Literary Syneesthesia In The Knight's Tale

We have the impression that those in a position of power above us, be it our leaders or gods, are supposed to have our best interest at heart. A king is meant to lead his knights to victory in order to create an environment in which his people can thrive. A god, especially in a society where Christianity sets the norm for religions, is meant to look after his or her followers and grant them a prosperous life. Yet, there is a sense of unease in the morbid depictions of the gods alters in the Knight’s Tale. Venus had a thousand people caught in her snare, Mars relished in glory with wolf eating a dead man by his feet, and Diane simply turned those who wronged her into animals. Chaucer’s use of literary synesthesia brings these portrayals of the gods to life, giving readers the illusion of being able to see and interact with the almighty beings. Coupled with the problematic and

Moreover, the detailed description in lines 1985 to 1986 allows the readers to almost feel the powerful wind rushing through the hallways and hear the temple’s gates rattling. Arguably, the sense of smell is elicited through the vivid descriptions of stables and ships burning in the background (2000, 2017). In response to Palamon’s prayers, the rings that hung on the temple doors clattered, evoking readers’ sense of sound. Unlike Venus, the knight recounts Mars’s alter in a manner that creates more distance between the observing reader and the god himself. In fact, he pays careful attention to use the phrase “I saw” as he was describing the painting in the background. Nevertheless, literary synesthesia exists within the description of Mars’s alter, and the distancing the knight creates between reader and Mars allows for the knight to project his own unsettled sense of fear onto the readers. By the final stanza in the knight’s account of Mars’s alter, we