Hey everyone, this week's medieval literature essay will be about how two knights' friendship was unintendedly smashed by a lady they both fell for. First, some background. Palamon and Arcite fought under Creon (Remember him, from my past essays?), but were wounded and captured while Creon was killed. They were put in prison with no possible bail by the opposing king. They soon became good friends, and since they were both knights, and swore allegiance to each other, they were more brothers than friends. That is, until they looked out of the windows of their prison and saw Emelye. They fell in love with her at the same time, which quickly led to conflict. Years later, when they both escaped in different ways at different times, they met each other again and at once started dueling for Emelye's hand. Emelye and some knights went hunting and found the two still fighting for her even though they were in blood up to their ankles.
This shows that Palamon and Arcite's friendship wouldn't have been destroyed without them stumbling upon Emelye. However, was their friendship really destroyed? At the end of the tale, Arcite is on his deathbed, having earned the right to marry Emelye after winning a competition but being fatally wounded right after. Arcite actually tells Emelye to marry Palamon, because he is the only one worthy to do so. So, it turns out that Palamon still had a friendship with Arcite, despite them fighting over Emelye. It's a little hard to choose a closing statement, because there are many different ways I could go with this. However, the moral of this story is that Palamon and Arcite may have temporarily lost their friendship over Emelye, but it was not completely destroyed.
Yorumlar