An analysis of order and authority in the Knight’s Tale

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s host gives every pilgrim the challenge of telling each tale with the “best sentence and moost solaas” . The noun “sentence”, meant in Chaucer’s day a “judgment rendered by God, or by one in authority” . Therefore, pilgrims from the highest feudal order – the knight – to the lowest feudal order – the ploughman – compete to tell tales from the best authority. From the very creation of The Canterbury Tales’ narrative framework, Chaucer decentralises authority to the twenty nine pilgrims. Each of the tales contribute “a special artistic vision, and thus a special view of the world, to collection as a whole” . As Strohm argues, “Chaucer’s poetry offers an experience in which a hierarchy is postulated and then penetrated or otherwise qualified” . The Knight’s Tale offers such a “special view of the world” and therefore its own way contribute to the decentring of authority that the narrative creation of The Canterbury Tales creates.

 

In the Knight’s Tale, Chaucer “releases the force he sees in the Teseida by replacing the essentially external structural features of Boccaccio’s poem with structural patterns that expose much more the conflicting feelings and interests intrinsic to the story’s shape”. Agreeing with Windeatt, conflicting structures are central to the poem’s story and style, and these conflicting structures are, in essence, systems of authority which Chaucer juxtaposes to each other. Chaucer sets up two main systems of authority: chivalric authority and divine authority. The Knight’s Tale, has its own “realm of discourse, meaning that the work of art defines within itself a range of experience it will treat and structure the values that are to guide the reader’s judgments”. Chaucer initially constructs this chivalric ordering of violence through the patterns of ceremonial and ritualistic language. However, he then juxtaposes this with the realistic depiction chivalric warfare’s acute horror and thereby the failure of chivalry to order Palamon and Arcite’s chaotic feud. Thus, Chaucer critiques chivalric authority. However, chivalric authority is transcended by the planetary gods' deterministic authority. By examining Boethius’s philosophy of divine order, Chaucer subtly suggests that divine order fails to convincingly order chaos, too. Therefore, by firstly examining the ability of chivalric authority and divine authority to order chaos, it will become clear that Chaucer deconstructs single systems of authority and therefore critiques the idea of the centrality of authority and truth. What rhymes true across the Knight’s Tale and The Canterbury Tales’s framework is the decentralised nature of authority.

Though the Knight’s Tale announces itself to be a stable story of chivalric code through its style and narrator, and some critics have argued that “in the Knight’s Tale there is only one worldview, this stability is slowly deconstructed as the poem progresses and reveals the chaos underlying order. The realistic description of chivalry’s state in the fourteenth century – one of horror and suffering – critiques chivalry as a source of authority.

 

Chivalric order manifests itself here through a superficial ordering of battle. Chaucer opens the Tale by describing Theseus -

 

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,a

Ther was a duc that highte Thesesus;

Of Atthenes he was lord governour,

That gretter was ther noon under the sonne

 

From the beginning, Chaucer hyperbolises the greatness of Theseus, and therefore establishes Theseus as a synecdoche of idealised knightly values. He has “wisdom and his chivalrie”, has just “weddede the queene Ypoltia”. Theseus is well and truly “In al his wele and in his mooste pride”. This holds up through Theseus’s war of conquest, where Chaucer describes the conquest in the sequence -

 

So shyneth in his white baner large,

That alle the feeldes glyteren up and doun;

And by his baner born is his penoun

Of gold ful riche, in which ther was ybete

The Mynotaur, which that he slough in Crete.

Thus rit this duc, thus rit this conquerour.

 

Chaucer creates an initial battle that is ceremonial and ordered. The colours white, gold and red “glyteren”, creating a glamorous, rich and even beautiful scene of war. Both the banner and the statue are symbolic of constructing chivalric order out of the chaos of war, because of how banners represent the ordering of sides in conflict. Furthermore, the repeated sentence structure “thus rit this duc, thus rit this conqueror” contributes to a calm, ordered tone. As Frost puts is, “Chaucer created military elements of the poem by fusing his own knowledge of contemporary warfare with a classical tradition...the mixture is rich, allusive.”

 

The most important moment of how chivalry seems to be able to order chaotic fighting is how Theseus is able to order the fight between Palamon and Arcite. At first, the fight between Palamon and Arcite is outside of Theseus’s chivalric society and structure, such as when Arcite says -

 

We stryve as dide the houdnes for the boon;

...

