MEDIEVAL WARFARE

read The Knight’s Tale at the Harvard Chaucer Page. Which is fine€“this is in Middle English with a Modern English Translation under each line. First link below is the summary / intro page to the tale; the second takes you to the interlinear translation.

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/knight/.

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/kt-par0.htm

Line numbers and book divisions (I-III) are for the Harvard Chaucer Page:

I. focus on book I of the Knight’s Tale. Pay special attention to ll. 893-1024, and lines 1157-1354.

First respond to ALL these questions THEN at the end of the essay response, CREATE a question of your own that makes us think and allows for discussion; include it at the bottom of the essay.

The 4 prompt or essay questions are [put the # of the question at the beginning of the answer]:

1) How is it that Theseus acts honorably toward the women who have lost husbands and sons yet refuses to allow Palamon and Arcite to be ransomed? Think about the contradiction here€”He honors the dead soldiers, yet refuses the honorable way of restoring the living ones to their families.

2) What does this contradiction say about Theseus’s idea of honor? Where is it situated? In the tension between Theseus as a model of chivalry and a man who embodies Mars, the god of war, how does he come out?

Because of Theseus’s decision to refuse the right of ransom (a courtesy granted amongst the nobility), Palamon and Arcite are doomed to live in a very small world for a warrior: they are essentially imprisoned at court€”stuck in a cell with each other and a view of the court (garden in which Emelye walks).

Under these circumstances romance takes precedence over war.
Yet the battlefield has not disappeared; it’s just been co-opted and distorted into the battle over Emelye.

In this battle, Palamon and Arcite redefine themselves and their alliance and bond of loyalty they have with each other. They adapt the some of the impulses and ideals of the battlefield (conquest, loyalty, and honor) to love. In the contest over love, the argument turns to the question of which man is the most worthy lover and who has most right to Emelye.

Everything that happens now has to seen as a response to their lack of any real hope. Their future has been taken away from them.
The scope of their actions has been reduced €“their vision is narrowed to tiny garden;
Note that the question for which they demand an answer is therefore not : who acts honorably, but rather who loves lady first? (1145, 1152)

3) So . . . . What does this change in scope and focus say about how their moral compass has changed?
To think more about this problem€”how they are trying to manage a life so narrowed and without escape€“take a look at the arguments they use on each other. Look at the shifting vocabulary that comes along with their distorted sense of proportion and conflict, esp from line 1160 and following.

4) Looking at this segment, think: What kinds of ideas and images become the basis for arguing about their honor and their rights? How do they describe themselves? Emelye? By what principles do they should be judged? By what principles are they judging each other?
Now compare: By what principles does the narrator ask that these cousins be judged by his audience? (last few lines of Book 1).