The Arming of the Warrior in European Literature and Chaucer

Abstract

It is notable that both Chaucer and the Gawain-poet have a formal arming-passage amongst their works—but with how different a hero in either case! To compare Sir Thopas with Gawain is to get a glimpse into the abyss which separates their great contemporaneous authors. A little further acquaintance with European literature soon discovers a very considerable number of other formal arming-passages, strongly resembling each other in structure, though curiously enough no scholar or critic, even amongst those who have commented on the possible allegorical significance of Gawain’s armour (which it is not my purpose to discuss here), appears to have remarked upon this phenomenon. The first purpose of this essay is to establish the existence and suggest the varying uses of this formal device, though there is no attempt to list every occurrence. The second purpose is briefly to examine Chaucer’s use of it in comparison with that of the Gawian-poet and the ancient tradition. Chaucer by his use effectively destroys this tradition in English, as he does others. From this point of view he may be regarded as one of the last traditional poets and the first modern poet in English; or, as I have tried to express it elsewhere, as being both ‘Gothic’ (i.e. traditional) and ‘Neoclassical’ (i.e. modern, naturalistic). I use the term ‘Neoclassical’ to include much of Romanticism.¹

First published in Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner C.S.C., ed. Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy (Notre Dame and London, 1979) pp. 221–43.