Abstract

Francis K. H. So: The Benign but Bleak “wyldrenesse” in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  Medieval and Early Modern English Studies Volume 24 No. 1 (2016) 17-35

Deep in winter when Sir Gawain sets forth on his adventure to look for the Green Knight, he has nothing but trepidation. The journey brings him to traverse over a lonesome trek of wilderness, somewhere desolate, wild, hardly inhabited by decent people and beyond the control of humans. Lines 698-735 in SGGK yield the locus classicus of the wild world motif. Unlike Chaucer’s pilgrims envisioning the “holt and heeth” that promise to burgeon with young lives, Gawain’s contact of wilderness is less than spectacular and full of anxieties and uncertainties. Yet the distressful land serves as his soul’s ecosystem to purify his haughty ego, rips off his courtly mask and forces him to face his own shortcomings. The ultimate benefit of the wilderness experience leads him to come close to God, that is, making him realize his frailty and so depend more on moral obligations than before. This paper will explore the role wilderness plays where Gawain’s vain chivalric activities are restricted but spiritual growth is enhanced. Much as the fearful land is a refuge for all things natural, the pristine and uncorrupted ambience while threatening Gawain’s physical well-being and incapacitating his chivalric potentiality leaves him to his bare flesh, or human impotence against nature. This wilderness empowers him with the ability to reflect on his limitations thereby preparing him to act as a virile errant knight.

Keywords

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, wilderness, stress, spiritual growth