ABSTRACT
Sir Gawain is a poem about a test, or rather a series of tests. One could say that every story inevitably tests its hero in some sense—brings out some quality in him or at least requires him to exercise some mental or physical faculty. But this is obviously not what we mean by a ‘test’. A test-story must have an air of calculation about it. We must feel that the hero is subjected to difficulties contrived in such a way as to try him out. In a test-story proper, this contriving is ascribed to some character within the story itself—whom we may call, according to his motives, either ‘tester’ or ‘adversary’. Bercilak in Sir Gawain, Walter in the Clerk’s Tale, the Duke in Measure for Measure, God in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, all play this part. However, there are other stories of a rather similar sort which have no tester. Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale is a familiar example. Certainly Dorigen is subjected to a contrived test in this poem; but it is not Aurelius, the technical ‘adversary’, who does the contriving. It is rather the author, whose chief purpose seems to be to demonstrate his heroine’s peculiar virtues in the most striking way possible.
