Gawain’s Struggle with Ecology: Attitudes toward the Natural World in Sir Gawain and

As a poem largely dependent on the relationship between humans and the natural world, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight provides the ecocritic with an excellent case study in medieval attitudes toward the non-human world. The poet presents conflicting attitudes toward the non-human world, with Gawain asserting militaristic dominance and Bertilak acting as steward. The existence of these competing attitudes shows that medieval thought on the place of the non-human world was a complex philosophical issue. As such, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight presents evidence relevant for the on-going debate over Lynn White's "Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis." In 1957, John Speirs recognized the importance of the natural world in the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A number of scholars have since echoed his comments. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem that depends in large part on the relationship between human and environment. Corinne J. Saunders notes that in the poem "the contrast between the security of the court, and the discomfort and danger, real and supernatural, of the quest landscape plays a central role " (148), and scholars have connected the Green Knight to symbols of fertility and nature.2 Indeed, the ecological setting plays a significant role throughout the poem. With its concern with the non-human, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is certainly a poem conducive to an ecocritical analysis. The poem’s settings provide binary oppositions of human/non-human, habitation/wild, privileging throughout the former. The poet presents two competing notions of the interaction between these oppositions. From the beginning