And therefore, at the kynges court, my brother,

Ech man for himself, ther is noon oother.

 

Within the seeming chivalric order of the “knyges court”, reminiscent of Arthurian chivalric legend, there is anarchy which Chaucer creates through the dehumanising simile of the hounds, which also connote chaos in the afterlife, and the definition of anarchy: “Ech man for himself”.

 

However, at this stage, it is logical to think that Arcite and Palamon’s chivalric conflict be without order or authority. When Arcite leaves prison “And cladde hym as a povre laborer”, this symbolises Arcite’s mad love outside of chivalric authority, and the same goes for when Palamon escapes prison. The dehumanising simile continues as Chaucer describes how -

 

Thou myghtest wene that this Palamoun

In his fightyng were a wood leoun,

And as a crueel tigre was Arcite;

As wilde bores gonne they to smyte,

That frothen whit as foom for ire wood.

 

Theseus, who is associated with chivalric conquest in the beginning of the poem, interjects into the fight. This represents the imposition of order upon chaos – the fight is stopped and the organised – ordered – by a figure of authority. The fact that his happens in the woods is also significant – it is outside of ordered chivalric society, and “wood” etymologically originates from “wode”, Old English for “madness” or chaos. Theseus threatens to execute them as they are “so hardy for to fighten here / Withouten juge or oother officere,/ As it were in a lystes royally.” The court resurfaces again as a symbol of chivalric order. Furthermore, the decision of Theseus to create an ordered fight to resolve the conflict between Arcite and Palamon originates from “gentilesse”. Just as the beginning where the wailing women asked “ a drope of pitee, thurgh thy [Theseus’s] gentillesse”18, “pitee renneth soone in gentil herte” here, and Theseus chooses to organise a fight. This is crucial as it demonstrates how the entire construction of the order in the fight following this is built from chivalric gentilesse.

 

In the fight, there are a great deal of orderly features of its context, but the fight itself is just as chaotic and horrible as any war. Namely, the construction of the amphitheatre represents a human attempt to control and order the forces of chaos in fighting.

 

That swich a noble theatre as it was,

I dar wel seyn in this world ther nas.

The circuit a myle was a boute,

Walled of stoon, and dyched al without.

Round was the shape, in manere of a compass,

Ful of degrees, the heighte of sixty pas

 

The circularity of the amphitheatre as well as its geometric precision signify the extent to which the fight under Theseus is controlled and ordered. There is a great sense of ceremony to the organisation of the fight – the gates are made of “marbul whit”. As Salter argues, “this deliberate formalising language imposes a rhythmical pattern upon the Tale which is almost musical in its effect”. The elaborate description of the paintings of the deities’ temples are attempts to order chaos in art – meta - textually, they work like the very nature of the Knight’s Tale itself in that they are artistic attempts to order knightly order.

 

The pattern established here is that Theseus constantly attempts to order the chaotic fight between Palamon and Arcite and in a system of authority. This is seen in the grove as a symbolic space – first, the grove is outside of the human construct that is society and thereby symbolises “the chaotic violence of the cousins’ private duel and then, literally and figuratively, the attempted obliteration of that chaos with the physical structure of the lists and the civilized ritual of the tournament”.

 

However, for all the increasingly flagrant attempts of Theseus to order violence between Palamon and Arcite into his system of chivalric authority, the dark violence and chaos that the runs underneath the ritual does not leave – in fact, it only intensifies. Chaucer juxtaposes the glamorous battle scenes with the reality of the battle soon after. Just following the scenes telling Theseus’s conquest, Chaucer writes -

 

He fought, and slough hym manly as a knight

In pleyn bataille, and putte the folk to flight;

And by assaut he wan the citee after,

And rente adoun bothe wall and sparre and after

....

To ransake in the taas of bodyes dede

Hem for to strepe of harneys and wede

The pilour dide bisynesse and cure

 

Chaucer juxtaposes the initial glittering ceremony of Theseus’s conquest with the direct language of “taas of bodyes dede”. Moreover, the knights are now mere “pilours” who “ransake", which is not the language of high mediaeval romance but of low criminal activity. Chaucer thus sets up an initial glitter and righteousness to the authority of chivalry but then swiftly reveals its darker and violent reality.

