A Knight

             Imagine a fire in your chest that so violently burns as bottomless and blistering as Satan's lair only to be caused by a razor-sharp dagger, tacitly resembling love, that pierces skin and bone and finally ends up centered in your heart. I can only imagine that this is the pain that Palamon and his cousin, Arcita, endure as they first set their eyes on Queen Hippolyta's sister, Emily, as she gracefully paces in the garden outside their dark and lonely prison. With this horrible burden, of not being able to love, that the bold knights mutually share, we are left to decide who amongst the two is in a more troublesome scenario. Each of knights in Chaucer's The Knight's Tale is presented with a most unfair situation in the complex world of love. How they act in response to their restricted love reveals a wealth of information about each knight, worth comparing and contrasting, and about the irony of how each cousin would rather have been dealt the other's cards and trade places with one another.
             The two knights, Palamon and Arcita, are conveniently set up to lay their eyes upon a "fairytale" princess, Emily, and immediately fall in love with her. These knights hold many similarities and many differences that in each of their cases cause them to go to extremes to get to the one that they so dearly love. At first they both play with fire by calling each other a traitor and bickering back and forth over who deserves her. It is clear in the reading that Palamon is first to set eyes on Emily but Arcita insists on loving her as well. After Arcita compares their fight between them to two dogs fighting over a bone, he says " '...It's each man for himself and not for other. Love if you like; for I love and aye shall...'" (Chaucer, pg. 35). This quote shows that even though Arcita knows that Palamon fell in love with Emily first, Arcita is willing to sacrifice anything, including their...

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A Knight. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 06:53, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/99089.html