Similarly, Hippolyta is literally a possession owned by her enemies, having once been a powerful Amazonian queen. Chaucer made his heroine Emelye less spirited and independent than Boccaccio’s female lead, reducing her to an agentless pawn fought over by the two men. Elsewhere in The Canterbury Tales we find them cavorting in trees with their paramours, or presenting their bare backsides out of windows (see ‘ The Miller’s Tale’, which follows ‘The Knight’s Tale’ in the collection and is a comic response to it) we even encounter witches, whose purpose is to show men the evil of their ways.īut we don’t find such women in the more sober romance that is ‘The Knight’s Tale’. Nor are the women in ‘The Knight’s Tale’ given an especially active role. If they are meant to embody particular qualities, it is not easy to tell them apart and identify which values they respectively represent. One of the weaknesses of ‘The Knight’s Tale’ (its excessive length and relative lack of action aside) is the lack of clear distinction between Palamon and Arcite. It is thought that this element was Chaucer’s addition to the original story, inspired by his reading of the Roman author Boethius, who believed that men were constantly at the whim of fate (the idea of the ‘wheel of fortune’ ultimately stems from Boethius).
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