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  • Wisdom and Chivalry: Chaucer's Knight's Tale and Medieval Political Theory
  • Robert Emmett Finnegan
S. H. Rigby. Wisdom and Chivalry: Chaucer's Knight's Tale and Medieval Political Theory. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Pp. xvi, 329. €119.00; $169.00.

Wisdom and Chivalry is a deeply researched and closely argued piece of historical criticism. Stephen Rigby chooses as his analytical tool for The Knight's Tale Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum, a mirror for princes composed circa 1280 for the future Philip IV of France. Giles, a student of Aquinas, synthesizes the political/religious ideas of his—and Chaucer's—day with respect to the personal and public qualities a ruler ought to possess, and demonstrate. The De Regimine, which shows the [End Page 365] influence of Aristotle and Plato, Cicero and Seneca, survives in some 350 manuscripts, mostly Latin, some vernacular. John Trevisa translated it into English; Thomas of Gloucester, Richard II's uncle, possessed a Latin copy. It is, then, an appropriate touchstone for a study of this sort. Indeed, a reader/listener who had internalized Giles's ideas might well find that “in idealizing Duke Theseus . . . The Knight's Tale seeks to offer a confirmation of the ‘dominant’ ideology of late medieval England” (285) and that “Duke Theseus embodies the virtue which political theorists demanded a ruler should possess as an individual, as the head of a household, and as a sovereign ruler” (276).

Rigby structures his analysis in terms of this tripartite division: Part I (“Ethics: The Good Rule of the Self”) deals with Theseus's personal ethics; Part II (“Economics and Politics: The Good Rule of Others”) shows these personal ethics in public action; Part III (“The First Mover and the Good Rule of the Cosmos”) views Theseus's rule of self and others in the wider context of Jupiter's/the Christian God's dominion over the universe.

Rigby, then, evaluates Theseus's conduct from the microcosmic-personal to the macrocosmic-universal. There is no ambiguity here. By every measure, and in all circumstances, Theseus comports himself as Giles, and political theorists roughly contemporary with Chaucer— Dante, Boccaccio, John Gower—think an ideal ruler should. We learn, for example, that the duke had every right to send Palamon and Arcite to prison forte et dure and set the “pilours” on the fallen Thebans; he had shown his banner on the march against Creon, and this gesture counted to Chaucer's contemporaries not only as a formal declaration of war but also as an indication that little, or no, quarter need be expected. Later we discover that Saturn, whose intervention concludes the strife in heaven, can be understood as representing the wisdom of old age. We are also told that Theseus's First Mover lecture is informed not only by Boethius but by current ideas of the Christian God's control of the universe and everything in it. There are numerous such interpretations, all positive; Rigby consistently sees the duke's actions as ideal and exemplary. But this need not necessarily be so, even for a reader steeped in the De Regimine.

A Gilesian reader might recognize Theseus's right to conduct himself as he does on the Theban battlefield, but yet question the charity of his so doing. Given the dynamics of the poem, such a reader might well find it odd that Jupiter, who attempts to resolve the contention in [End Page 366] heaven—“Juppiter was bisy it to stente” (2442)—signally fails. If our Gilesian could trace the semantic range of “bisy” and “stente,” he would find, perhaps, the terms suggesting that Jupiter worked for a solution over a significant period of time and became worried and distressed when he did not succeed. Saturn's malevolent self-characterization embodies the worst violence depicted on the walls of the temples of Mars, Venus, and Diana. Our Gilesian reader might find an in bono interpretation here a very large order indeed, and discover little in the text to warrant an assertion that “the agency of Saturn, in resolving the conflict between Mars and Venus, can actually be seen as an instrument of Jupiter's power” (269). Again, our Gilesian might...

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