he fi nally becomes aware of “a man in blak” (l. 445)
who is standing with his back to “an ook, an huge
tree” (l. 447).
It takes over 100 lines for the Narrator to describe
the Black Knight (ll. 444–559). As he voyeuristically
gazes at (and into) the Knight’s body, he infers that the
“man” is a virtually beardless, but “wel-farynge knyght”
(l. 452) of about 24 years old. Like the Narrator and
Alcyone, the Black Knight is suffering in a state of acute
sorrow that the Narrator labels as unnatural, thereby
aligning himself with the man’s condition. By eaves-
dropping on the Black Knight’s love plaint, delivered
as an unmelodious LAY, the Narrator discovers the
Knight’s love, his “lady bryght” (l. 477), has died—or,
rather, this is the information that the Knight unmis-
takably discloses, and which the Narrator, for ambigu-
ous and ultimately unknowable reasons, somehow
forgets, or pretends to forget, as soon as he records it.
The Narrator eventually steps out of the shadows
and approaches the Knight. As the two engage in a cor-
dial and courtly conversation, the Narrator notices
“how goodly spak thys knyght, / as hit had be another
wyght” (ll. 529–530), and feminist readers have since
noted that the Black Knight speaks like a woman and
occupies a position fi lled elsewhere in medieval
romances by fairy ladies. When the Narrator brings up
the appropriately manly topic of the hunt, the Black
Knight admits that he does not care about hunting—
his mind is elsewhere. The Narrator acknowledges the
Black Knight’s sorrow and offers to listen to his com-
panion’s story and do whatever he can to “make [him]
hool” (l. 553). From the Black Knight’s monologue that
follows, the audience learns more about him and the
lady he loved and lost than is ever revealed about the
Narrator and the unnamed object of his desire.
Lines 560–709 are spent explicating the Black Knight’s
sorrow. After a lengthy diatribe about all that is back-
ward and unnatural about his existence, the Black
Knight says the fi gure responsible for his sorrowful
state is FORTUNE, an immortal female fi gure whom he
describes disparagingly as a “trayteresse fals and ful of
gyle... I lynke hyr to the scorpioun” (ll. 620, 636).
The Black Knight’s condemnation of Fortune says more
about his character than hers: He played a metaphori-
cal game of chess with her, lost his queen, and lost the
game. Many critics have scrutinized this use of the
chess metaphor, which Chaucer gleaned from his
French sources and apparently did not understand.
The Black Knight is an inept player and a sore loser: in
one breath he condemns Fortune for defeating him,
and in another exonerates her, saying he would have
done exactly the same thing if he had been in her posi-
tion (ll. 675–676).
Lines 710–757 take a comic turn, as the Narrator
tries to tell his companion that his life is not as bad as it
seems, and he subtly insults the Black Knight by imply-
ing that he is behaving like the irrational, suicidal
women of literary tradition who have been abandoned
by their lovers. According to the Narrator, only a fool
would kill himself over a woman. In his own defense,
the Black Knight suggests that the Narrator does not
know what he is talking about, insisting: “I have lost
more than thow wenest” (l. 744). The Black Knight
proceeds to take charge of the conversation, and in lines
758–1311, he explains how he dedicated himself to the
service of love, and how he fell in love with a “fair and
bryght” lady called “White” (ll. 948, 950). The Black
Knight recounts how he wooed White—loving her in
secret, making a fi rst supplication to her and being
rejected, and making a second supplication a year later,
which she accepts (ll. 1144–1297). All of this love talk
is punctuated by humorous banter between the bum-
bling Narrator and the defensive Black Knight, leaving
White’s words noticeably out of the conversation. In
fact, the one line attributed to White, “ ‘Nay’ ” (l. 1243),
is actually a paraphrase of her initial response to the
Black Knight, who says he can only restate “the grete /
Of hir answere” (ll. 1242–1243). The Black Knight, like
the Narrator, silences the woman.
In the fi nal 35 lines, the Narrator, for ambiguous
reasons, forces the Black Knight to divulge the source
of his sorrow: White “ys ded” (l. 1309). Afterward, the
dream abruptly ends, and the narrator wakes to fi nd
himself in bed with his book about Seys and Alcyone
in hand. The urgency of his near-fatal insomnia is
replaced by incongruous carelessness. Waxing laconic
about his unusual dream, he decides to someday trans-
late it into “ryme” (l. 1332).
Most dream visions include an obligatory post-dream
exposition in which the Dreamer reveals what specialBOOK OF THE DUCHESS, THE 91