The
Knight's Tale
1. In Middle English
The Knight's
Tale at the UVa Electronic Text Center.
Read the
Knight's Tale in the context of Fragment
I - Group A.
Read Chaucer's short lyric Trouthe
(Representative Poetry Online, U of Toronto), embodying a chivalric value
crucial to the Knight's portrait in the General Prologue:
- A Knyght ther was, and that a worthy
man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie. (I [A].43-46)
2. In Modern English Translation
The
Electronic Library Foundation's edition of the Canterbury Tales,
accessible by individual tale & available in a variety of formats: Middle
English, Modern English, Facing Page, & Interpolated/Glossed (frames; from unknown
base text).
- Although unsuitable for formal research or college work, the
ELF is the best online version for younger readers and those unfamiliar with Middle
English.
Skip
Knox's selection
of Canterbury Tales in Modern English (Boise State) includes the Knight's Tale
(from an unknown base text).
3. Historical & Cultural Backgrounds
The Crusades
(Paul Halsall, IMSB) offers a full range of primary sources on the Crusader Era from Urban
II's pivotal address in 1095 to the fall of Acre in 1291, including accounts of the
Crusading Orders.
The Western Orientalism
section of IMSB contains texts from Western European travelers as they describe the
"exotic" lands of the East.
Knights, Warfare, Weapons, and Tournaments:
Steven
Muhlberger (Nipissing U) has put together a very fine compilation of
chivalric texts entitled, Deeds
of Arms: A Collection of Accounts of Formal Deeds of Arms of the
Fourteenth Century. These are, in fact, accounts of tournaments (in
original languages and in translation) as opposed to fictionalized
accounts. Included in the riches here are
- The 1351 Combat of the Thirty
- The Smithfield Tournament of 1390
- The life-and-death duel between James le
Gris and John de Carogne (Froissart, Religieux)
See also Muhlberger's Historical
Materials on Knighthood and Chivalry and Fighting
for Fun? What was at Stake in Formal Deeds of Arms of the 14th Century?
Elizabeth Bennett (Princeton) has provided a
facing page translation of Rene
d'Anjou's traictié de la forme et devis d'ung tournoy.
Bennett notes "The tournament book describes a style of tournament
which René says he has adapted from the ancient customs of France and
other countries. Although René describes this tournament in vivid detail,
we do not know if such a tournament was ever held in the fifteenth
century."
The
Association for Renaissance Martial Arts has an extensive site that
puts the meat and bones back into the romantic accounts of medieval
warfare, and it's chock full of articles
explaining and images
illustrating forms of medieval
combat and types of weapons. A rich site indeed that focuses on late
medieval (and Renaissance) combat. See especially:
Other
Websites Concerning Knights, Warfare, and Tournaments:
4. Sources, Analogues, & Related Texts
TEAMS Middle English Text
Series (Russell Peck, URochester) houses a number of lesser known and
hard to find medieval texts in helpful student editions. A generous and fascinating
selection not to be missed! Each selection includes a scholarly introduction
and full notes. Some of the selections related to the Knight's Tale
include:
- The Canterbury Tales:
Fifteenth-Century Continuations and Additions
(ed. John M. Bowers), Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute
Publications, 1992.
- John Lydgate: The Siege of Thebes
(ed. Robert R. Edwards), Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute
Publications, 2001.
"All
TEAMS texts are under copyright, whether in hard copy or in electronic
form. The on-line texts provided here are meant for individual use only.
To download and make multiple copies for course use, you must have
permission from the managing editor of Medieval
Institute Publications."
Boethius's Consolation
of Philosophy, from the W.V. Cooper translation. (London: J.M. Dent, 1902). A key text
for understanding the Knight's Tale.
A brief summary of Andreas Capellanus' The Art of Courtly Love.
For other views of medieval chivalry, you might peruse one of the greatest of all
Middle English poems, Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, or the famous crusading epic, The Song of Roland.
You'll
find some helpful and interesting information at Middle
English Romances: An Online Companion (S. Shepherd, SMU), the WWW site for the
Norton Critical Edition of the same name.
5. Online Notes & Commentary
Discussion and links concerning the Knight's Tale on Larry D.
Benson's superlative Geoffrey Chaucer Page
(Harvard). Includes e-texts of scholarly essays, sources and ancillary texts, and capsule
discussions of key issues. Some of the items related to the Knight's Tale include:
Jane
Zatta's The Knight's Tale, part 1
& The Knight's Tale, part 2,
contains discussion and images relevant to the Knight's high romance (SIU Edwardsville).
6. Online Articles and Books
Peer Reviewed Articles
Louise O. Fradenberg's Sacrificial
Desire in Chaucer's Knight's Tale," Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies 27.1 (1997), 47-75 takes a Lacanian view of
the KnT.
