A Curious Condition of Being : The City and the Grove in Chaucer's Knight's Tale

Description: Focuses on the city of Thebes, the Athenian grove, and Theseus's First Mover speech in KnT to define and explore implications of the "elastic ontology" of KnT. Unlike the city in Boccaccio's "Teseida," in KnT Thebes is mysteriously whole after having been razed, while the grove is inexplicably razed twice. The unstable hierarchical relationship between Saturn and Jupiter in KnT underlies its concern with human inability to know the contradictions of the universe.

Chaucer Subjects: Knight and His Tale.; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations