I thought it was about time for a short survey of some of the academic findings that have emerged, or been found, after my book Strange Country: Sir Gawain in the moorlands of North Staffordshire.
1. I’ve since found that Ordelle G. Hill’s now-unobtainable book Looking Westward: Poetry, Landscape, and Politics in Sir Gawain (2009) opens by examining the similarities with… “the two most significant Welsh poets … Iolo Goch (1325-98) and Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320-80)”, wandering Welsh bards “well known throughout Wales”. Their dates certain align exactly with my timeline, since my candidate has the dates 1326-1383. And also note the major minstrel court meeting at Tutbury in Staffordshire from 1372 onward, supported by lavish patronage. Just the sort of thing to lure the best poets out of Wales. And with Tutbury being just 13 miles SE of my Gawain candidate (then 46 years old).
2. I read that in 2012, a lecture by Joel Fredell made a good argument that the Cotton Nero ms. (containing the surviving copy of Gawain) was scribed in York in the early fifteenth century. Quite possible, given that my candidate had strong connections to York as well as to Alton in Staffordshire. However, Fredell’s additional claim that this new… “evidence refutes many assumptions about the Gawain-poet’s connections” to Cheshire etc seems rather a dramatic over-reach. The man simply had, on my evidence, homes in North Staffordshire and York and moved between them as was common in the period.
3. In 2020, I spotted a new M.A. dissertation which considered “The Gawain-poet as Monastic Author”. I read this and found the case unconvincing, but the author usefully highlighted the work of Philip F. O’Mara (1992). O’Mara had proposed that one Robert Holcot could have been a possible tutor for the young Gawain-poet. I found the dates matched well, since the timeline for my candidate would have had a 16-18 year-old available to lodge with Holcot for a year. Perhaps so as to ‘polish him up a bit’, in terms of education and also spirituality, perhaps even after previously lodging at somewhere like Swythamley near Alton. The polishing would thus have been when Holcot was assigned, c. 1343, to serve with a Dominican religious house in Northampton. So the dates fit. But… it could just be that the Gawain-poet came to know Holcot’s writings later and a literary and philosophical influence came that way.
4. I was unaware of Helen Cooper’s 2021 Gollancz lecture (not online), which is reported to have suggested the patron could have been Richard Scrope. He became Bishop of Lichfield in Staffordshire, from 1387 onward. This connection with Staffordshire is too late in time, by my timeline. And there seems to be no prior connection of Scrope to Staffordshire. But it’s not impossible there was an interest in such works. One should note that Walsingham wrote of Scrope’s “incomparable knowledge of literature”, and that in 1378 Scrope became chancellor of Cambridge University. It is not therefore impossible that in 1378 or next year this friend of literature read a copy of the new Gawain-poem, originally written (as I reckon it) in time for a possible visitation at Alton Castle in Christmas 1377. Scrope was a northerner from Bolton, so may have been able to read the Midlands dialect.
Later, Scrope was the new Archbishop of York from 1398. Scrope would thus have been located in a city that still had strong family connections with my candidate, some 15+ years after the man’s death.
5. In 2022 there was another try at the claim for Sir John Stanley (1350-1414). I blogged about this journal article here. But by my reckoning, Stanley was too late in time by a good 20+ years. Further, it seems to me unlikely that such an ugly and murderous character would also have been one of our finest and most sensitive poets.
I’d further note re: the claims for Cheshire, the telling point in Bowers, An Introduction to the Gawain poet (2012), that (summarising Bennett, 1979)… “The Poll Tax returns of 1379 found that Cheshire and South Lancashire had only four university graduates who could have appreciated, never mind written, an intellectually challenging poem like Pearl”. I further note that I’ve also since heard a podcast with Tom Shippey, who pours very cold water on the idea that the Gawain-poet hailed from Cheshire.
6. In 2024 I noted Leo Carruthers new book Pearl / Perle: suivi de “Tolkien et Perle”, in paperback in French. The introduction apparently proposes… “a new theory about the poem’s patron … one of the most famous English princes of his time, son and father of kings”. I have not yet seen the book, or a review. However, a Google Books snippet in another French book of 2024 usefully informed me that (I translate)…
“Carruthers advances a series of arguments suggesting that Perle was composed for the family of John of Gaunt in memory of Blanche”.
Not strictly “new”, I think. Since I recall I’ve heard Gaunt named as a possible patron before. But possible in terms of dates, if a bit early by my reckoning. Not his wife who died 1368, at age 23. Rather his granddaughter Blanche of Portugal (1388-1389), who died as a babe. Rather late, I’d say, and if he were that close to John of Gaunt then surely we would know more about the author?
I’ve also found a Country Life magazine feature of 1960 on Alton Castle, that would have made many aware that the castle was built atop a mediaeval castle. Country Life having an immense readership at that time. Thus it’s all the more puzzling that Gawain academics have completely overlooked a mediaeval castle that is a near-perfect ‘fit’ both in terms of location and architecture.
