Abstract
Palamon's complaint is typically grouped as one of the Boethian speeches in the Knights Tale, as it reverberates with the theme of the suffering of innocents voiced by Boethius's persona in the book of the Consolation of Philosophy.2 From a Boethian perspective, Palamon's complaint against the gods' and graunt?synonymous terms for a decree or decision reached through consultation3?appears vainly directed against the sublunary realm of Fortune, to which the art of politics belongs and which is to be transcended. Yet, curiously, the Knight holds out the possibility that temporal government is part of the solution to human suffering rather than part of the problem, as his tale purports to demonstrate at its resolution (which after all is a political assembly despite the Boethian resonances of Duke Theseus's celebrated first mover speech).4 Not coincidentally, neither parlement nor the substantive form of graunt appears in Chaucer's translation of the Consolation. I point to the peculiar use of this terminology in Palamon's
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