ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the descriptions of food and feasting in England in the fourteenth century with specific reference to the medieval romance Gawain and the Green Knight, which gives what is believed to be the earliest descriptions of Christmas. The convivial decadence depicted in Gawain is contrasted with the morally outrageous descriptions in another poem contained in the same manuscript, Cleanness. Where appropriate, the celebrations in Gawain are discussed with brief reference to other medieval feasts including Langland’s Vision of Piers Plowman, Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale and Wife of Bath’s Tale, and The Weddyng of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell. This analysis is informed by, among others, Peter Hammond’s (1996) study, Food and Feast in Medieval England, Bridget Ann Henisch’s (1976) discussion Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society and Christopher Dyer’s (1983) essay “English Diet in the Late Middle Ages”. This chapter’s principal focus is on the feasts and celebrations in Gawain and the Green Knight. For other discussions, particularly the moral predicament in which Gawain finds himself, as well as the nature of the testing of Gawain, the reader is directed to some of the enormous body of literature on Gawain, including Barron (1980), Brewer and Gibson (1997), Burrow (1965, 2001), Davenport (1978), Putter (1996), and Spearing (2010).
