ABSTRACT
In the Knight’s Tale, an incomparably more ambitious work, Geoffrey Chaucer once again put the planets in the forefront of the action, in a symmetrical arrangement in which each planet-god is linked to a figure in the human story. The passage in Boethius’s de Consolatione Philosophiae which Chaucer is using does make a distinction. Chaucer arranges his distancing partly through such an observing figure – that of the Knight – and partly through the figure, to some extent a duplicate of the Knight, of Theseus, who is not only the observer of the lovers’ activities but also the kingly ruler in whom is to be found the ultimate earthly source of order in their world. Chaucer’s problem, in writing Theseus’s speech is, it is obvious, to provide something which will be worthy not only of a major character that has been built up in an extremely impressive way, but also of the climax of an extremely ambitious work.
