Throughout the book of Canterbury Tales, there is a theme of different types of love. Among the characters, love can mean different things.
The first set of characters are the two brothers from The Knights Tale, they both fall in love with the same girl, her name is Emily. Although the brothers love her, they are stuck in prison. They think that only one of them can win her heart, and so, they find themselves pitted against each other in a contest for love.
One day, one of the brothers (Arcete) is allowed to leave the prison, but he is banished from the kingdom on penalty of death. He is now in a dilemma, he cannot go back to see his love for fear of physical pain, but he really cannot stay away because Emily has stolen his heart.
Meanwhile, Palomon, his brother, has no problem deciding whether he would rather be free or stay near the one he loves, because he is chained three stories down in the city sewer.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales shares ma...
English: Scan of Ellesmere manuscript of Canterbur...Sooner or later he too escapes, and is on his way out of the county when by coincidence, he runs into his long lost brother Arcete. They decide to have a fight determining who will have the right to love Emily the Fair. In the end Palomon ends up with Emily, all that to say that these brothers considered love as burden, physical freedom was no good when they could not be with the one they loved.
The next love struck person I would like to consider, is Sir Topaz.
Sir topaz was a silly man, he was rather a klutz, and he sore by ?all that is blue.? Chaucer portrays him as a knight who really was, all by himself, not just a moron, but a oxymoron.