Canterbury Tales: The Knight's Tale

The Knight's Tale:

The Knight rides at the front of the procession described in the General Prologue,and his story is the first in the sequence. 

The Host admires the Knight,as the narrator. Chaucer seems to remember:

Four main qualities of the Knight:

• The first is the Knight's love of ideals: Like prowees,fidelity,reputation or generosity.
• The second is the Knight's impressive military career: He has fought in the Crusades, wars in which Europeans traveled by sea to non-Christian lands and attempted to convert whole cultures by the force of their swords. The Knight has battled the Muslims in Egypt and the Russian Orthodox in Russia. He also fought in formal duels.
• The third quality is his meek,gentle, manner.
• The fourth is his "array" or dress: The Knight wears a tunic made of coarse cloth, and his coat of mail is rust-stained, because he has recently returned from an expedition.

In the Prologue he calls out to hear something more lighthearted,saying that it deeply upsets him to hear stories about tragic falls. He wold rather hear about " joye", about men who start off in poverty climbing in fortune and attaining wealth.

The Host agrees with him, which is not surprising, since the Host has mentioned that whoever tells the tale of " best sentence and moost solaas" will win the storytelling contest. And, at the end of the Pardoner's Tale, the Knight breaks in to stop the squabbling between the Host and the Pardoner,ordering them to kiss and make up. Ironically, though a soldier, the romantic,idealistic Knight clearly has an aversion to conflict or unhappiness of any sort.