On Erwin, Bonnie J. “Beyond Mastery: Interspecies Communication in the Middle English Romance.” Exemplaria 29 (2017): 41-57

Along with Ralph’s reading below, this article illuminates animal agency in the middle English romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, albeit taking a broader angle of middle English romances in general including Bevis of Hampton and two Fierabras romances. While Ralph focuses on animals in the hunting scenes of the fourteenth-century poem, and “what this divulges about medieval attitudes toward hunting animals for sport” (430), Erwin takes the more empowering angle, for the animal perspective, of how the horse teaches the human and not how humans hunt/dominate animals, drawing on Gala Argent’s theory of interspecies apprenticeship. In each text examined, horses work as characters, who teach knights how to behave chivalrously, thus complicating the traditional hierarchy. Romances offer a unique medieval perspective on animal agency because “In romance, every action looms larger than life, not only because of the supernatural which pervades these texts, but also because of the genre’s inherent idealism. Horses like Richard’s, Bevis’s, or Gawain’s may be extraordinary–but then, so are the human heroes” (54). Like Langdon and Crane, Erwin focuses on the impact animals have on humans/culture.