Terry Jones, Chaucer's Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary

Jones, Terry. Chaucer's Knight: A Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

Jones posits that Chaucer's Knight is not the honorable and noble character everyone thinks he is, but is actually more of a medieval mercenary. The book is divided into three major sections. In the first, she closely examines the battles in which the Knight took part, and argues that these were not noble battles as one might expect, but massacres. The Knight, she continues, was not the crusader of a noble cause, but simply a tyrannical mercenary. In the second section, Jones examines the Knight's tale itself to show that it is not the renown tale of courtly love it is believed to be. She argues that the Knight does not actually have much respect for courtly love at all. She shows the parallels between Theseus' and the Knight' military successes and points out how both seem to see love in a more militant light. In the final section, she examines the Knight's interruption of the Monk's tale. She points out how the host first called on the monk to tell a tale immediately after the Knight's and he is prevented from telling his tale because of the drunken Miller. Though the Miller's tale seems to "qyte" the Knight's, Jones suggests that it is the Monk's tale which really does the "qyting". The Knight interrupts because the Monk's tale is beginning to hit too close to home.

Book available from Seymour Library.