Brotherhood In The Knight's Tale

“There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my eyes adore you, my knees shake with blind affection.” by William Goldman. Throughout time, we have seen over and over men losing their minds because of women. In almost every romance movies there is a man that falls in love with a woman and will to anything for her. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, we see it again. Palamon and Arcite break their knightly oath of brotherhood over a woman by the name of Emily. The oath of brotherhood is to stay loyal, protect, and help other knights in your kingdom. Palamon and Arcite are cousin so they are even closer. As knights, they are supposed to follow the rules of chivalry. But in their case they fight over a woman, why …show more content…
When Palamon first see Emily he is blow away by her beauty. He prays to the god Venus to help him and his cousin to get out of the prison this way he can be with Emily. At this time Palamon has not broken the oath of his brotherhood. Although when Arcite sees her, he wants her and wants her all to himself. Which starts the breaking of the code. They make a pled to not let Emily break their bond. When both are out of prison they run into each other in a bush. They argue over Emily. When they Duke finds out about this he make a plan for them to come back in a year with more knights to fight for Emily. This is acceptable because the ideal knight is supposed to find a beautiful woman to marry. Part of being a knight is to have courtly love. Also a knight should become better after marrying a fine young lady through bravery and wisdom. The knight is supposed to treat women with respect and kindness. So them both falling in love with her is just human nature. Knights are seen as this huge deal, which they are, however, they are still very human. People fall in love and cannot help it. The knight in The Canterbury Tales is telling the story to show that knight are human just like the rest of the people on the quest. Another argument that can be made is Palamon and Arcite are they are very similar. They are in the same event with very similar personality in love with the same woman. So this is done because we then cannot pick a side between Palamon and Arcite. As human we like to pick side between people, but in this case the reader cannot. This is so there is no reason that one deserve Emily more. However they both end up have very different