The Yong Squyer

Chaucer’s Squire is an energetic, talented twenty year-old with a passion for battle and an eye for the ladies. The Squire “represents youth, love, and springtime, offering a youthful point of view to the pilgrimage” (Huey 22). He is accompanying his father, the chivalrous Knight, to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury. He has two immediately apparent roles: the son and protégé of the Knight with a similar background and personality, and a knight-in-training, learning the basic skills needed to become like his father (Huey 15).

In the General Prologue, Chaucer immediately describes the Squire as “a lovyer, and a lusty bacheler” in the second line emphasizing the importance of his obsession with women early on. Next, the Squire is described in great detail, perhaps more than any other pilgrim in the novel. He has curled, pressed locks of hair, stands at moderate height, and is around twenty years old. He is embroidered in red and white like flowers in a meadow with a short gown and long, wide sleeves. The Squire has also been in “chivachye,” or cavalry expeditions, in places such as Flanders, Artois, and Picardy, provinces of northern France. This implies that the Squire has already received all the training necessary to be knighted and is just “waiting for the proper occasion so that he can be formally knighted” (Huey 19). Finally, Chaucer names many of the Squire’s talents and skills such as singing, whistling, riding, making songs, reciting poems, jousting, drawing, and writing. This hints at his diverse wisdom and intelligence as well as his obvious muscle and dexterity. However, the quintessence of the Squire can be summarized in the final two lines of the General Prologue.

Perhaps the most important description of ...

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...ical order in the chivalric world, the Squire’s Tale presents the growing impulse toward exoticism and disorder at work in the courts of late medieval Europe” (Kahrl 195). Despite what seems to be the beginnings of another knightly romance, the theory still survives that the Squire’s Tale was intended to be an exemplum of the growing problems with feudalism and courtly proceedings. This contrast is also shown between the characters of the Knight and the Squire as the Knight follows the ideals of chivalry while the Squire seems to deviate and be more focused on courtly love.

Chaucer presents the Squire as a foil character to his father, the Knight. The Knight embodies chivalry, while the Squire embodies courtly love. The Squire is compared to spring flowers and likened to the month of May, while the Knight is representative of winter, a symbol of old age (Huppé 32).