The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...

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"The Squire's Tale" is a Middle English narrative poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, part of *The Canterbury Tales* (late 14th century), belonging to the romance tradition with elements of magic and courtly spectacle. The excerpt introduces the Tartar king Cambyuskan, an idealized ruler celebrated for his birthday feast, who receives a visit from a foreign knight bearing four enchanted gifts from the King of Arabia and India: a brass horse that can fly anywhere in a day, a mirror that reveals enemies and unfaithful lovers, a ring that grants Princess Canacee the ability to understand the speech of birds and the properties of plants, and a sword that can wound without cure unless its flat is applied to the injury. Chaucer's narrator repeatedly performs mock-modesty, claiming his English and rhetorical skill are inadequate to describe the splendors on display, while the assembled court debates the gifts in terms drawn from classical mythology and natural philosophy (citing Alhazen, Vitelo, and Aristotle on optics; invoking the Trojan Horse and Pegasus). A distinctively playful quality runs through the telling: the narrator deflects elaborate description by feigning incompetence, then invokes Lancelot as the only man who could do justice to the dancing—before noting he is dead. The fragment breaks off mid-feast, and the tale famously remains unfinished, making this surviving portion primarily an elaborate setup of magical objects and courtly atmosphere whose promised plot never fully materializes.

The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...

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