Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Editorial Introduction: Namoore of this! How to read Guy of Warwick and why
- 1 Gui de Warewic at Home and Abroad: A Hero for Europe
- 2 Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context
- 3 Guy of Warwick as a Translation
- 4 From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance
- 5 The Manuscripts and Texts of the Middle English Guy of Warwick
- 6 The Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate's Guy of Warwick: The Non-Romance Middle English Tradition
- 7 An Exemplary Life: Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero
- 8 The Visual History of Guy of Warwick
- 9 ‘In her owne persone semly and bewteus’: Representing Women in Stories of Guy of Warwick
- 10 Of Dragons and Saracens: Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration
- 11 Guy of Warwick and The Faerie Queene, Book II: Chivalry Through the Ages
- 12 Guy as Early Modern English Hero
- Appendix: Synopsis of the Guy of Warwick narrative
- Index
7 - An Exemplary Life: Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Editorial Introduction: Namoore of this! How to read Guy of Warwick and why
- 1 Gui de Warewic at Home and Abroad: A Hero for Europe
- 2 Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context
- 3 Guy of Warwick as a Translation
- 4 From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance
- 5 The Manuscripts and Texts of the Middle English Guy of Warwick
- 6 The Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate's Guy of Warwick: The Non-Romance Middle English Tradition
- 7 An Exemplary Life: Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero
- 8 The Visual History of Guy of Warwick
- 9 ‘In her owne persone semly and bewteus’: Representing Women in Stories of Guy of Warwick
- 10 Of Dragons and Saracens: Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration
- 11 Guy of Warwick and The Faerie Queene, Book II: Chivalry Through the Ages
- 12 Guy as Early Modern English Hero
- Appendix: Synopsis of the Guy of Warwick narrative
- Index
Summary
The Middle English Guy of Warwick narrates a vita that is, even by the often outrageous standards of medieval romance, extraordinary. Guy's life leads him from somewhat humble beginnings as the son of a provincial steward – the very margins of chivalric society – to his predestined place as chivalric, Christian, and most importantly, English culture-hero. Along the way he obtains chivalric glory, a courtly paramour, and associated noble title (Earl of Warwick), he vanquishes Saracen threats both defensively (at the walls of Constantinople) and offensively (whilst on a one-man Crusade in the Middle East) – thus taking on the mantle of defender of European Christianity – before returning home to become England's saviour from invasion and to finally die, as the circle of his life completes, back in Warwickshire as a devout hermit. As an example of popular romance entertainment, Guy of Warwick has few peers either in terms of popularity or its impact on wider English culture. However, the romance's importance is not limited to its function as popular entertainment. Much recent scholarship has established the important role of medieval romance in the articulation of national and group identity, figuring romance as a genre that is of great interest to the literary scholar and cultural historian alike. In addition to the importance of Guy of Warwick in the discourse of identity politics, the figure of Guy also enjoys a powerful influence outside the romance, as he is appropriated for the promotion of family, civic, and national pride more widely within English culture. The narrative development of Guy as a medieval culture-hero – a figure who embodies a number of different identity groups – is the subject of this chapter.
Thorlac Turville-Petre has described Guy as ‘the model of the knight of England’. Implicit within this designation is an understanding of this romance as exemplary narrative: a vita that in some fashion was intended to be imitated by its audience, or at the very least was intended to inspire its readers through admiration of the hero's deeds.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor , pp. 94 - 109Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007