Helen Barr's "Chaucer's
Knight: A Christian Killer," The English Review 12.2 (2001), np
takes on the claim that the Knight was a mercenary. From Grover
Wonderbrook's geocities.com website.
Academic Books
An important work of gender criticism in Chaucer studies is Elaine Tuttle Hanson's Chaucer and
the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992).
H. Marshall Leicester's The Disenchanted Self: Representing the
Subject in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley: U of California P,
1990).
Richard Neuse reads Chaucer through the
lens of the great Italian poet Dante in Chaucer's Dante:
Allegory and Epic Theater in The Canterbury Tales. (Berkeley: U
of California P, 1991).
Charles Ross traces the courtly tradition in The Custom of the Castle: From Malory to Macbeth
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1997).
Aldo Scaglione details a wide variety of knightly practices in Knights
at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the
Italian Renaissance (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992).
R.A.
Shoaf's online postprint Dante, Chaucer, and
the Currency of the Word devotes Chapter 10 to "Fragment A and the
Versions of the Household"
Chaucer Sourcebook, from the
Harvard Chaucer Page, offers a number of classic and professional essays from noted
Chaucerians, including:
- David Aers, "Imagination, Order and
Ideology: The Knight's Tale," from Chaucer, Langland, and the Creative
Imagination, 1980, pp. 175-95.
- Susan Crane, ""Medieval Romance
and Feminine Difference in the Knight's Tale," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12
(1990): 47-63.
- Charles Muscatine, ""The Knight's Tale,"
Chaucer and the French Tradition, pp. 175-190.
- Larry
D. Benson, The
Tournament in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes & L'Histoire de
Guillaume Le Maréchal Chivalric Literature: Essays on Relations
between Literature & Life in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Larry D.
Benson & John Leyerle. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1980.
2-24.
- All articles on the Harvard Chaucer Page reprinted by
permission.
Sarah
Stanbury, "Visibility
Politics in Chaucer's Knight's Tale," from the Conference Proceedings of
"Cultural Frictions: Medieval Studies in Postmodern Contexts," 27-28
October 1995. Cite as web document.
Other Studies
Chaucer's
Knight, the Tale of Melibee, and the SocioHistorical Implications of
Pilgrimage, from the very interesting website of Frederick Martin and
his project Whitecrow
Borderland, which is concerned with articulating a Native American
cultural philosophy.
Essays in Medieval Studies,
full-text articles from the proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, edited by
Allen J. Frantzen (Loyola - Chicago).
Keeping in mind the Knight's portrait in the General Prologue and Theseus's
grand tournament between Palamon and Arcite for the hand of Emily, see
Steven Muhlberger's excellent overview of the knightly ethos in Fighting
for Fun? What was at Stake in Formal Deeds of Arms of the 14th Century?
Thomas
Honegger has written a sophisticated linguistic analysis in 'Yif
me my love, thow blisful lady deere' : Forms of Address in Chaucer's The
Knight's Tale (U of Zurich).
7. Student Projects
Matthew
Markland, a student of Susan Yager (Iowa State) prepared a hypertext report on Chaucer's Poetry: The
Boethian Poems, whose content is pertinent to the Knight's Tale.
Anniina Jokkinen's Essays and Articles on Chaucer
includes a number of sample student essays, of varying quality. Like any other
source, student essays must be evaluated rigorously, cited correctly, and used
responsibly. Jokkinen also compiles a number of resources by Canterbury
Tale: The
Knight's Tale
8. Online Bibliography
Steven Mulberger's Select
Bibliography on Medieval Tournaments (Nipissing U).
William Vincenti's
Chivalry Bibliography (Montclair State U).
From Association for Renaissance Martial Arts: General
Reference Books on Medieval Arms & Armor or Medieval Warfare
9. Syllabi & Course
Descriptions
10. Images & Multimedia
See the
Knight's Portrait from the Ellesmere Manuscript, one of the two
earliest compilations of the Canterbury Tales (Huntington Library, San
Marino, California).
From Association for Renaissance Martial Arts: Insights
from Historical Sources features a load of images and "representations
of foot combat from various sources of Medieval and Renaissance combat art"
(11th-17th century)
11. Language Helps & Audio Files
Sample
audio files (.wav, .au, .aiff) from the Knight's
Tale, read by Alan T. Gaylord and recorded at Dartmouth College in 1994, are available
from the Chaucer Studio (Paul Thomas, Brigham Young).
12. Potpourri
Warfare
and armor, mostly from enthusiasts and hobbyists:
Maps
13. The
Next Step
How to Document
Print & Electronic Sources:
The Chaucer Pedagogy
Documentation Primer
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