The Knights tale. Right before reading his tale I began imagining how a knight’s tale would go in such a time. What I have as a mental picture of a knight is one with armor, a horse, and a quest which he must achieve to save his ideals, girl, kingdom, or the world. My expectations were pretty much like the ones I explained just moments ago.
But as I read I realized that this wasn’t the knight’s tale, but a story the Knight was telling. With this said I’d like to comment on the tale the character is telling.
His story is based, from what I understood, of three men of Greece, Theseus (governor of Athens), Arcite, and Palamoun (war prisoners). They are both incarcerated together and fall in love with a woman that they see every day named Emelye. I don’t know why but until this point the story seemed very familiar. I thought I may have heard this story before, and as I continued it began to look very familiar. The dilemma that the knight proposes, of who is happier, Arcite who is free but can’t see the women he loves, or Palamoun who can see her but is in jail.
"1347 Yow loveres axe I now this questioun:
1348 Who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamoun?"
This rhetorical question made me think a lot. In my opinion the worse situation is Palamoun’s since he is tempted every day by just seeing Emelye. While Arcite isn’t tempted, though he is always thinking about her, but he mustn’t suffer the torture of seeing her every day and knowing you can’t have her. This question is very interesting, it states a moral dilemma that most of us have had to deal or will have to deal sometime in our life.
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