| dc.description | This thesis investigates the intersection between classical and medieval concepts of patience and romance heroism in twelfth to fourteenth century England, focussing particularly on the influence of the virtue on the depiction of Gawain and his adventure in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the first chapter, I establish the range and currency of the learned tradition of patience in medieval England. The second chapter considers the early characterisation of patient heroism in twelfth-century vernacular literature, demonstrating through Marie de France's works how patience became encoded into the romance hero near the beginning of the genre's inception. In the third chapter, I argue that aggressive, martial heroism dominates the horizon of expectations in Middle English romance during the first half of the fourteenth century, even though protagonists such as Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, Isumbras, and Florent in Octavian all manifest aspects of patience to varying degrees. The fourth and fifth chapters demonstrate the popularity of patience as a literary theme in the latter half of the fourteenth century; in the fourth chapter, I discuss patience in Chaucer and Langland, and in the fifth, I consider the degree of the Gawain-poet's awareness of the discourse concerned with the virtue. Finally, I conclude the thesis by asserting that the understanding of patience that I have been examining throughout the thesis is essential for understanding the characterisation of Gawain and his quest in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Gawain-poet's use of the conventions of the virtue patientia have not been addressed sufficiently, and such an investigation can illumine our understanding of his materials and how he transforms them into this wonderful, yet perplexing, narrative. | en_US |
