Charles Muscatine's "Form Texture and Meaning..."

by Karl Krueger
Web posted at 8:19 PM on 3/7/96 from aml38.engl.wsu.edu.

English 555: Chaucer
Feb. 20, 1996
Oral Reporter: K. Krueger

Muscatine, Charles. "Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer's Knight's Tale." PMLA 65 (1950): 911-29.

"The Knight's Tale is almost universally taken to be a love poem-a mediÊval romancewith philosophical appendages, but the particular location of its value is the subject of considerable disagreement" (911).

For Muscatine, its value is located in the way meaning is conveyed through the poems "depth and complexity." The parts can be examined to reveal that the Knight's Tale is a "poetic pageant" which celebrates the noble life. Nobility is seen to concern itself not only with love and war, but above all else with order.

ITS SYMMETRY RESISTS CHARACTERIZATION
ãThe poem is not about developing personalities, but creating symmetrical, balanced characters (Palamon/Arcite; Venus/Mars; Diana/Emelye; Lygurge/Emetreus) who submit to those who understand order (Theseus and Saturn).

ITS PACE RESISTS PLOT (it's certainly not satiric)
ãExtended descriptions (even occupatio , summarized description), rhetorical discourse (rather than rapid dialogue), and lack of action (KT has, instead of action, "conventional stage business": swoons, cries, declarations and lamentations) make for a plot which "does not amount to much" (919).

INSTEAD . . . ORDER
ãIts "slow and majestic" pace gives a noble grandeur to the poem, and the symmetry underlines the importance of order.
ã"The story is immediately concerned with those two noble activities, love and chivalry, but even more important is the general tenor of the noble life, the pomp and ceremony, the dignity and power, and particularly the repose and assurances with which the exponent of nobility invokes order. Order . . . is the heart of its meaning." (919)
ãA concern for order is necessary because there is always a threat of chaos lurking beneath the surface of things.

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