A Knight

A detailed Summary of A Knight

Imagine a fire in your chest that so violently burns as bottomless and blistering as Satan's lair only to be caused by a razor-sharp dagger, tacitly resembling love, that pierces skin and bone and finally ends up centered in your heart. I can only imagine that this is the pain that Palamon and his cousin, Arcita, endure as they first set their eyes on Queen Hippolyta's sister, Emily, as she gracefully paces in the garden outside their dark and lonely prison. With this horrible burden, of not being able to love, that the bold knights mutually share, we are left to decide who amongst the two is in a more troublesome scenario. Each of knights in Chaucer's The Knight's Tale is presented with a most unfair situation in the complex world of love. How they act in response to their restricted love reveals a wealth of information about each knight, worth comparing and contrasting, and about the irony of how each cousin would rather have been dealt the other's cards and trade places with one another.

The two knights, Palamon and Arcita, are conveniently set up to lay their eyes upon a "fairytale" princess, Emily, and immediately fall in love with her. These knights hold many similarities and many differences that in each of their cases cau

Much can be seen and told about a character from his actions in a tale. In Palamon and Arcita's case they have more similarities than differences and it would seem right that way because they had nearly been brothers before this unfortunate complication arose. It tears these brave and bold knights apart from each other, but from bad comes some good. The greatest achievement in this tale is that the two knights attain peace with one another at the end of the story. They both receive exactly what they asked for: Palamon gets his wife, and Arcita wins the battle, and knowing this, the tale ends in perfect harmony with a slight twist.

se them to go to extremes to get to the one that they so dearly love. At first they both play with fire by calling each other a traitor and bickering back and forth over who deserves her. It is clear in the reading that Palamon is first to set eyes on Emily but Arcita insists on loving her as well. After Arcita compares their fight between them to two dogs fighting over a bone, he says "'...It's each man for himself and not for other. Love if you like; for I love and aye shall...'" (Chaucer, pg. 35). This quote shows that even though Arcita knows that Palamon fell in love with Emily first, Arcita is willing to sacrifice anything, including their relationship, to have the princess for his own. It is amazing that they were once cousins and best friends and now they are each other's sworn enemy.

At the beginning of the tale, both the knights are imprisoned supposedly for eternity, but as the tale evolves they both are freed and given equal opportunity to go and achieve their goal. Once they are free, the way they go about getting Emily brings forth some differences. Arcita is set free

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Approximate Word count = 1161
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English