Forests, Animals, and Ambushes in the Alliterative Morte Arthure

Abstract

In the Alliterative Morte Arthure , the forest is often depicted as an ideal place for ambushing one's enemy. Such persistent attacks lead many warriors in the poem to encounter densely wooded areas with trepidation and even at times with explicit violence towards these places. However, through its use of several arresting locus amoenus passages, the Morte demonstrates alternative ways for soldiers to experience natural landscapes. Rather than suggest that forests are inherently malicious and forbidding places (as many medieval romances have done), the poem suggests that when cleared of an immediate threat of ambush, natural landscapes can be restorative and intoxicating spaces for soldiers.