A Comparison Between Chaucer’s Knight, and the knight from the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”

In his prologue, Chaucer introduces all of the characters who are involved in this fictional journey and who will tell the tales. One of the most interesting of the characters introduced is the Knight. Chaucer refers to the Knight as “a most distinguished man” and, indeed, his sketch of the Knight is highly complimentary. Another Knight seen in the “Canterbury Tales” is the rapist knight in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, who is not …

…times. I pose that the essence of Chaucer’s Knight was no more real in his day than it is today, and he was simply giving the people and ideal character to admire. He never intended his fictional star to be interpreted as a reality, and he was only giving his readers what they wanted. Today, our mass media delivers the same package and on a grander and even more fictional scale than ever before.