Animal Magic: Moral Regeneration in 'Sir Gowther'

Robson, Margaret

doi:10.2307/3508381

Cited by 8 publications

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“…Gowther is offered by Margaret Robson when she reminds us of the common medieval assumption 'that a male child takes its nature from his father and that an ignoble son means an ignoble father'. 10 Robson focuses productively on fears, anxieties and desires in the narrative. Yet her psychoanalytical method situates these primarily as individual needs and anxieties.…”

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The twin demons of aristocratic society in Sir Gowther

Blamires¹

2018

Pulp Fictions of Medieval England

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Sir Gowther is a 700-line narrative probably originating (in its Middle English form) about 1400 in the North Midlands. It is extant in two mildly divergent manuscript texts, which will here be referred to as the 'Advocates' and 'Royal' versions. 1 Sir Gowther is conspicuous for that surface crankiness and drastic speed which are often found in medieval English verse romances and which readily provoke a modern reader's suspicion that no very challenging contact with medieval society is being offered. Gowther is the name of the son born to a hitherto childless duchess after she is first threatened with repudiation by her husband and then apparently impregnated by a devil out in an orchard. This son grows up pursuing a life of reckless helter-skelter sadism. However, when an elderly earl of the region alleges that such tyranny proves he cannot be of human stock, Gowther coerces his mother to admit the devilish identity of his father. He recoils from this revelation into a course of abject penitence. Under the pope's instruction he embraces complete voluntary silence and undertakes a startling regime of selfhumiliation, accepting food only from the mouths of dogs. Gowther's spiritual rehabilitation is subsequently consolidated through the agency of an emperor's mute daughter, whom he delivers from the prospect of forced marriage to a Sultan by thrice fighting the Sultan's forces, in successive suits of armour miraculously supplied in response to prayer. Although the daughter falls from her tower when she sees Gowther wounded on her behalf, she arises after three days of 'death' and escapes also from her own mute condition to proclaim news of his divine forgiveness. Gowther marries her and they inherit the empire.

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The twin demons of aristocratic society in Sir Gowther

Blamires¹

2018

Pulp Fictions of Medieval England

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Hagiographic Romance

Rădulescu

2017

The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain

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“Hagiographic romance” is a label used to define a subgroup of medieval vernacular romances, usually focused on the deserved penitent suffering of a male protagonist of high social status (lord or king) or the undeserved patient endurance of trials and tribulations by a female protagonist. The protagonists walk a difficult path to sainthood or are very close to becoming role models for sainthood. While the narrative does not seem to require miracles as a precondition to considering these romances “hagiographic” the lives of the protagonists do not fall short of miraculous coincidences or turns of events, satisfying the expectations of romance in general. The female protagonists of hagiographic romances tend to be cast in the role of wronged/calumniated daughter/wife, and their testing is more strongly related to challenges to their obedience, constancy, and innocence. Hagiographic romances remained the most popular subcategory of Middle English romance throughout the late medieval and early modern period, transitioning well from manuscript to early print. Their middle‐class audiences clearly appreciated their combination of education and entertainment, as the extant evidence attests.

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Fit for a Dog? Food Sharing and the Medieval Human/Animal Divide

Langdon

2018

Soc. Animals

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Medieval unease with human animality manifests itself strongly in attitudes toward and proscriptions concerning food sharing. This is particularly true with dogs, the nonhuman animals with whom humans most intimately share both the procurement and consumption of food, and who are routinely figured as embodying many of the best and worst characteristics associated with humans. Through a range of late medieval texts, this paper will probe the precarious boundary between human and nonhuman animals in the medieval imagination by considering the portrait of Chaucer’s Prioress and her lapdogs in The Canterbury Tales; depictions of dogs in the hunt in medieval romance; and the strange tale of Sir Gowther, whose penance is to eat only what he receives from the mouth of a dog. Rather than supporting claims for an essential difference between human and nonhuman animal, such examples further emphasize the fluidity of the two categories.

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Animal Magic: Moral Regeneration in 'Sir Gowther'

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

The twin demons of aristocratic society in Sir Gowther

The twin demons of aristocratic society in Sir Gowther

Hagiographic Romance

Fit for a Dog? Food Sharing and the Medieval Human/Animal Divide

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