The Squire, presented in the GENERAL PROLOGUE as
the fashionable and charming son of the more
sober Knight, presents what promises to be a
chivalric ROMANCE of the sort then popular in
France, with an interlaced structure involving several
characters and plot threads. Thus The Squire’s
Tale would have been more complex, more full of
wonder and supernatural elements, than any other
story in The CANTERBURY TALES. The tale breaks off
after some 664 lines, though both Edmund Spenser
and John Lane wrote continuations of the story
later. Lane’s continuation runs to 7,000 lines, which
may be the chief reason CHAUCER chose not to finish it—it would have been far too long to include in
The Canterbury Tales as they were conceived.
No direct sources for The Squire’s Tale have been
found, though clearly Chaucer was inspired by contemporary
French romances, themselves influenced
by Oriental models that had come through Moorish
Spain.Accordingly Chaucer uses Oriental-sounding
names in the tale, including “Cambyuskan,” the Latinized
form of “Genghis Khan.”
In the first part of the tale, Cambyuskan, king of
Tartary, has a great birthday feast. During the
meal’s third course a knight rides in to deliver
wondrous, magical gifts for Cambyuskan sent by
the kings of Arabia and India. One is the brass
steed on which the knight sits—the horse can bear
its rider anywhere in the world within 24 hours.
The second is a magic ring that grants its wearer
the ability to understand the language of the birds.
The third gift is a sword that is able to cure any
wound that it makes. And the final gift is a magic
mirror in which one can see coming dangers. The
mirror and the ring, we are told, are gifts for Cambyuskan’s
daughter, Canacee.
In part 2 Canacee rises the next morning and
goes for a walk. She finds a wounded falcon, crying
piteously in a tree above her. Because her ring allows
her to understand the falcon’s speech,
Canacee learns that the falcon has been betrayed
by her lover. Taking pity on the bird, Canacee
brings the falcon home in order to nurse her back
to health.
As the second part of the tale ends and the third
begins, the Squire narrator promises to tell about
Cambyuskan’s wars, about the adventures of Cambyuskan’s
sons Cambulus and Algarsif, and about
how Cambalo fought against her brothers to win
the love of Canacee. But the tale breaks off
abruptly after the first two lines of the third part,
and what follows is the Franklin’s enthusiastic response
to the Squire’s tale, that leads into his own
story.
Critics have speculated about whether The
Squire’s Tale is intended as a satire of the immaturity
and excessive rhetoric of its teller. Others have
argued that the tale was intended to be interrupted
by the Franklin, who tactfully stops the Squire
from running on indefinitely.
Bibliography
DiMarco, Vincent. “The Dialogue of Science and
Magic in Chaucer’s ‘Squire’s Tale,’ ” in Dialogische
Strukturen/Dialogic Structures: Festschrift fur Willi
Erzgraber zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Thomas
Kuhn and Ursula Schaefer. Tübingen, Germany:
Gunter Narr, 1996, 50–68.
Edwards, Robert R. “The Failure of Invention:
Chaucer’s ‘Squire’s Tale.’ ” In Ratio and Invention:
A Study of Medieval Lyric and Narrative, edited by
Robert R. Edwards. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt
University Press, 1989, 131–145.
Goodman, Jennifer. “Chaucer’s ‘Squire’s Tale’ and the
Rise of Chivalry,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 5
(1983): 127–136.
Pearsall, Derek. The Canterbury Tales. London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1985.