The created cover of antiquity gives the fourteenth-century poet license to pay close attention to form, the delight of the image, a depth we can see in the description of the statue of Venus in the Knight 's Tale. A remarkable feature of this description is its three-dimensionality, a particular attention to extremities, props and supports that draws the attention away from the centre to the margins, a technique that allows the statue to be viewed as a carved and painted sculpture. From the fragment below, we can see how the narrator goes on with the support and moves smoothly downwards and then up, but not right through the centre; rather, through the margins:
Repeated references to the action of sight in this ekphrasis also switch on the sensory. With the line of sight located in the double position as that which can simply record with delight, the action of a gaze also appears to bring the statue almost to life. 'Glorious for to se ' in the first line of the description disrupts the declarative statement on the statue 's nudity and its pleasure, though the poet willingly focuses on covering up the exposure.
In the descriptions of the
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Following the description of Venus, recounted with an attempt to capture the delight of three-dimensional figure, the lines between art and reality melt away, and pictures and murals take on progressively malignant action.
The images “Of huntyng and of shamefast chastitee” (KnT 2055) in the temple of Diana are immediately noticed by Emelye. However, the Knight does not concentrate on these pictures in his description. Instead, he brings back the story of Callisto or Acteon who were all chastised by Diana. The most distressing and remarkable image found in the temple is the image of a woman in the pains of a breech childbirth. Her pain is even imagined as