For the Birds

Abstract

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, a Mongol princess and a peregrine falcon talk together thanks to a magical ring that renders birdsong intelligible to humans. Or do they understand one another, as the falcon suggests, thanks to their shared femininity, nobility, and sensitivity to love? These registers of sympathy unite them across the species barrier and set them apart from the tale’s opening scene of masculine diplomacy and chivalry. The opening scene displays a relatively straightforward orientalism, in which the eastern kingdom of Cambyuskan (Genghis Khan) is both richly exotic and smoothly appropriated to express the Squire’s international sophistication. In the tale’s second part, species difference raises the stakes on ethnic difference, interrogating the limits that ethics might set on hospitality and compassion.