 

For all the ceremony and ordering in the build-up to the tournament, as Terry Jones argues, the tournament itself is remarkably un-chivalric. The very creation of the tournament was against one of the conventions of the day – knights were supposed to take an oath that they would “only frequent tournaments to learn the exercises of war” and not use them as an opportunity for personal revenge. In the description of the tournament, Chaucer loses the formalistic language of the performance before the tournament, rather, he opts to bring back to the surface the imagery of wild beasts and physical horror -

 

Out goon the swerdes as the silver brighte;

The helmes they tohewen and toshrede

Out brest the blood with stierne stremes rede;

With mygthy maces the bones they tobreste.

 

Again, even in the most ordered and most chivalric event of the Knight’s Tale, the authority of chivalry and of Theseus fails to contain the chaos and violence unleashed by battle. In fact, the final fight between Arcite and Palamon is perhaps the most un-chivalric part of the poem. Palamon is wounded by Emetrius when he has his back turned – such behaviour is extremely unchivalrous and men who do so are compared to dogs in Havelock the Dane. This end of the tournament is historically absurd – a foul blow such as the one Froissart observed in 1381 would have certainly provoked indignation. Furthermore, as Jones argues, the way in which chivalry ceases being a source of authority for the knights deconstructs Theseus’s character as that of a fair judge and personification of order. After the battle, Theseus proclaims that -

 

... ‘Hoo! Namoore, for it is doon!’

I wol be trewe juge, and no partie.

Arcite of Thebes shal have Emelie,

That by his fortune hath hire faire ywonne.”

 

After having seen that what underlies chivalry is brute horror to an extent such that proclaiming the values of chivalry – fairness, gentilesse and the like – becomes impossible. Theseus making himself seem to be this “trewe juge” is a highly ironic depiction of how even though chivalry does nothing to order the forces of chaos in battle, it proclaims itself as a working system of authority.

 

Overall, then, Chaucer critiques chivalry as a system of authority because of how it is unable to meaningfully order the forces of chaos within battle, by juxtaposing the veil of chivalric order with the brute military reality of what chivalry had become by the 1380s. This is a crucial part of his overall decentralisation of authority, because its implications are that we cannot trust the claims made by chivalry as true. Truth from one source becomes doubtable; contributing to the overall decentralization of truth and authority.

Because of how inextricably linked the Knight’s Tale is with how Chaucer understood Boethius’s vision on the possibility of free will given God’s omnipotence and omniscience, it is key to understand this through Chaucer’s Boece. In Boece, Lady Philosophy convinces Boethius that it is possible for us to have free will and exist in the order and organisation of divine providence, which is the “pure clennesse of the devyne intelligence” and destiny.

 

Divine providence is eternal in the sense of “timeless” (meaning that it exists outside the human experience of time) rather than “everlasting” (meaning that it always has and will exist). The definition of divine providence as timeless separates divine intelligence and the development of human affairs. Providence is therefore the “unfolynge of temporal ordenaunce, assembled oonyd in the lokynge of devyne thought”, while destiny is “the same assemblynge and oonyng, devydedandn unfolden by tymes”. Whereas providence is divine “lokynge” outside of time, destiny is “lokynge” in time.

 

Humans can only see destiny, and not the whole system. Boethius’s analogy of “destinal ordenaunce” as “ywoven and accomplisid” explains the concept with the analogy of weaving: “the design of the whole will be perceptible only when the weaving is completed; while it is in progress the shifts in shape and colour may well seem random and confusing”. Therefore, then, free will is part of destiny, of the “moveable thynges” which makes up temporal reality. Hence, “necessitee” does not represent the intrusion of divine control into human affairs”

Perhaps, however, authority is still praised in the poem in a different form – where the human construct of chivalry fails, there is still the stable order and authority of God. In a very Boethian vision of the universe, the deconstruction of chivalric authority might suggest that human authority is meaningless within the larger cosmological authority of God. In the Knight’s Tale, this takes the shape of the fatalistic authority and ordering capability of the planetary gods. However, upon closer examination, it seems that divine authority too leads to suffering and chaos that seems too much for the appearance of order that it creates. The common area between chivalric and divine authority is the notion of hierarchy. The effect of furthering his critique to one of both chivalric and divine authority is to focus on the critique of hierarchy.

