Honor In The Canterbury Tales

To be honorable simply is to earn high respect. Honor was established as an admirable and precious gift long before Geoffrey Chaucer and his The Canterbury Tales, as Publilius Syrus of the 1st century B.C. once questioned “What is left when honor is lost?” (Stolinsky). This question, although pondered long before the mid 1300’s, was depicted within the chivalric code, with honor being one important attribute that knights were expected to retain. In our day and age, honor is typically displayed through athletic awards or academic achievements; however, in Chaucer’s time honor was more than personal achievement. Honor was an act that reaped the benefit of somebody else. Within “The Knight’s Tale”, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” and “The Franklin’s …show more content…
When Duke Theseus encounters mourning women dressed in black in “The Knight’s Tale,” he sympathetically asks them what the cause of their mourning is. When they explain to him that King Creon killed their husbands for unfair and immoral reasons, Theseus “[swears] on oath that… he [will] take vengeance on this tyrant King” (Chaucer 102-104). Rather than simply apologizing for their heartbreaking losses, Duke Theseus takes brave action and promises to deliver justice. Such bravery brings honor to the Duke’s reality, as he places the mourning women’s needs before his own. Although Duke Theseus exudes great courage in this instance, this is not the only time in The Canterbury Tales where a character acts on bravery. In “The Franklin’s Tale,” when Arveragus understands his wife Dorigen’s terrible situation, Arveragus “was moved to think the better course… and act on her of such a churlish kind” (Chaucer 825-827). Rather than treating Dorigen, encumbered by her reality, with hostility and chiding her misdemeanor, Arveragus attempts to understand her plight and acts with bravery in proffering her the chance to go fulfill her promise to Aurelius. Arveragus’s brave action, as he knows the lamentation he will experience, creates for him an honorable reputation as he places Dorigen’s life before his own. Both Duke Theseus and Arveragus acting with bravery develop the ideal …show more content…
Within “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” a knight terribly assaults a young woman. Since he acts against the law and the code of chivalry, the King desires his death wholeheartedly. Being a man of humility, however, the King avoids acting on temerity and grants the determining of the knight’s punishment to the Queen, who then decides that “‘[the knight] shall live if [he] can answer me: What is the thing that women most desire?... [The knight] is to go a twelvemonth and a day to seek and learn’” (Chaucer 50-55). Rather than calling his beheading immediately, the Queen grants the knight a fairly simple recompense to save his own life. Her act of generosity grants her honor within her society, as she kindly benefits the knight’s life before acting on her own angry state. “The Franklin’s Tale” also obtains an act of selfless generosity which results in honor. When Aurelius is disheartened and forlorn over the impossibility of receiving his beloved Dorigen, his brother finds a magician who can “bring into a large and lofty hall fresh water and a barge, and there they seem to row it up and down” (Chaucer 439-441). Since the magician can perform such illusions, he definitely can disguise the rocks on the coast of Brittany to generously aid Aurelius. Whether the generosity in this situation is from Aurelius’s brother for his thoughtful planning or the conjuror for his precise