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[beccaelizabeth]

I read The Knight's Tale.

I also unexpectedly got a couple more hours sleep. Because I was horizontal and warm. And then the clock beeped the hour and oh look, six o'clock.
*facepalm*

The Knight's Tale: Very long. Very, very long. Long. And incredibly boring.
So there's these two dudes who get locked up in a tower and they fall in love with a woman they see out the window and instead of being Best Friends they get all jealous and hate each other. One of them gets out of the tower and leaves and gets really ill and comes back disguised as someone who isn't a Knight. This cunning disguise works, so he can stand right in front of people who knew him for years and they don't recognise him. Because he's not a Knight. Because Knights wouldn't dress up as menials. I was all *facepalm* and :eyeroll: there. So, anyway, he sneaks back so he can be a menial servant to his lady love. And not so he can break his best friend out of jail at all. So a couple years later his best friend breaks himself out of jail. But instead of running away he hides and finds out his friend is there and in love with the same lady he has been staring at out of the window who of course Should Be His, so he gets all angry and they agree to fight about her. Only then the guy who held them captive turns up while they're fighting about her. He's going to kill them for being broken out of jail and still in his garden, which seems fair. But the ladies are all crying about it so instead he says they should come back with a hundred knights each and have a big fight about it and whoever wins gets to marry the girl. Who has never met either one of them before. And did I mention they were both in jail? That's a prize match that is.
So then there's a break while they build the theatre for the tournament, and some temples. You know those bits in some vampire books where they take a time out from the action to describe, in detail, what the party room looks like, what everyone is wearing, what the weapons are, and what they're wearing some more? Yeah. Exactly like that. Only then it goes on to describe what the temples are wearing, and symbolic though I'm sure every word is, I am not at all surprised I fell asleep. Blasted thing made getting ready for a big fight boring.
So then one of the guys prays to Venus that he should get the girl and he don't mind about winning, and the other guy prays to Mars that he should win the fight, thinking he'll get the girl, and the girl prays to Diana the goddess of virgins that could she please not be won? Please? Was perfectly happy without husband kthxbye. But sadly Diana turns up to say the other two gods are having a fight about it but one of them will be winning, sorry, no more virginity for you.
So the next day the guy who prayed to Mars wins the fight but gets a slow mortal wound when his horse chucks him on his victory lap, which is what you get for showing off, obviously. And the girl is all sad about this and so he very briefly and without any of that mucky stuff gets the girl. And dies. And the guy who lost then gets the girl, because once someone is supposed to get the girl you can't have a girl flapping around un-got, even if she didn't fancy getting married and is now the consolation prize for the loser. So they get married.
The End.


So basically? Two guys start out as best friends, fall out because of a woman, have a big fight, one wins and dies, one loses and gets the girl, isn't love a funny thing.


It takes so many pages.

And I don't know if it's the translation or the actual Chaucer but I'm heartily sick of the stupid poetry.
Also the stupid way you have to say the words so the rhymes rhyme. They always look the same, but they don't sound the same in Norfolk.

I can see why we're studying this Tale. It goes with the Greek stuff. The story is theoretically about Theseus and a couple of dudes from Thebes, and the girl they fall in love with is Emily, the slightly less famous little sister of Hippolyta. So it's kind of greek. Just in a weird and updated way.

... yes, we're leaving exactly this kind of *facepalm* for our descendents in our pop culture.

So, anyway, bored now, but have done the reading.

Comments

[raine-wynd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found Chaucer to be incredibly boring. I read the Cliff's Notes when I had to read it for senior-year high school English class; I was in a play when he came up in the rotation of authors we had to read, and didn't have the time or inclination to read him when I was in rehearsals most of the week. I still haven't read most of the Tales.