 

It seems that, in the poem, human affairs are minute compared to the great cosmological authority of the planets, and that humans are mere pawns to these gods. This is seen not only through direct and constant references to “destinee” or “hap”, but also frequent cosmological metaphors and symbols. This is seen in the may instances where Palamon or Arcite grieve about how they have been damned by fate, for example when Chaucer writes -

Thanne sayde he, “O crueel goddes that governe

This world with byndyng of youre word eterne,

And written in the table of atthamaunt

Youre parlement and youre eterne graunt,

 

The metaphor of the law and government returns but this time is affirmed to be true and constant, demonstrating that where human authority fails to order chaos, divine authority remains imperious. However, there seem to be many instances of the Tale’s fabula that seem to be the result of chance rather than destiny, suggesting a failure of divine authority to bring all under its deterministic order. For instance, it seems incredibly chanceful that Arcite happened go to Thebes where, seven years later, Palamon had just broken out of prison and happen to be in the same place at the same time. Though the characters very frequently appeal to fortune, the fortune and chance seem to be inextricably linked. Arcite even says “Wel hath Fortune yturned thee the dys”, where the metaphor of fortune rolling die somewhat paradoxically links order and seeming chaos, links chance and destiny together. However, Mann convincingly argues that chance can coherently be viewed as part of the overall system of destiny under the Tale’s Boethian vision. Mann argues that frequently in the narrative, there are chance events signalled by the pattern of key - word “aventure”, “cas”, or “hap”. It is “by aventure or by cas” that Palamon falls in love with his Emily, and his fate appears to be sealed. However, this is explained with the most Boethian part of the Tale - Theseus’s speech. As an act of consolation, Theseus’s speech separates itself from the rest of the poem by firmly attaching itself to a genre established in 1380, unlike the rest of the poem which is much harder to assign to a specific genre. The form of the speech already creates this sense of order and security. Theseus’s character has already been established as orchestrator of chivalric order, and he is also the representation of divine order on earth through this speech. His allusion to the “First Moevere” reminds us that there is a power beyond the planetary gods, and that only from this perspective will we understand destiny. Theseus declares -

Considereht eek how that the harde stoon

Undre oure feet, on which we trede and goon,

Yet wasteth it as lyth by the weye.

.....

Thanne may ye se that al thyng hath ende.

Of man and woman seen we wel also.

 

The repeated natural metaphors of the earth and river create the seemingly comforting explanation and consolation, but they only do insofar as they notice a pattern in small, individual events. Even in the consolation of Theseus’s speech, we are denied a vision of the whole system.

 

Until this point, Mann’s reading is convincing. However, her conclusion that “since man is bound to time and change, he must embrace these conditions of his existence” doesn’t seem to account for the totality of the horror in the Tale. The question that arises is whether or not divine authority truly works as a consolation in the Tale. Though Mann suggests that Theseus’s speech offers some certainty and consolation, it seems that when Theseus tells us that grief is useless since Arcite is now beyond gratitude, this doesn’t offer any meaningful consolation at all – it doesn’t face the problem, but attempts to escape it.

 

Muscatine’s reading of the poem, which is that order through this divine scheme is part of the story’s central structure and meaning might be a way to maintain the Tale’s Muscatine argues that order “characterises the framework of the poem, but is also at the heart of its meaning”. The amount of evidence which Muscatine provides for symmetry and order within the Tale’s construction is overwhelming: the character-grouping is symmetrical, the characters of Palamon and Arcite are more or less equal in terms of character, the description of the gods’ temples as well as the activities carried out by Palamon and Arcite are symmetrical. Other evidence such as the many patterns of imagery such as the one of military language, which dictates both the description of battle but also that of love and destiny, as Palamon “stongen were unto the herte” when he sees Emilye, and Saturn describes his own power to decide as “the stranglyng and hangyng by the throte”47, further strengthens Muscatine’s point that the text is linguistically and structurally ordered. For Muscatine, the presence of order, which is at its best in the divine order, in what seems to be chaos, is the story’s meaning. However, where Muscatine’s argument seems less convincing is that it implies the triumph of order over chaos, and thereby the victory of authority. One of the chief moments in which divine order is symbolised is through the paintings of the temples. In the painting of Mars’s temples, there seems to be hardly any order. Chaucer describes how

 

The hunte strangled with the wilde beres;

The sowe freten the child right in the cradle;

The cook yscalded, for al his longe ladel.

