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"Tu es pélérin en la sainte cité": Chaucer's Knight and Philippe de Mézières
Ist Teil von
Studies in philology, 2009-10, Vol.106 (4), p.379-401
Ort / Verlag
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2009
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Literature Online (LION)
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Not only did he serve as a mercenary, crusader, chancellor of Cyprus, diplomat, and councilor to the French throne, he also compiled a body of literary works impressive in its sheer volume, as well as in its variety and learning.10 Almost from the very beginning of his career, he demonstrated an unstinting commitment to the pacification and unification of Western Europe and to the crusade to recapture the holy places. Here, Chaucer's use of Mézières in the portrait gains additional meaning: it turns an inherited story about reconciliation of two warring parties into a direct representation of the Frenchman's message of peace between England and France.61 Chaucer, by drawing on Mézières' life in constructing his Knight, helps to give a local habitation to the Frenchman's attempts at pacification.62 By putting a tale of reconciliation into the mouth of a character that echoes the man most immediately concerned with pacification and reconciliation in his time, and placing this character at the front of his pilgrimage, Chaucer reintroduces the subject into the political agenda of the time of the writing of the Canterbury Tales.