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The Knight’s Tale

The Knight’s Tale. Lecture II – Books three and four Cosmic order and earthly disaster. Cosmic order and earthly disaster*. 1. The law of unintended consequences how attempts to impose order and alleviate suffering in this dark world create new suffering and chaos

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The Knight’s Tale

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  1. The Knight’s Tale Lecture II – Books three and four Cosmic order and earthly disaster

  2. Cosmic order and earthly disaster* 1. The law of unintended consequences how attempts to impose order and alleviate suffering in this dark world create new suffering and chaos 2. The role of the gods/planets in this process 3. The identity of order/symmetry and chaos/pain • The aesthetic possibilities of this identity • The problem of meaning // the question of agency Theseus as the key to the poem * “dis-aster” = disorder among the stars (astra)

  3. Vignette: Astrology and the Gods

  4. Movements of planets through heavens influence weather, crops, personalities, health, political events. Astral influence was a scientific theory, going back to Greeks. Advanced thinking on, e.g., the science of “rays,” was Arabic-influenced. Astronomy connected to medicine, psychology, and politics. Subject to theological concerns about where it leaves human agency, the ability to choose good or evil.

  5. Planetary Influence in the Knight’s Tale Arcite comforts Palamon, Book 1 (1084ff) For goddes love, taak al in pacience Oureprisoun, for it may noon oother be. Fortune hath yeven us this adversitee. Somwikke aspect or disposicioun Of Saturne, by somconstellacioun, Hath yeven us this, although we hadde it sworn; So stood the hevenewhan that we were born. We moste endure it; this is the short and playn.

  6. Planets as Gods in the Knight’s Tale Saturn comforts Venus in Book 4 (2453ff) My deeredoghterVenus, quod Saturne, My cours, that hath so wyde for to turne, Hath moore power than woot any man. Mynis the drenchyng in the see so wan; Mynis the prison in the derke cote; Mynis the stranglyng and hangyng by the throte, The murmure and the cherlesrebellyng, The groynynge, and the pryveeempoysonyng; I do vengeance and pleyncorreccioun, WhilI dwelle in the signe of the leoun. […] And myne be the maladyescolde, The derketresons, and the castes olde; My lookyng is the fader of pestilence.

  7. Divine and Human Symmetries Saturn: first father of the gods Egeus Jupiter: ruler of heaven Theseus (Juno: wife of Jupiter Hippolita) Mars: god of war Arcite Venus: god of love Palamon (Mercury: messenger of the gods) Diana : god of chastity/hunting Emily (Pluto: god of the underworld)

  8. What to do about chaos and suffering in this world? Four Solutions • Aesthetic: build structures of beauty • Beauty of battle (2600ff) • Beauty of description (1975ff) • Communal: create bonds of human affection • Arcite’s death scene (2765ff) – also pleasure of pathos • Philosophical: search out the order behind the chaos • Theseus’s “prime mover” speech (2987ff). Glimpse of ultimate order and justice • Practical: learn to put up with it • End of Theseus’s speech (3041ff), Egeus (2843ff)

  9. Aristotle on the pleasure of pain (Poetics I) Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation. The truth of this second point is shown by experience: though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations of them in art, the forms for example of the lowest animals and of dead bodies.

  10. What to do about chaos and suffering in this world? Four Solutions • Aesthetic: build structures of beauty • Beauty of battle (2600ff) • Beauty of description (1975ff) • Communal: create bonds of human affection • Arcite’s death scene (2765ff) – also pleasure of pathos • Philosophical: search out the order behind the chaos • Theseus’s “prime mover” speech (2987ff). Glimpse of ultimate order and justice • Practical: learn to put up with it • End of Theseus’s speech (3041ff), Egeus (2843ff)

  11. Theseus Does Theseus, uniquely, have “agency” in KT? Does Theseus control the poem’s action? Does it matter to him to do so? How are we to understand his “prime mover” speech? If Theseus represents “heroic masculinity,” also rational masculinity, how are we meant to think of this quality? Is Theseus a power for good in his world?

  12. Possible way of constructing tale 1) Femenye(Amazonia): the untamed feminine: defeated as a precondition of poem’s assertion of heroic masculinity 2) Athens: site of heroic masculinity, marked, in part, by its ability to subdue the female, an act that also demands a subduing of the self 3) Thebes: site of passionate, thus corrupted, masculinity, still in thrall to the female. In this model of the poem, Theseus finally unites Thebes and Amazonia into a harmonious whole through marriage of Palamon and Emely, a marriage that replicates his own with Hippolita. This heroic “knight’s tale” has Theseus at its dead center.

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