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer's Knight's Tale 1957The Parlement of foules, an interpretation

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2000The Monk’s Tale

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