The Role of Saturn in the 'Knight's Tale'

Author / Editor
Gaylord, Alan T.

Title
The Role of Saturn in the 'Knight's Tale'

Published
Chaucer Review 8 (1974): 172-90.

Description
Reads Saturn and the saturnine elements of KnT as the attitudes and qualities that oppose free will, reason, and Theseus's new age of proper order, moderation, and pity. Chaucer's addition to Boccaccio, Saturn represents the strict and unfortunate aspects of Venus and Mars, and he is replaced by Jupiter, the force that moderates through reason the "dark destiny to which the willful passions of men commit them."

Chaucer Subjects
Knight and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations