Beginning with the Ending: Narrative Techniques and Their Significance in Chaucer's "Knight's Tale."

Author / Editor
Mann, Jill.

Title
Beginning with the Ending: Narrative Techniques and Their Significance in Chaucer's "Knight's Tale."

Published
Elizabeth Archibald, Megan G. Leitch, and Corinne Saunders, eds. Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance; A Tribute to Helen Cooper (Martlesham, D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 85-102.

Description
Argues that various narrative and stylistic devices in KnT evoke the question "Does human life have a final meaning?" The poem begins with an ending and ends with a beginning, these complemented throughout by stoppings and startings and various shifts in style, tone, mood, and chronological perspective. Comedy and tragedy combine with epic and romance, conveying a sense that they cannot be resolved until human "aventures" come to a final conclusion.

Contributor
Archibald, Elizabeth, ed.
Leitch, Megan G., ed.
Saunders, Corrine, ed.

Alternative Title
Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance; A Tribute to Helen Cooper.

Chaucer Subjects
Knight and His Tale
Style and Versification