Crusade Reflected in “The Knight’s Tale”

Abstract

Although original fervor of religious idealism was cooling somewhat and a sense of practicality was taking over, the crusades were far from a dead issue among the commoners as well as the nobles during the fourteenth century. As this century is called 'the real age of propaganda for the crusade,' some writings including late Middle English romances and chivalric treatises stress the justice of the crusades and urge people, in particular, the knights, to action. Chaucer, who was in a precarious position at court and had a perfect understanding of the crusades deeply embedded in the knights' mind, adds two real crusaders in The Canterbury Tales: the Knight and his son, the Squire. While eulogizing crusading as an admirable pursuit of the knight, Chaucer does not ignore a natural contradiction between the brutal violence or killing that military campaigns required and the religious motivation of converting the infidel into Christianity. Such an ambivalence is revealed implicitly in his portrait of the Knight as well as in The Knight's Tale.