EN390 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Palamon And Arcite, Great Feasts Of The Orthodox Church, Geoffrey Chaucer
Document Summary
1725- betting on who will win fits in with the idea of chance (hall of chance) Establishment of the rules: theseus decides what may be used in battle. Personified with only one nameless character put into all of these situations. Palamon as a lion and arcite as a tiger. One has to win, (2651) palamon loses. Battle is so short, but other descriptions of trivial things are very lengthy: very generalized rather than being a narrative, minimalizing the war attributes this more t human growth and character development. Theseus prevents the death and shrinks the battle down. I don"t think there is any concern whether who will win. There is a deflation of the battle and activities of the knights. The knights representing arcite and palamon emphasize how young and similar they both are. Arcite"s change was supposedly incredibly significant, but his nature is still the same in the end: any change in his personality amounts to zero.
