The Game of the Courtly Hunt: Chasing and Breaking Deer in Late Medieval English Literature

Abstract

The medieval English aristocracy loved no leisure activity more than hunting.1 Jousting, feasting, dancing, gaming, and polite conversation might have rounded out these activities, but none competed with the total cost, time, and effort that the aristocracy devoted to hunting. Immense swaths of countryside were legal forests, and hunting parks and lodges liberally dotted the landscape. Literary works invoking the hunt, and the records of its laws, rights, and disputes, are extensive. Not all types of hunting were equally important, however, and none compared in nobility to the chasse par force des chiens (chase by strength of hounds) for the hart, the male red deer,2 which was “þe fairest huntyng þat any man may hunte aftir.”3 In this