Geoffrey Chaucer's Nameless Knight
Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, is a popular story about a pilgrimage taken by 30 people, including himself, to Canterbury, England. It starts with a general prologue that helps break down each of the characters. The reader gets an understanding of who the people are that are travelling on this pilgrimage. Certain characters are part of each of the three estates that
Chaucer describes, which are the people who pray, the people who fight, and the people who work. The specific characters he uses for the clergy members are the monk, friar, and prioress, the knight, the squire, and the yeoman are all part of the nobility class, and the workers are the miller, the reeve, and the pardoner. Chaucer ridicules and problematizes the
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Francis Townsend, the author of "Chaucer 's Nameless Knight," seems to prove this through Chaucer 's ironic writing. Townsend uses comparison to prove how the knight is an oxymoron. He compares Chaucer 's knight to Florent from Confessio Amantis. He uses examples that Florent is well liked because "of his high standing as a knight and his noble lineage," while
Chaucer 's is really only liked by the queen and the ladies who "plead for him" (Townsend).
Chaucer 's knight really does not deserve or gain the proper respect as a true, noble knight during this time but he was not the only noble man that Chaucer mocked.
The knight always travelled with two other people, his son known as the squire and the yeoman. The squire is not like his father really at all. He is known more as the new chivalry. He fights but he also writes, dances, draws, and composes music. The younger knights are more known for fighting the nation rather than their faith like the knight. The squire does not just have fun doing all of those things but he is known as quite the ladies’ man. Chaucer describes
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Chaucer’s descriptions were extremely detail oriented about each of the character’s appearance but his real reasoning behind his character descriptions were to show the true irony of the three estates. Chaucer was illustrated with his depiction of the three estates and accurately ridiculed and problematized each class and members of the classes through satire, irony, and oxymoron throughout his entire general prologue. The audience is able to get a comical understanding of how these three estates worked long ago and the people who were involved in each
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