 

The image of the hunter being strangled by bears is, by contrast to the description of Emetrius and Lygurge who “hadde beres skyn”, symbolise the reversal of the natural order of man’s dominion and the failure of authority. Though Muscatine may argue that this represents the failure of human construction of authority, the fact that this persists in the description of Mars suggests a failure of order and authority to contain chaos within the divine itself. Furthermore, the way in which the description continues -

A wolf ther stood biforn hym at his feet

With eyen rede, and of a man he eet;

 

As Jones argues, “the resemblance to the Visconti emblem is unmistakeable”51, as a painting of the Visconti coat of arms below helps demonstrate -

Jones also explains how Bernabo marrying his niece into the English royal family in 1368 means that Chaucer must have been aware of the symbol and its meaning. This poses a great problem for Muscatine’s reading, for if the meaning of the poem is to value divine order, the existence of chaos, especially human chaos, within symbols of divine order contradicts the absoluteness of divine authority. Although Muscatine admits the existence of chaos, he only does insofar as chaos is “an antagonistic element”53 and an “ever-threatening possibility”54 . The poem seems to overwhelmingly portray chaos as an actuality rather than a potentiality, though, so Muscatine’s argument that divine authority successfully creates order seems weak. Not only this, but even when order exists, it seems ultimately meaningless. Chaucer describes Arcite’s funeral with an occupatio -

Ne what jewels men in the fyre caste,

Whan that the fyr was greet and brente faste;

Ne how somme caste hir shelf, and somme hir spere,

 

The juxtaposition between the ceremonial language of “jewels”, the military language of “spere” and the reality of Arcite’s burning body suggests that order in the face of seemingly unfair death, is meaningless. Though the patterns of ritualistic, ceremonial and military language continue in renewed attempts to create order, they are ultimately far less meaningful than the fire that “brente faste”. Chaucer’s occupatio, tells the reader that the narrator cannot describe the funeral, and yet Chaucer goes on to describe it in minute detail. This oxymoronic use of the occupatio (devoting a lot of narrative time though the technique usually shortens narrative time) suggests that all the meaning and order created by the ritualistic language in the funeral is ultimately meaningless – the relentless anaphora of “Ne” or “Nor” remind us that all the ritual and order mean nothing in face of Arcite’s unfair death.

By demonstrating the failures of chivalric authority and divine authority to order chaos in a meaningful and good way, Chaucer’s overall goal in the opening part of The Canterbury Tales is to deconstruct the stability offered by authority and instead explore a feeling of uncertainty, or aporia. Whereas the failure of chivalric authority to create order seems perhaps logical in the sense that Chaucer is, in a trait of realism, critiquing chivalry in the late fourteenth century, the failure of divine authority seems a much more difficult issue one to resolve clearly. However, the very existence of uncertainty of whether we are destined or not, and whether there is a greater authority that shapes the universe furthers the doubt in hierarchical authority that Chaucer starts in his critique of chivalry. Though there is huge critical debate on the extent to which Palamon and Arcite are free – Mann suggests that they are, while Salter argues that they are “envisaged as pawns in a game played by the gods”, within both those readings there exists uncertainty and aporia. Certain truth from authority, especially hierarchical authority, seems impossible for Chaucer.

Chaucer, G., 1963. Chaucer's Major Poetry. New Jersey: PRENTICE-HALL.

 

Chaucer, G., 1988 (Originally written 1382-1388). Boece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Cripps-Day, F., 1982. History of Tournament in England and France. London: Ams Pr Inc.

 

Frost, W., 1949. An Interpretation of Chaucer's "Knight's Tale". The Review of English Studies, October, 45(100), pp. 289-304. https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.rXejWyh4HZ8EHUVpQjiehAHaIm?pid=ImgDet&rs=1https://www.etymoline.com/word/Sentence

 

Jones, T., 1980. Chaucer's Knight - The portrait of a medieval mercenary. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

 

Mann, J., 1986. Chance and destiny in Troilus and Criseyde and the Knight's Tale. In: J. M. Piero Boitani, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 75 - 93.

 

Muscatine, C., 1950. Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer's Knight's Tale. PMLA, 65(5), pp. 911 - 929.

 

Salter, E., 1962. Chaucer: The Knight's Tale and the Clerk's Tale. London: Butler & Tanner Ltd..

 

Spiers, J., 1951. Chaucer the Maker. London: Faber and Faber.

 

Strohm, P., 1986. The Social and Literary Scene in England. In: J. M. Piero Boitani, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1 -19.

 

Whittock, T., 1968. A Reading of the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Windeatt, B., 1986. Literary structures in Chaucer. In: J. M. Piero Boitani, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 195 - 213.