Dangerous Amazons: Sexual and Textual Rivalry in “The Knight’s Tale” and The Dalimil Chronicle

Abstract

Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” was probably written in the early 1380s, sometime between The Parliament of Fowls and Troilus and Criseyde. The description of the return of Theseus and his men from the land of the Amazons (“and of the tempest at hir hoomcomynge,” I. 884) has been seen as a reference to the storm that wrecked the ship bringing Anne of Bohemia from Calais to Dover shortly after she stepped ashore in England on December 18, 1381.^l The importance attached to May 3 as a day of significance in love proceedings in “The Knight’s Tale,” in Troilus, and “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” may also be an allusion to the date of the betrothal of Richard and Anne on May 3, 1381 (Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, 153). In fact, the opening passage of the tale was probably intended as a courtly compliment to the new Queen and her English husband, Richard II:

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,

Ther was a duk that highte Theseus;

Of Atthenes he was lord and governour,

And in his tyme swich a conquerour,

That gretter was ther noon under the sonne.

Ful many a rich contree hadde he wonne;

What with his wysdom and his chivalrie,

He conquered al the regne of Femenye,

That whilom was ycleped Scithia;

And weddede the queene Ypolita,

And broghte hir hoom with him in his contree

With muchel glorie and greet solempnytee,

And eek hir yonge suster Emelye. (859–71)