The Knight's Tale Courtly Love Essay

Geoffrey Chaucer was an interesting person. He was a writer, a poet and a diplomat. However, he was most known for his series of stories, The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales are a mix of stories that featured a lot of different people of a lot of different backgrounds who all share the same goal, go to Canterbury. These tales differ greatly, in terms of subject matter and characters, some talk about love while others talk about war. The Art of Courtly Love dominated the ideals of love, while The Knights Code of Chivalry was the predominant way of thinking of warriors. Many of Chaucer’s tales deal with these two sets of thinking, thus different characters deal with them in different ways. Chaucer’s characters are not a product of the times, as they disprove stereotypes and have no need to follow guidelines set by The Knights Code of Chivalry and The Art of Courtly Love. The differences of the perception of The Art of Courtly Love between the Knight’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s tale and the Miller’s Tale are rather obvious. In the Knight’s Tale, both Palamon and Arcite follow The Art of
The biggest difference between the three tales are the actions of the knight in the Wife of Bath’s Tale. He barely follows the code, as he breaks several of its rules. However, in the Knight's Tale and the Miller’s tale, both Nicholas and Palamon and Arcite respect women. Yet, Nicholas only follows The Knights Code of Chivalry in this aspect. Nicholas routinely goes against the code by deceiving John plenty of times and, because he isn’t a knight, he has no need to follow the code in the first place. The only characters throughout all three tales that truly follow the The Knights Code of Chivalry are Arcite and Palamon, as they are knights and are bound to follow it in the first