ABSTRACT
The late fourteenth-century Middle English metrical romance Sir Gowther has largely been taken to be a kind of Christian exemplum, a salutary narrative whose protagonist presents a model of moral rehabilitation. 1 The thematic of transformation dominates critical responses to this poem, becoming then a matter of how one designates the trajectory of Gowther’s dramatic change: sadistic sinner to healing saint, animal to man, 2 or “unholy wildman” to social being. 3 Implicit in these readings of the poem is the view that Gowther functions as an Everyman figure, a universal reminder of the good of self-purgation. George Kane’s treatment of Gowther, though overly impressionistic, is perfectly consistent with these interpretations:
Gowther attracts our attention, and even admiration, from the moment he comes into the world with a load of ill-fate upon him such as even the Greek tragic poets seldom devised.… With no hesitation or repining he turns from the enormities of his past life and the hideous inheritance of his paternity, and sets out simply and honestly to purify himself of the diabolic…. If a man is to be the son of a demon, and if he is to purify himself, this is how we would have him behave. 4
