Chaucer with his pants down:

Ideological blunders in 'The Knight's Tale'

by

Jack Brimhall

“A striking feature of The Canterbury Tales is its encyclopedic diversity of genres. They range from courtly romance to racy fabliaux and from saints’ legends to sermons, to form a multilayered scheme of more or less formulaic genres including the secular and the religious, the humorous, and the solemn” (Taavitsainen 192). These same genres that appear throughout The Canterbury Tales are essentially created by the ideology of the person telling them. Whether it be the Knight informing of courtly love or the Prioress of saints’ lives; all are molded to fit their own individual ideology. Whether consciously or not, all the characters on this journey are constantly being hailed by that same ideology. Louis Althusser calls this hailing – interpellation (244).

You see, according to Althusser “ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all)” (245). All of the players in the Knight’s Tale, even thought fictional, are transformed because Chaucer himself constructs these individuals through his own ideology which he cannot escape. He is hailed, hence the Knight and others are hailed.

Ideologies can be seen in the Knight’s Tale from the very first line. The Knight begins his story with, “Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,” which can be translated into, “once upon a time.” (Chaucer 37). Here, the Knight makes a direct reference to history. This history is an image of what the prevailing ideology used to be. Since, the ideology has evolved and consequently gained a history. This is how ideologies are born into existence.

The Knight, in order to convey the tale with the most sentence and solas (joy and meaning), in order to acquire himself a lavish dinner, decides on a story that is ideologically driven. His choice is fueled with his own individual ideology. In a sense, not just the Knight, but all the characters are bound and hailed by ideology.

The question of being hailed by ideology does present one very real ideological problem in the Knight’s Tale. If we, as subjects, are bound by our own ideology, then how does change occur? For example, on numerous occasions Theseus has abrupt changes in his own ideology. For instance, when Palamon and Arcite become involved in a corporeal disagreement, the Duke immediately sentences them both to death. He was playing off of his own ideology that requires law and order for a civil society to govern properly. However, with a small amount of pleading from the ladies of the Court, the Duke changes his mind and decides on a joust between the two – with the victor winning the hand of Emelye.

So why this impulsive revolution of ideology? According to Althusser, “ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (241). Real conditions change and, in-turn, subjects change as well, but in a collective whole. According to Gabrielle Spiegel, a literary historian, people don’t want change, yet they continually try and “dehistoricize literature” (62).

On the surface, this seems like a direct paradox in relation to The Canterbury Tales. In all of the stories, characters are embracing history with recounts of the old. However, when examined closely, the tales are in-fact just representations of society at the time. The tales are interpellated as subjects by the prevailing ideology of the time. The Knight’s Tale doesn’t plunder into the depths of history, but diametrically mimics the society that is already present.

The Knight’s Tale is particularly important in its use of genres. The Knight’s story is filled with love, chivalry, honor, and adventure. It has knights, duels, and revolves around a Duke named Theseus, who I mentioned earlier. Theseus was very prominent – for he was the governor of Athens and also a heroic solider. It is fitting that the Knight chose a story that involved valiant characters such as Theseus, along with chivalric topics. The Knight was himself a distinguished man. He had fought in bravely in many religious wars, both Christian and heathen. He was the ideal character of Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Because the Knight was the most ideal and socially prominent person on the journey, he was interpellated in telling a story of this nature. He was interpellated by his own view, adapted from society, that believed the story with the most sentence and solas (joy and meaning) would be one that implicated such intrepid characters and courtly love.

The Knight was constructed, not solely by Chaucer, but by the preceding folklore that engulfed Europe during the time. However, the Knight does have a “self-effacing humility redolent of Chaucer’s narratorial persona” (Hardwick 150). This image is ultimately derived from Giovanni Boccaccio, the great medieval poet, as is the whole of the Knight’s Tale, “but whereas Boccaccio specifically addresses his private muse, Chaucer, through the Knight, addresses his audience in general” (Hardwick 150). Chaucer was just applying re/cognition, not to a system of “real relations which govern the existence of individuals,” but to “the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live” (Althusser 242). Chaucer was directing his ideology the Althusserian way, “using the imaginary relationship of individuals of the relations of production and the relations that derive from them” (Althusser 242). He exploits love as an unconscious conduit to instinctively accomplish this.

This epic romance uses this type of courtly love as its life support. This “love is an essential element in character description in the Knight’s Tale, and it provides motivation for the plot” (Taavitsainen 193). However, when examined closely – love is what causes the Knight’s Tale to flat line; to directly contradict the ideology that it tries to represent. For example, according to David Aers, an established medieval literature critic, the prominent love in the tale was “ideal love” (96). He was of course referring to the love that both Arcite and Palamon share for the fair Emelye. This view is also prominent in many other literary journals. Ideal love of this kind completely lacks sensuality. It is a true and platonic love – the highest love one can have. Well, what if Aers and other prominent Chaucerian scholars are wrong? What if the Knight’s Tale is based on nothing more than lust – the type of sensual and unromantic lust that one might see in the Reeve’s Tale? If this were true it would surely contradict the ideology of the Knight as well as the ideology that the tale tries to represent – wouldn’t it? Yes, it would and does.

Lets examine closely the relationship that both Arcite and Palamon have with Emelye. First, the beautiful Emelye was introduced only after both Arcite and Palamon had spent several years in prison. One day while the two lay in the prison tower Palamon glances down through the prison bars and first eyes the stunning Emelye. The situation is recalled, “in a morowe of May,/ That Emelye, that fairer was to sene/ Than is the lylie upon his stalke grene…” (39). The sight of this stunning female is the extent of Palamon and Arcite’s relationship with her. The love that Arcite and Palamon show is portrayed as an “ideal love” because it was the ideology of the knight. This was to be a noble story about noble love. The Knight could have never told a story that involved such sensual inclinations as in the Miller’s Tale. The only story that could fit the Knight’s ideology would be one of chivalry, honor, and ideal love. The problem I propose is that the love that Arcite and Palamon show for Emelye is purely sensual love disguised, by ideology, as ideal love. This so-called ideal love is not similar to Romeo and Juliet, but Romeo and Rosaline.

When Palamon first eyes the lovely Emelye, he cries out in pain with an astounding “A!” Arcite, startled, asks the strident Palamon what the dilemma is. Here, a profuse amount of overwhelming evidence can be found to support my argument of sensual love. He replies, “Cosyn, for sothe, of this opinioun/ Thow hast a veyn ymaginacioun/ This prison caused me not for to crye,/ But I was hurt right now thurghout myn ye/ Into myn herte, that wol my bane be./ The fairnesse of that lady that I see” (40).

With one glance, one sight, Palamon is instantaneously in love. He had never spoken to her or even been adjacent to her. Her devastating beauty, nothing else, exclusively interested him. This is not an ideal love, but a sexual one. However, Chaucer tries to utilize the ideology from the rest of the tale in order to camouflage this love as ideal. He wants the reader to submit to love at first sight; a love that one rarely reaches – that stops time and brings a joy that only a deity could possess. However, don’t be deceived by Chaucer’s trickery. Before one jumps to conclusions either way, lets look at the facts. First, we have a man who has been locked up with another man for over two years without any female contact. Second, the only luxury Palamon and Arcite have is gazing out a barred window. Third, from all the accounts of the text, Emelye has astonishing looks. The fact that Palamon reacts in the way he did can be attributed to his sorrowing situation, not love. He is a lonely man locked up with without any female contact at all.

This sensual love is hard to spot because it is inconsistent with the rest of the tale. Just take a look at the transgressions in the rest of the story. First, Palamon and Arcite end their friendship over their competing love for Emelye. Second, Even though he is let go, on the condition that he is banished forever, Arcite feels that Palamon is in a better position because he can still spy Emelye through the barred window. Arcite may have earned his freedom back, but only at the price of never seeing Emelye again. Arcite says, “Allas that day that I was born!/ Now is my prisoun worse than biforn;/ Now is me shape eternally to dwelle/ Noght in purgatorie, but in helle./ Oonly the sighte of hire whom that I serve,/ Though that I nevere hir grace may deserve” (42). He would rather be locked up and see Emelye than be free and never see her again. Third, for the hand of Emelye, Arcite and Palamon fight in a duel that Arcite is ultimately killed in. These actions are definitely not characteristic of sensual love. However, don’t let those instances fool you.

Before I begin my repudiations to those points, it is important to realize that Chaucer uses Arcite and Palamon as nothing more than pawns in order to convey two characters that were willing to fight for the love of a beautiful lady. However, Chaucer makes a fundamental mistake in that both characters are “unable either to act or to seek, to display valor in a worthy fight ‘against a common enemy’ or to go anywhere without difficulty, they are vassals without a lord, knights without deeds. They are faceless, formless, difficult to name, difficult to see, difficult to understand” (Bergan 4). And they are supposed to be the heroic ones in the tale?

The fact is that on the surface they both make suitable characters for the role of the heroic soldier fighting for his woman. How was Chaucer to know that hundreds of years later a thing called critical theory would be invented and that some inane student would apply that same critical theory to his text in order to profess that there are deep-rooted errors in his two valiant characters? Chaucer was situated in regard to his conditions of existence. He was born into ideologies and didn’t even realize it. He didn’t realize ideological inconsistencies with his depiction of love, yet we can see it because we are on the outside looking in. You have to be outside of ideology to say that you’re in ideology. This is what Althusser dubs as being “always-already” a subject of ideology (246).

Now that my disclaimer is finished, what about my earlier points that directly contradict sensual love? First, the fact that Palamon and Arcite end their friendship over a beautiful woman is not that unrealistic. The text does not directly infer that they were ever friends in the first place, just soldiers together in battle as well as prisoners. The knowledge to the extent of their friendship is unknown and therefore extraneous.

Second, Arcite’s disappointment of being freed, and unable to eye the stunning Emelye, is insignificant. First, both Arcite and Palamon share a “foolish and misguided bravery” (Bergan 4). As I mentioned earlier, Arcite has problems going anywhere without difficulty, even if that means to freedom. If Arcite truly loved Emelye, he would be best off, as is later shown in the text, by being freed and sneaking back in the country. By staying in prison, Arcite could have never truly been with Emelye. Being released was the only way that he could genuinely prove his ideal love. The fact that he can’t see this, completely discredits his common sense as well as the incentives behind his love. He can’t see my point because he is within ideology. You see, ideology is centered and an “Absolute Subject” occupies that unique place of the center (Althusser 248). So if you have to be outside of ideology to recognize ideology and Arcite, as the “Absolute Subject” is in the center of ideology, how would he see it? He was trapped in ideology as a subject by becoming interpellated by a strong ideology of the time that romanticized love at first sight.

But what about the fact that he died in a duel trying to obtain her love? This can be dismissed with a little examination of the text. First, this was nothing more than a pseudo battle – not a fight to the death. In fact, the Duke even states, “No man therfore, up peyne of los of lyf” (59). Also, Arcite’s death was completely unexpected and accidental. He was killed while taking a victory lap when his horse mysteriously threw him to the ground. The truth is, neither Palamon nor Arcite expected to die in the duel. They were both interpellated by the chivalric ideology that engulfs this tale. They wanted to win the heart of their love by fighting in an illustrious battle.

More evidence of Chaucer altering the chivalric ideology of the times can be seen in the Knight’s portrait. “Of fustain he wered a gypon/ Al bismotered with his habergeon…” (Chaucer 24). Translated, his tunic and coarse cloth were all stained from rust by his coat of mail. This Knight lacks the typical “costume rhetoric” of the ideal knight of romance; “no matter that Chaucer enumerates several ideal chivalric virtues in the Knight’s portrait, through his costume rhetoric he contradicts chivalric values and gives us a knight in dirty clothes where the idealized knight wears an embroidered coat of arms” (Hodges 275).

Chaucer depicting of a non-characteristic ideal Knight, and by having him spout an ideological corrupt tale, demonstrates how the tale manifests incorrect ideological assumptions. The Knight’s Tale reveals a supposed courtly ideology, however, by Chaucer showing these contradictions in the Knight, he reveals his own inconsistencies.

Chaucer was trying to reveal an image of the late fourteenth-century “Every-Knight” (Hodges 275). Chaucer’s point here was to show that a knight “fulfilled of heigh prowess,” in reality, “might well look battered and disheveled" (Hodges 275). He wanted the reader to realize that the nomadic lifestyle of a knight errant, with its episodic confrontations, would have fashioned certain difficulties of personal maintenance; “Perspiration, rain, rust, not to mention blood stains, would necessitate the cleaning of armor and clothes” (Hodges 275). However, Chaucer’s contemporaries largely ignored these problems. Again, Chaucer runs into some major problems with inconsistencies. He wants to portray the “Every-Knight,” yet bolsters up this Knight with a morally flawless likeness that even a king would adore. Chaucer’s main problem here is that he seems to be ideologically everywhere.

These ideological blunders that Chaucer makes, derive from the fact that the Knight himself is Chaucer’s material practice. Chaucer, like the Knight, was also a soldier. He was also “an esquire of the king’s household, a member of diplomatic missions, a controller of customs, a justice of the peace, a member of Parliament, the clerk of the kings works in charge of building and repair at ten royal residences, and a forest official” (Chaucer xv). He was as, if not more, socially prominent than the Knight. Chaucer uses the Knight as a bridge in order to convey his own persona. You didn’t really believe that Chaucer was depicting himself in the host did you?

For Chaucer, the Knight functions as a critique of courtly love and chivalry, and is based on previous work by his contemporary poets such as Boccaccio, and an overriding sense of European culture during the fourteenth century. This critique itself reveals Chaucer’s construction within ideology. The fact that Chaucer’s attitudes compare with others of the time makes him “abstract” with respect to the subject which he always-already is (Althusser 246).

There is overwhelming evidence that the Knight’s Tale obtains its plot through the work of existing ideologies that Chaucer and his characters encompass. Chaucer himself has a very pertinent role in the tales; he plays the part of the subject. By playing the subject and working within ideology, certain areas of the Knight’s Tale, such as an abundant amount of inconsistencies, become convoluted. I believe Chaucer’s goal in writing the Canterbury Tales was to create a narrative of stories that would encompass sentence and solas according to the ideology of the reciting character at hand. The problem in trying to achieve a tale with an abundant amount of sentence and solas, particularly in the Knight’s Tale, while completely adhering to that ideology, was that it would be very problematic. If Chaucer included real ideal love and became ideologically non-partisan, which is essentially impossible by the way, extra plot would surely have to be added. As is – the Knight’s Tale has almost three thousand lines. Instead, Chaucer deliberately uses instances – while faulty at the base – that point to a purely ideal love, which contribute to the distortion of other ideologies as well. This misleading tactic, along with the use of ideology, causes the Knight’s Tale to have a corrupt central theme.

©2000 Jack Brimhall. All Rights Reserved.
Published by "The Wretched" Through Express Written Permission of the Author.