The Paradox of Form: 'The Knight's Tale' and Chaucerian Aesthetics

Author / Editor
Herzman, Ronald B.

Title
The Paradox of Form: 'The Knight's Tale' and Chaucerian Aesthetics

Published
Papers on Language and Literature 10 (1974): 339-52

Description
Several features of KnT indicate that the rules and forms of chivalry can dignify conduct but at the same time threaten to overwhelm or undercut what they are intended to achieve. Similar threats of form overwhelming content are evident in the tale's treatment of time, its overt structural patterning, its uses of "occupatio," and its offering of aesthetic order in place of divine perfection.

Chaucer Subjects
Knight and His Tale