How is Love Perceived in The Knight 's Tale and Wife of Bath 's Tale?
The Knight 's Tale and Wife of Bath 's Tale are both love stories which show two different ways of love, one in a way where you love someone but cannot get to them and it slowly drains you because of that, and the other, when the man is already sad and given up, at the last moment he is back to loving, these two ways of loving are so different yet so alike in many ways, that 's why this analysis will show you the similarities and differences. Chaucer also uses a range of literary devices to give the story more meaning and creativity.
So the Knight 's Tale should be talked about first (even though it’s long and boring compared to the wife of bath 's tale) because it’s the first tale of all of the tales. There are two extremely close cousins (who might as well be brothers), Palamon and Arcite who are the nephews of the Duke of Thebes and they are captured in battle by the Duke of Athens and locked up in a tower, where there is a window (or should there not have been a window?), one day Palamon looks out of the window and see’s a beautiful woman (from a far distance) known as Emily and gives a huge groan, that very groan wakes Arcite up and Palamon blatantly tells Arcite to “come and look at this!” and of course Arcite falls more in love with Emily and they end up fighting over her, and losing all their camaraderie that they had with each other, another day (since there are no dates in this story) a friend
With each tale, there are different events that occur in order to reach the main topic of these tales. Within the Knight’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Tale, and the Pardoner's Tale, Chaucer does a phenomenal job in having these tales represent the societal problems of his era. Geoffrey Chaucer uses the Knight’s Tale to explains how love can corrupt the trust between two cousins. The knight is telling the story of Palamon and Arcita, two prisoners of wars that are locked up in a prison in the city of Athens. One day, the two look outside the prison window and see a fair young lady called, Emily.
After reading the prologue of the Wife of Bath’s Tale, it didn’t greatly astonished me. I don’t pictured women in the Middle Ages as second class citizens. In my opinion, they had more rights in Europe than they would in the Middle East or Africa today. If their husbands died, the wives were able to owe the land; the oldest child, despite being male or female, would inherit from their father; and can receive high positions (of course, not as high as the men). The most famous of all women in the Middle Ages is Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc.
What do women yearn for most? At times, most women cannot answer this ancient question. A substantial amount of women prefer money, never ending youth, to be wed, to be widowed, to be respected, or to be pampered; the list is infinite. In The Wife of Bath’s Tale, King Arthur’s knight rapes a young maiden; the punishment at this time was beheading. Yet, the King allowed the Queen to choose the consequences that the knight will suffer.
“Seeing is not always believing.” -Martin Luther King Jr. ("Seeing"). In life, what people see is not always what they get. Appearances can be deceiving and keeping up with expectations does not always occur.
Chaucer was inspired by his experience of pilgrimage. Two of them use a lot of imagery. However, I think the Wife of Bath’s Tale uses it in a more coherent way.
The Wife of Bath: An Analysis of Her Life and Her Tale The Wife of Bath’s Prologue stays consistent with the facts that experience is better than the societal norms, specifically those instilled by the church leadership. Chaucer uses the Wife of Bath to display the insanity of the church, but through switching and amplifying their view of men and chastity onto the opposite gender. The church doctrine at the time held celibacy in an idolized manner, forgetting the inability for humans to ever reach perfection, or live up to this standard. They also did not hold women in a high regard at all, again this is where Chaucer flips the role, as the Wife of Bath describes her five marriages in her prologue, essentially describing each as a conquest, where the result is her having all control.
Beowulf and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” are both narratives in which gender acts as an important theme within their individual communities; both have underlying meanings when it comes to defining what the role men and women in a good community should be. Or in other words, both stories paint a vivid picture of the role of women during the medieval time period, by suggesting that one gender had more power over another. However, these two narratives take alternative paths when expressing their views; Beowulf conveys its message through what is missing, while “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” incorporates satire and uses explicit narrative when telling the experience of a woman that is highly different from other women in her time. Furthermore, another difference that is appealing to the reader’s eyes, besides the way the two narratives reflect to women’s role in medieval times, is that men become the hero in Beowulf, while “the wife”, so a woman, becomes the authority figure in the story of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” I want to first introduce the two main differences between the two narratives and then I will explain how regardless of the differences, both of these narratives’ main goal is to show that women had less power and a good community back that time was male dominated.
In the pardoner's tales, the moral is how greed can destroy people. Whereas the moral in “The Wife of Bath Tale” applies to rape. In “The Pardoner's Tale”, Chaucer explains,“ No longer was it death those fellows sought, For they were so thrilled to see the sight, the gold was so beautiful and bright” (171-174). “And with that poison he could kill his friends. To men in such a state the Devil sends Thoughts of this kind, and has a full permission To lure them on to sorrow and perdition; For this young man was utterly content To kill them both and never to repent” (246-251).
In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” the knight’s punishment for raping a girl is to set out on a year long journey to find out what women desire most. This story is sexist portraying women in a negative light. The tale portrays women as tricksters and seducers.
He also utilized fabliaux to fill his stories with multiple sexual accounts that poke fun at the rules of courtly love. Chaucer’s humor had three main components – mockery, irony, and sadism. John, an older carpenter, with a young wife, is at the center of “The Miller’s Tale.” Chaucer mocks John for marrying a younger woman and the fact that their relationship does not follow the rules of courtly love. Courtly love suggests that jealousy strengthens relationships and equates to love.
On the other hand, in the tale she tells a story about a Knight who takes the maidenhood of a young girl which almost causes him to lose his life and about women gaining sovereignty. The Wife of Bath fifth husband, King Arthur, the Knight, and the Wife of Bath will be placed in Dante’s hell in the Inferno. The
Men and women both have the capability to deceive each other; yet, in the fifteenth century, a patriarchal society would blame women the most when it comes to dishonesty. In “The Wife of Bath's Prologue” and the “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” of The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer gives women the opportunity to defend their gender against the dominating male sex. Both texts describe the negative social views of women and how the Wife intends to correct them through her own gender perceptions plus the story of a young knight who learns the difference between truths and lies from a hideous, aging hag. Men should stop lying about women’s deception for both are equally capable; nonetheless, some lies are necessary for the truth to emerge, particularly,
The society of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl Poet written shows, how one is praised for his deeds. Within this society, love is defined as philia or the fondness of the individual. This form of love is a in the same category as eros. However, this love can only be obtained from others. More specifically, an individual has to carry out "actions that promote good" (Oord).
The theme pertaining to love and marriage in the “Knight’s Tale” is the inconvenience and ignorance of love. After being imprisoned by Theseus, two knights, Arcite and Palamon, both fall in love with the same woman by love at first sight. The fantasy over the beautiful, youthful woman, Emily, caused inconvenience between the two knights in addition to the ignorance of love. By sharing the same feelings of the same woman, Arcite and Palamon experience a great deal of inconvenience. The relationship between the two brothers, often labeled as cousins, was destructed over this.
Overview of ‘Courtly Love’ Courtly love, also called fins amors or refined love, is a notion of love which has no affiliation with marriage. This does not mean married people were excluded from courtly love; they just experienced it with someone outside their marriage. The concept was first introduced in medieval literature, but it eventually caught on in the royal courts.