Comparing Clothing in Knights Tale and the Millers Tale...

One of the striking differences between the Knyghts Tale and the Millers Tale (which is supposed to quit(e) the Knyghts Tale) is that of clothing (the former tale) and lack of clothing (in the latter). Upon an inspection of the General Prologues description of the Knyght, I found that clothing is a very signifcant part of the Knyghts Tale. Chaucers decription of him may forshadow (or, since Chaucer wrote the tales after they were told, color his perceptions of the Knyght) the importance of clothing in the Knyghts Tale. Special attention is paid to the Knyghts coat of mail. He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght. But for to tellen you of his array, His hors were goode, but he was nat gay. Of fustian he wered a gypon Al†¦show more content†¦But this ornament may in fact hinder the tale. When Chaucer began the Tales with the Knyghts Tale, he was probably quite aware that he was going to borrow heavily from other tales. ...Scholarship has uncovered and stressed his strong relationship to conventional rhetoric... (Finlayson 133). Chaucer probably felt as if he was about to be bound by the fact that he was borrowing from another tale (from Boccaccios Il Teseida delle nozze dEmilia), and that he would have to change it to make it his own. The characters that he uses are bound by literary stereotypes and narrative function which they fulfil rather than transcend or reject. (Finlayson 147). Chaucer transcends the Romantic stereotype, but the characters dont. The characters are bound to convention and the ornament of Romance, much like they are bound by thier clothes that define them, keep them from true human (flesh) contact, and that ultimately destroys them. The first significant mention of clothing is when, after Theseus has conquered Thebes, the soldiers go through the pile of corpses. To ransake in the tass of bodyes dede, hem for to strepe of harneys and of wede, The pilours diden bisynesse and cure After the bataille and disconfiture. And so bifel that in the tasse they founde, Thurgh-girt with many a grevous blody wounde, Two yonge knyghts liggying by and by, Bothe in oon armes, wroght ful richely, Of whiche two Arcite highte that oon, And that oother