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COPYRIGHT 2002 Modern Humanities Research Association
His clannes and his cortaysye croked were
neuer.
(Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, l. 653)
An old religious uncle of mine taught me to
speak, who was in his youth an inland man;
one that knew courtship too well, for there he
fell in love. I have heard him read many
lectures against it, and I thank God I am not a
woman, to be touched with so many giddy
offences as he hath generally taxed their whole
sex withal.
(Shakespeare, As You Like It, III. 2. 329)
The view has been gaining ground of late that the Gawain of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a knight renowned as 'pat fyne fader of nurture' (l. 919) and as 'so cortays and coynt' of his 'hetes' (l. 1525), (1) degenerates at the moment of leave-taking from the Green Knight, his erstwhile host, to the level of a churl capable of abusing the ladies of that knight's household (ll. 2411-28). In an article provocatively entitled 'Gawain's Antifeminist Rant, the Pentangle, and Narrative Space', Catherine Batt claims that in this 'anti-feminist passage' (so-called), 'Gawain imposes an unsatisfactory rhetorical patterning on experience, in order to make it intelligible in already-known terms' and that he 'does not later show regret for his illogical calumny of women, because its expression exists as a discrete encoding of received wisdom'. (2) The assumption of anti-feminism in this passage has become something of an article of faith. Thus Richard Newhauser refers without explanation to 'Gawain's misogynous outburst', (3) and Derek Pearsall without sympathy to Gawain's willingness 'to bluster ', whereby 'he turns on women and blames them'. (4) By Pearsall's account Gawain does this not in the bitter moment of self-discovery but 'when he has gathered himself somewhat'. In other words Gawain's bitterness has the character not of an emotional spasm but of a considered insult. We seem to be on the verge here of substituting our own commonplaces for what we may take to be the commonplaces of the Middle Ages.
In the line in which the poet of Sir Gawain introduces his hero into his masterpiece, 'There gode Gawan watz grayped Gwenore bisyde' (l. 109), we are led at once to recognize not only Gawain's moral virtue and his exalted status in Arthur's court but also the fitness of his presence in the company of a lady, and not only a lady, but the most beautiful of ladies, worthy indeed to be seated in the centre of such a noble gathering of knights:
pe comlokest to discrye
per glent with yzen gray,
A semloker pat euer he syze
Soth mozt no mon say.
(l. 81)
The presence of a beautiful lady is impossible to ignore, and Gawain can hardly be indifferent to Guinevere's beauty. So much is evident when he first sets his eyes on the lady of the castle at Hautdesert, for her radiant beauty strikes him at once as surpassing even that of Guinevere:
penne lyst pe lady to loke on pe knyzt,
penne com ho of hir closet with mony cler burdez.
Ho watz pe fayrest in felle, of flesche and of lyre,
And of compas and colour and costes, of alle oper,
And wener pen Wenore, as pe wyze pozt.
(l. 941)
Beautiful ladies are drawn to the presence of great knights and by the same token such knights must learn to accustom themselves to the company of beautiful ladies. This is true in life as in fiction, and thus we acknowledge, for example, the fitness of the marriage of the Black Prince to Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent. (5) If we wish to conduct an investigation into misogyny in the Middle Ages we should be better advised to look to philosophers and churchmen such as Valerius, Theophrastus, Jerome, and Tertullian, or to a 'joly clerk' such as Jankyn, than to a knight like Gawain. (6) Knights are inspired by ladies and are prepared to die for ladies. (7) They humiliate themselves for ladies (Lancelot enters the cart of ignominy and dishonour after hesitating for only two steps) and are humiliated by ladies (Lancelot is snubbed and rebuked by the Queen for his momentary hesitation). (8) They languish for ladies (Troilus and Arcite) (9) and they sometimes succeed in marrying ladies (Palamon and Arveragus), (10) and even after marriage they can lie subject to the sovereign power of ladies (Chretien's Erec). (11) It is not surprising that the destinies of great knights and beautiful ladies are thus interwoven, for it is the very function of a knight to fight for justice for the weak and helpless, for women, widows, and orphans. Indeed, as Sir Geoffroy de Charny tells us, a knight can save his soul by fighting for such a cause:
Encores, se aucun vouloient oster l'onnour ne l'eritage de povres pucelles ne de povres femmes vesves, et autrement ne les peust l'en destourner de ce sanz guerre ou bataille, l'en y doit entrer seurement et pour les corps et pour les ames sauver, et tout en autele maniere pour povres orphelins et orphelines. (Section 35, l. 195)
Criseyde is moved by the figure of Troilus when he appears before her eyes and to popular acclaim as the very protector of Troy:
So lik a man of armes and a knyght
He was to seen, fulfilled of heigh prowesse,
For bothe he hadde a body and a myght
To don that thing, as wel as hardynesse;
And ek to seen hym in his gere hym dresse,
So fressh, so yong, so weldy semed he,
It was an heven upon hym for to see.
His helm tohewen was in twenty places,
That by a tyssew heng his bak byhynde;
His sheeld todasshed was with swerdes and maces,
In which men myghte many an arwe fynde
That thirled hadde horn and nerf and rynde;
And ay the peple cryde, 'Here cometh oure joye,
And, next his brother, holder up of Troye!'
(II. 631)
A knight is not a terrorist but a warrior who has been civilized by the life of courts and above all by the company of ladies. The Green Knight frames the second game or Exchange of Winnings with Gawain on the assumption that a knight will be at his ease in the company of ladies (in the public rooms of the castle, it is implied, not in the privacy of the bedroom):
Ze schal lenge in your lofte, and lyze in your ese
To-morn quyle pe messequyle, and to mete wende
When ze wyl, wyth my wyf, pat wyth yow schal sitte
And comfort yow with compayny, til I to cort torne.
(l. 1096)
Thus the refinement of manners is at the very heart of the definition of a medieval knight, and we are led to see that this is also the case in respect of the experienced warrior who has proved himself on the field of battle for forty years or more. Such a man is Chaucer's Knight, who was present at the siege of Algeciras in 1342-1344 and is now in the late 1380s on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The Knight has not been brutalized by the violence of war. Chaucer has conjoined in the figure of the Knight the arts of war and of peace, for indeed the object of war is the establishment of peace. (12) So interwoven are these elements in a knight that the very word 'chivalry' that defines...
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