Foreshadowing Palamon’s Triumph and Arcite’s Defeat in Their Rivalry for Emily: An Exploration of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale

Abstract

This article explores words and actions that foreshadow Palamon’s triumph and Arcite’s defeat in their rivalry for Emily in Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale’. In fact, in accordance with Gustav Freytag’s pyramid about the plot structure, at the second step of the pyramid known as the inciting moment or narrative hook, Chaucer sets in motion the rising action of his story making up suspense. This suspense created by the question the author asks by the end of the first part of the tale in the form of ‘demande d’amour’, leaves free rein to uncertain predictions about the triumph or defeat of Palamon or Arcite involved in a merciless struggle for Emily, Hippolyta’s beautiful younger sister and Theseus’s sister-in-law. Thus, this paper purports to demonstrate that for a scrutineer, Palamon is found to be the winner and Arcite the loser from the outset, since there are words and actions that anticipate their triumph and defeat respectively. To detect those hints of triumph and defeat, a formalist approach is used as it emphasizes the form of a literary work to determine its meaning, focusing on literary elements, such as foreshadowing and back-shadowing, and how they work to create meaning.