Back to: Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
In this article will discuss The Squire’s Tale Summary in Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Table of Contents
Part 1
Cambyuskan, his wife, Elpheta, his two sons, Agarsyf and Cambalo, and his daughter, Canacee with an unexpected guest, the knight are the main character of Squire’s tale.
At the time of the great feast, an unexpected knight carrying a sword and a mirror, wearing a gold ring on his thumb, comes on a brass horse.
He salutes the king and pays his respect to everybody sitting around in a way that the king himself couldn’t do. In order to accentuate the greatness of knight’s etiquettes and courtesy, the narrator stops to mention that he’s unable to really articulate in words what and how he did.
The knight tells the king that he has been sent by the king of Arabia and India with a brass steed for the king which could transport a person anywhere safely within twenty-four hours.
He also gives Canacee a ring that could enable anybody to talk to birds and a mirror which could foresee the mishaps and reveal the character of friends and enemies. The sword has the ability to go through any armour and whose flat could cure any would cause by the edge.
After presenting the gifts, he goes outside the hall. The gifts are carried inside the house but the brass steed couldn’t move. The horse becomes the point of wonder for everybody, people compare it to the Trojan horse. According to the knight, in order to move the horse, one had to twirl a peg in its ear.
Part 2
Next morning, Canacee keeps sleeping late dreaming of the ring and the mirror and having satisfying sleep in a long time. Later on, while walking that morning with her maid, she found a crying and bleeding peregrine falcon.
She picked it up and talked to it with the help the ring. The falcon told her the tale of the tartelette, who had fallen in love with both kite and the falcon, and left falcon for the kite. Canacee healed the falcon with herbs and took in the box.
At this point narrator leaves the story with the promise to come back to it and finish the story of how the falcon won its love back with the help of king’s son, Cambalo, and wishes to tell, firstly, the story of the king’s victory and battles, then of Agarsyf and how he won his wife and later of Cambalo.
In the end, he wishes to come back to where he’s left.
Part 3
Just at the beginning, the narrator is interrupted by the Franklin. The Franklin tells the narrator, the Squire, that he has well proven his wit and eloquence and has proved that no one in this room better than the Squire.
He bets twenty pounds’ worth of land if he can show such characteristics in his own son. At this point, the host interrupts saying that all that the Franklin is talking about is completely irrelevant and reminds him the rule of the contest.
This is how the Squire’s tale got disrupted. We would never know what he had to tell us but remain wondering and assuming the remaining part of the tale.
