A Knyght There Was: The Evolution of the Knight in Literature

This book is no social or literary history but is instead a study, literary both in intent and, I hope, in execution, of a particular literary figure, the knight, who first appears in the "chansons de geste", rides triumphantly through the great romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, appears as a philosophical pilgrim in Chaucer, fights a heroic last-ditch stand for chivalry in the pages of Malory, becomes allegorical in Spenser, and dies away amidst the catcalls of parody, finally to be rejected by England’s second poet as a figure unsuitable for epic.