![]() This viewpoint was best exemplified in Terry Jones’s 1980 book Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary, in which Jones attempts to refute virtually all Chaucerian critical tradition and turn the portrait of the Knight entirely on its head, leaving us with not a paragon of virtue, but the very scum of the earth, a man who preys mercilessly on his fellow Christians and will stop at nothing to gain profit. Seen against this framework, some critics have viewed the Knight as a cruel mercenary, a scathing satire of this ignoble state of chivalry. ![]() By the time Chaucer wrote the Tales, the age chivalry, of loyalty and service based largely on feudal ties, was over, replaced by a system in which warriors fought not because of fealty, but for pay. However, by the 1980s, a reactionary critical viewpoint had developed. Manly have regarded him as a representation of idealized knighthood, a force of unquestioned good in a world gone topsy-turvy, hearkening back to the heroes of chivalric romances. ![]() For the greater part of the century, critics such as Myrtle Bowden and J.M. Throughout the twentieth century in particular, views on this “worthy” knight have varied greatly. ![]() Introduction: The Knight in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales has always attracted a great deal of critical attention. Co-Winner of the Harlaxton College Essay Prize (2012) ![]()
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