The twin demons of aristocratic society in Sir Gowther

Abstract

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. 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. Sir Gowther has seemed in the past too slight and eccentric, too brusque and melodramatic to attract much serious notice apart from