Strangers at the Feast: Social Mobility, Integration and the Nature of Nobility in the Fair Unknown and Northern Gawain Romances

This thesis examines the presentation of social mobility and the notion of nobility as either a learned skill or an inborn quality across the Fair Unknown and Northern Gawain romance groups. While this is quite a broad field of study, this study is particularly concerned with the social upheavals following the Black Death, which gave new urgency to pre-existing concerns around the crossing of social boundaries, and the role played by women in defining and shaping late medieval ideas of nobility. Chapter one discusses the idea of recognition, and the idea of innate nobility as opposed to the outward appearance of wealth and standing, through the lens of sumptuary law and the way that signs and signifiers of nobility can be loosely divided into two categories: the physical, innate qualities of the body, and the material signifiers that speak of wealth, influence or prestige and may be earned, bought or otherwise gained rather than inherently possessed. The second chapter deals with the idea of knightly education and the often-unconventional female characters who act as guides, spurs and instructors in knightly prowess and virtue. While these women often have agendas other than the education of their knightly companions, the role they play is often instrumental to a knight’s development, and through them it is possible to gain a clearer understanding of these texts’ presentation of nobility and knightly status as something that can be developed through effort rather than simply being inherently possessed by right of birth. Fundamentally, this thesis discusses the nature of social status, nobility and social mobility as it is presented in these works, and what the Fair Unknown and Northern Gawain romances tell us about perceptions of social mobility in late medieval England.