ersal.
             But the instance in which Man descends upon this happy structure could result from clumsy poetry. Perhaps the description tries to flow from the physics of the earth to the rise of Man and call for an evolutionary analysis of existence. Likely it does not. First of all, The Canterbury Tales could not have lasted so long as a classic of English literature if the introduction were so flawed as to misrepresent the point of the body as a whole. But, beyond this relatively simple, circumstantial point, no substantial evidence exists (once one looks past Chaucer's noticable but far from momentous or strange ribbing of the Church) that indicates the poet proposed evolution centuries before Darwin sailed or that he sought to overturn any conventional institutions. In fact, he seems more intent on displaying their separation from the natural state. And the old Christian conception of humanity conveniently segregated people from nature in similar fashion. So Chaucer's introduction asserts and so his social satire continues throughout its tales. Man and his ways, like nature and hers, stumble outside of the well-designed configurations that we might like to superimpose on them.
             The Knight's Tale represents the Tales' most self-consciously structured story. In it the knight, who worries much about remaining sorties into the wrong territory generally lead to tragedy. Each of a
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