Compare And Contrast The Prologue And The Knight's Tale

The Canterbury Tales is the most famous work Geoffrey Chaucer ever wrote. Chaucer wrote an introduction to each of the characters in the Prologue and planned to follow with a story pertaining to the characters. Unfortunately, Chaucer was unable to finish each of the stories he planned, but of the tales he did finish, arguably the best known of these is The Knight’s Tale. The problem with this tale, however, is that the focus of the Knight’s Prologue contradicts the focus of his tale or more specifically, the focus of Palamon and Arcite, the main characters, in the tale. When comparing the Prologue and The Knight’s Tale, it becomes clear that the tale is not appropriate to the Prologue because of the contrast in the character qualities of the of the Knight and the main characters of The Knight’s Tale. First, the focus of the Knight’s General Prologue is on the exemplary character of the Knight. Chaucer states that the Knight loved chivalry, and along with that came truthfulness and honoring commitments. During medieval …show more content…
Palamon and Arcite break oaths throughout the story. This is something the Knight, according to his Prologue, does not do because he is faithful to his commitments. Catherine Rock writes in her review of The Knight’s Tale that Arcite is indeed faithless and ignores his oath to uphold the code of chivalry (Rock). Although both knights are pursuing a courtly love with Emilia, they fall apart from each other in their pursuit. Medieval teachings state that courtly love was more valuable than their oaths, but with each oath broken they were continually split farther apart. Although they break these because courtly love is a powerful law—even more so than their oaths—love between two men was considered stronger and more important in that time. Both men broke their oaths to seek a weaker love than what they had in each