Story of Arcite

The following academic paper highlights the up-to-date issues and questions of Arcite. This sample provides just some ideas on how this topic can be analyzed and discussed.

Duke Theseus of Athens wins the country of the Amazons and marries Queen Hippolyta, taking her and her beautiful sister Emelye back to Athens. To his amazement, he sees women wailing, but not because of his return. These women have lost their husbands during the siege of Thebes, and Thebes’ cruel tyrant Creon refuses to bury the bodies.

Theseus immediately vows revenge and rides to Thebes, where he vanquishes Creon and returns their husbands’ bones to the women. In a pile of bodies, pillagers find the young royal Theban knights Palamon and Arcite, who are cousins. They are still alive.

Theseus sends them to Athens to be imprisoned for life, and returns home. Locked in a tower, Palamon one May morning sees Emelye walking in the garden, and falls instantly and madly in love with her.

As he explains his love to Arcite, his cousin also spies Emelye and he too is captured by her beauty. immediately the cousins, who have been as close as brothers since birth, become sworn enemies over the love of Emelye. Another duke, Perotheus, arrives in Athens to visit Duke Theseus. Perotheus also knows Arcite well, and when he hears the knight is Theseus’ prisoner, he begs for Arcite’s release.

Who Marries Emelye In The Knight’s Tale

Theseus agrees on condition that Arcite never be seen in any of Theseus’ lands, on pain of death.

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So Arcite returns to Thebes, heartbroken that he can never again see Emelye. At least Palamon, locked in the tower, can look at her, he moans. Meanwhile Palamon sighs that he is wretched, but lucky Arcite can gather an army in Thebes and return to conquer Athens to win the lady. Finally Arcite can’t stand it anymore and risks returning to Athens to see Emelye. He is so pale and thin from lovesickness that he’s unrecognizable, so he is able to become a page at Theseus’ court, still worshipping Emelye from afar.

One morning Arcite is walking in a grove, exclaiming how unfair it is that he can’t even disclose his identity. What he doesn’t know is that Palamon has escaped from prison and is overhearing every word from behind a bush. He leaps out and vows to kill Arcite for loving Emelye. The two agree to meet the next day and fight to the death, but when they do, Theseus, Queen Hippolyta, and Emelye happen along and see the battle. Palamon tells Theseus the whole story, declares his and Arcite’s love for Emelye, and admits they both should die for disobeying him.

Theseus has pity and declares a tournament joust instead. Each knight may enlist one hundred other knights and whoever wins the battle shall have Emelye. Palamon prays to Venus, goddess and planet of love. Arcite prays to Mars, god of war. In the heavens, Saturn promises Venus that her favorite, Palamon, shall win. Palamon is captured in the tournament, and Arcite wins. But as Arcite comes forward to accept Emelye, Saturn shakes the ground so that Arcite’s horse falls and kills him. As he dies, Arcite asks Emelye to have pity on Palamon if she ever marries.

Years pass, and when mourning for Arcite is over, Theseus declares that the world must go on. He orders Emelye and Palamon to be married, since Palamon has suffered so long for her love. With this happy event, the tale ends. THESEUS, the wise duke, is firm but fair. We have a picture of him as the strong conqueror, but also as the figure who, like God, dispenses justice along with mercy. For this reason, some have seen Theseus as the major character in the Knight’s Tale. He personifies the idea of just and reasonable leadership. It’s no accident that he rules Athens, the ancient center of learning and reason.

He conquers the Amazon nation because it is fitting that a man should be the higher power over women. (This is according to the ideal of knighthood, not necessarily Chaucer’s own view. As we shall see, Chaucer pokes fun at some of the courtly conventions even though he greatly admires the Narrator-Knight’s behavior. ) Theseus is the representative of order, throughout the tale making a great show of ceremonies and games–such as the joust and the hunting of the hart–that are played by ordered rules. ARCITE believes that Theseus is not really his “mortal enemy,” nor is his cousin Palamon.

But Arcite is the favorite of Mars, the god of war, so he does not listen to reason. Instead he follows his own willingness, which first leads him to go against his cousin, then against his own good fortune. Imagine having your life saved–twice, no less–and cursing your luck because you are set free rather than put to death. We are meant to see Arcite as a man foolish in his willfulness. He is blind to his good fortune: he even complains about men who bemoan fortune’s twists, which is exactly what he’s doing. Because of Mars he wins the joust, but he does not realize that fortune is changeable.

Only at his death does he begin to see reason and ends the grudge he’s been holding for so long against Palamon. Does PALAMON get the lady Emelye because he’s the better, more valiant knight? He certainly is valiant in the joust–it takes twenty men to capture him–and he is the one who tells Theseus the truth about Arcite’s identity and their shared love for Emelye. But where Arcite is overly willful, Palamon refuses to put any stock at all in people’s ability to change their situations. He languishes in jail, believing that “man is bounden” to “God’s observaunce. ”

While some readers think that both men are ideal knights from a popular romance, others think Chaucer intended irony in their descriptions, and that indeed neither one of them is worthy of the lady. Or you might think that both are equally worthy, since each has his faults and blind spots yet sincerely upholds what he thinks is right. What about EMELYE, the object of affection in all this? For it’s hard to see her as much more than an object. Part of the humor of the Knight’s Tale comes from the fact that these two knights are pining away over beautiful Emelye for years, while she doesn’t yet know they exist.

They are ready to kill each other over her, yet we discover that she would rather stay a virgin than marry either one of them. We may not be quite sure how to take her because we see her only through the eyes of the two knights, who see her in different ways. A hint may be in the way she accepts the dictates of Diana, the goddess of chastity, that she must marry; and so she casts a “freendlich eye” on Arcite when he wins her hand. In general, we’re told, women follow “the favour of fortune” (line 1824), as the products of nature do.