The Ways and Words of the Hunt: Notes on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Master of Game, Sir Tristrem, Pearl, and Saint Erkenwald

Abstract

The recent legislation banning hunting with hounds in England marks the endgame of a pursuit that was once the most popular and presti gious pastime of the English gentry and nobility. The cultural ascent of hunting in the high and late Middle Ages is reflected in a number of related developments that form the background to the particular pas sages and problems that I would like to examine here.1 The first devel opment is the codification of hunting etiquette, with rules that were both functional and symbolic, and otherwise served the important pur pose of distinguishing an initiated elite from the hoi polloi.2 In England the emergence of hunting manuals and the expanding readership for them are indicative of this trend: while the first manuals were in Latin,3 from the thirteenth century onwards Anglo-Norman became the lan guage of choice,4 until finally in the fifteenth century English took over. Possibly the first, and certainly the most compendious Middle English hunting manual is Edward of York's The Master of Game (ca. 1410),5 a translation of Gaston Phebus's Livre de chasse.6 We shall be consulting some of these treatises in due course. The linguistic reflex of the formalization of hunting lore is the growth of a specialized lexicon, the mastery of which seemed no less important to medieval people than practical know-how. According to Henri de Ferrieres, author of a combined treatise about hunting and morality, Les Livres du Roy Modus et de la Royne Ratio (ca. 1375), all things related to the hunt should be done and named properly, car parolle bien prononchiee procede de science, especiaument puis que la maniere des parolles sont ordenees selon de mestier de venerie (for words well spoken proceed from understanding, particularly since the manner of words has been ordered in accordance with the art of