Being Green in Late Medieval English Literature

Abstract

This article traces links between late medieval English literature and the 20th century ecology movement. It suggests that the medievalists consider the question of how animals appear in a text as being linked to how allegory works and contends that continuities and discontinuities in medieval texts mark the perceived relations between our current ecologically informed outlook and that of earlier periods. This article also explores the medieval conception of the word green based on an analysis of several works including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “Friar’s Tales.”