Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Essays
- 1 The Current State of Research on Late-Medieval Drama. 2007–2008: Survey, Bibliography, and Reviews
- 2 Poetry as Source for Illustrated Prose: The 1519 Strassburg Wigoleis vom Rade
- 3 The St. Edith Cycle in The Salisbury Breviary (c.1460)
- 4 L'épanouissement de l'histoire au quinzième siècle en France
- 5 Escuelas de traducción en la Edad Media
- 6 Ten Poems from the Gruuthuse Songbook (c.1462)
- 7 Louis XI, A French Monarch in Pilgrim's Garb: Badges
- 8 Robert Henryson's Morall Fabilles: Irony, Allegory, and Humanism in Late-Medieval Fables
- 9 Defining Violence in Middle English Romances: Sir Gowther and Libeaus Desconus
- 10 Presencia y Ausencia de los Judíos en los Sermons de quaresma de Vicente Ferrer
- 11 “Als ich dich vor gelert haun”: Conrad Buitzruss's Recipe Collection in Manuscript Clm 671 (Munich)
- 12 Book Reviews
9 - Defining Violence in Middle English Romances: Sir Gowther and Libeaus Desconus
from Essays
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Essays
- 1 The Current State of Research on Late-Medieval Drama. 2007–2008: Survey, Bibliography, and Reviews
- 2 Poetry as Source for Illustrated Prose: The 1519 Strassburg Wigoleis vom Rade
- 3 The St. Edith Cycle in The Salisbury Breviary (c.1460)
- 4 L'épanouissement de l'histoire au quinzième siècle en France
- 5 Escuelas de traducción en la Edad Media
- 6 Ten Poems from the Gruuthuse Songbook (c.1462)
- 7 Louis XI, A French Monarch in Pilgrim's Garb: Badges
- 8 Robert Henryson's Morall Fabilles: Irony, Allegory, and Humanism in Late-Medieval Fables
- 9 Defining Violence in Middle English Romances: Sir Gowther and Libeaus Desconus
- 10 Presencia y Ausencia de los Judíos en los Sermons de quaresma de Vicente Ferrer
- 11 “Als ich dich vor gelert haun”: Conrad Buitzruss's Recipe Collection in Manuscript Clm 671 (Munich)
- 12 Book Reviews
Summary
English romances were written in verses, often by anonymous authors, and frequently based on French adventure stories. Some romances appeared in the first half of the thirteenth century, followed by many others in the 1300s and 1400s. They are somewhat moralistic and treat Arthurian material. (The editors.) The Middle English romance Sir Gowther (c.1400; 757 verses) is often approached in terms of its connection to, and transmission from, the “Robert the Devil” narratives, specifically the French Robert le Diable (eleventh century, 5,078 verses) which is seen as its closest ancestor. There are significant changes from this base text, however, that complicate (for a scholar) the connection between Gowther and its antecedents. One of the important factors separating Gowther from its French source is the paternity issue: who was the protagonist's father? In Robert le Diable, a mother promises an infant son to the devil and as the child grows, his wildness and violence seem to become manifestations of this initial vow. In Sir Gowther, the son is not pledged to the devil, but is instead sired by him; and so the narrative concerns itself with a much more ingrained, inherited wildness and violence borne out as Gowther becomes an adolescent, commits various atrocious acts, and begins to embody his demonic parentage. While the mother's promise in the French text reduces Robert's culpability, the question of the child's paternity, as Francine McGregor argues, becomes the driving theme of the English narrative, and is essentially linked to related inquiries about the boy's authority, patriarchy, and masculinity.
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- Information
- Fifteenth-Century Studies , pp. 148 - 161Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009