Preview: Section 10

Reading boundary Start: When that Arcite to Thebes comen was, Stop after: And forth I will of Theseus you tell.

Exile has not freed Arcite from love, while Palamon remains imprisoned in Athens. Chaucer now returns to both men’s suffering, setting private misery against dreams, questions of identity, and the bright natural beauty of a May morning.

Courtly devotion strains the cousins’ old bond. The narrator’s proverbs about love, chance, and Fortune also leave uncertain how far either knight directs his own life.