Non-Epic Poetry
This is not epic poetry. Not in any sense, really, but especially in the sense of being layered with dense passages of description imagery designed to set the stage and decorate the scenery in your head. It is short and to the point. At times, so remarkably so as to draw attention to the terseness. Consider that the following imagery reduces ten years into three lines:
“After the wedding there was a magnificent banquet and the whole day was spent in jousting; and the day after that as well, and the duke purchased a great deal of honor in some fierce fighting, and won ten horses for himself. The duke and duchess lived happily for ten years and more, but no child was forthcoming. Their happiness began to wane.”
The Story, the Lie and Explanation
The central event which drives the narrative is related three separate times. Once by the narrator. Once by the duchess to her husband. And then again, much later, by the duchess to her grown son. The imagery is never quite exactly the same, but instead feature slight but significant alterations:
“One day, in her orchard, she met a man who became very amorous with her. He looked just like her husband and so she lay down beneath a tree and they made love together. But when their lovemaking was over, he revealed his true form to her.”
“`An angel came to me from heaven,' she said, 'and assured me that tonight I will conceive a child and that all our troubles will be over.'”
“`A fiend lay with me in the orchard on the day that you were conceived. I thought that it was your father because he looked just like him. It was underneath a chestnut tree.'”
Penance
The Pope’s blessing of Gowther’s urge to atone for his sins results in a very strange sort of penance. He is not allowed to eat anything which has not first been inside a dog’s mouth:
“When the emperor had been served, he sent some food to the dumb man, but Gowther let it lie where it was. Then a spaniel came with a bone in its mouth and Sir Gowther grabbed the bone and chewed on it. Neither grouse nor pie would he eat, but only what he could get from the mouths of the dogs. The emperor and the empress and all at the high table watched this, and gave food to their hounds; Sir Gowther drew near, perceiving that it was his best chance of getting enough to eat. So he ate amongst the dogs and at night was led to a little room where he hid beneath a blanket.”
Papal Leniency
Not only is the Pope’s penitence sentencing of Gowther strangely imaginative, it is at the same oddly light. Admittedly, it is truly an effective way to test the faith of someone claiming to desire redemption and salvation because one has to really commit, but eating food from a dog’s mouth seems like a pretty good trade when one considers the sins being atoned for here:
“All who believed in Christ, young and old, were brought to grief. He would deflower virgins and force wives from their husbands, kill men and compel friars to jump from high cliffs. He would kill clergymen, burn hermits and widows and cause parish priests to be hung from hooks.”
