Hunting and the Making of the (Hu)man in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

This paper explores the relation between hunting and heroic masculinity in the fourteenth-century Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It considers hunting as an integral part of the hero’s initiation rite while drawing overdue attention to the curious fact that the hero does not actually take part in the hunts. The hunts create a “proper” man’s world and symbolically reinforce the basic distinctions between man/woman/animal. As such, Gawain’s nonparticipation not only signals a crisis of masculine identity but also momentarily suspends his (human) distinction from, and domination of, the animal. I argue that the chivalric test for Gawain is thus not only to resist the variously coded sexual temptations—he also must resist being the “domesticated animal.” While his identity as a (hu)man hangs in the balance, the hunts offer a performance of masculine wholeness that relies on the actual and rhetorical fragmentation of the animal and the female body, which this paper embeds in a greater cultural narrative of patriarchal control over the Other.