Ekphrasis in the description of the temples in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale
In the medieval world, Chaucer had great many encounters with the architecture of the time, which made him uniquely qualified to integrate architecture into his writing, using ekphrasis to treat visual images as text. The most prominent examples of ekphrasis in the Knight’s Tale are found in a description of three temples of gods: Venus, Mars and Diana, where narrator being in the position of recording medium walks through the temple depicting its interior décor. The temple of Mars, the god of war, is visited by Arcite, who asks there for victory in the joust with his rival, Palamon. Palamon prays to Venus, the goddess of love, to help him win Emelye's hand, because he…show more content… Walls in Venus’s temple depict the traditional sufferings of the courtly lover, but also portray the sinfulness that love can cause. Included in these are: laments, tears, desire, pleasure, hope, foolhardiness, beauty, youth, mirth, riches, falsehood and deceit, charm, force, flattery, expenditures, attentiveness, jealousy and lust. These are undoubtedly all qualities of which love consists, and it is not unreasonable to have them all represented in Venus’ temple. A lack of harmony in the portraiture of love comes with the mention of specific scenes that are presented in the temple. Although the Knight confirms the presence of more paintings, saying: “than I kan make of mencioun,” and “I koude rekene a thousand mo,”, he chooses and describes only these images where each scene emphasizes the futility of love (KnT 1935, 1954). We see, for instance, Hercules, who was killed by his lover; Medea and Circes who held their loves against their will; and Narcissus, who died for his lover Echo (KnT 1937- 1966). I would assume, now, that Palamon did not desire such poor outcomes of his love for Emelye. Nonetheless, these are the outcomes that the Knight deems necessary to