Poetry: The Knight's Tale

Overview
Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" is one of the longest and most ceremonious narratives in The Canterbury Tales, cast as a chivalric romance that blends classical source material with medieval courtly ideals. Set in and around an imagined Thebes after a victorious conquest, the tale stages a prolonged conflict of love and honor between two captured knights, Palamon and Arcite, whose rivalry for the same woman, Emelye, becomes the engine of action. The story balances heroic spectacle, devotional invocation, and rhetorical commentary on fate, fortune, and social order.

Plot
The tale opens with Theseus, duke of Athens, returning triumphant from war and founding a civilized order in a formerly barbarous region. In the sack of Thebes he takes two young cousins, Palamon and Arcite, as prisoners and confines them in a tower. From the tower window they both glimpse Emelye, a noblewoman and Theseus's sister-in-law, and immediately fall in love. Their love quickly hardens into bitter rivalry; Palamon vows to possess Emelye by force if necessary, while Arcite's honor and jealousy drive him to despair.
Arcite is eventually released but banished, only to return in disguise to serve in Theseus's household, where he gains proximity to Emelye. Palamon escapes prison and, by chance, the two meet in a grove and draw swords, prompting discovery and a formal contest decreed by Theseus. The duke arranges a grand tournament on a holy plain, complete with heraldry, rules, and appeals to gods for favor. Both knights call on different deities, Mars and Venus, while Emelye invokes Diana, asking for chastity. Arcite wins the tournament by Mars's favor, but fate intervenes: a sudden accident throws Arcite from his horse and mortally wounds him. In his dying hour he forgives Palamon and asks him to marry Emelye, and Theseus ensures the lovers are joined, while the tale closes with a sober reflection on fortune and the proper ordering of society.

Characters
Theseus functions as the authoritative center, a model of princely virtue who imposes law and adjudicates contests. Palamon embodies the passionate, plaintive lover whose sense of entitlement and romantic rhetoric align with courtly convention. Arcite, though equally devoted, is more pragmatic and concerned with reputation and honor. Emelye is idealized as the beautiful object of desire and the locus of conflicting male claims; her own voice and wishes are curtailed by the narrative, emphasizing the gendered constraints of aristocratic culture. Minor figures and mythic gods are woven into the plot to dramatize cosmic influences upon human affairs.

Themes
A central tension arises between fate and free will: characters appeal to gods and acknowledge fortune while still acting with human agency and ethical concern. Courtly love and chivalric honor are depicted both in their splendor and their limits; romantic valor yields spectacle and poetry but also violence and arbitrariness. The tale meditates on mortality and the vanity of human plans, with Theseus's rulings and the sudden reversal of Arcite's triumph underscoring the unpredictability of fortune. Social hierarchy and the restoration of order after conflict affirm aristocratic ideals of governance and justice.

Style and Influence
The narrative draws heavily on classical and Italian sources, notably Boccaccio's Teseida, but it reframes them within English aristocratic sensibilities and Middle English poetics. Chaucer's diction is elevated, ceremonial, and richly descriptive, invested in formal rhetoric, courtly speech, and lively battle scenes. The Knight's Tale helped shape later English treatments of romance and chivalry and remains a key text for understanding medieval notions of love, honor, and the interplay between human striving and providential uncertainty.