Roos Brands wint de Erik Kooper prijs 2017

Roos Brands heeft de Erik Kooper prijs 2017 van de bacheloropleiding Engelse taal en cultuur gewonnen. Deze prijs wordt jaarlijks toegekend voor het beste eindwerkstuk van de opleiding. De winnaar werd bekendgemaakt op 24 oktober tijdens de diplomauitreiking van Engels. Roos Brands wint de prijs voor haar scriptie ‘Foxy Lady, Foxy Knight: Animals and Chivalric Identity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. Zij werd begeleid door Dr. Marcelle Cole.

De prijs, die bestaat uit een diploma en een enveloppe met inhoud, is in 2006 ingesteld door oud-Universitair Hoofddocent Erik Kooper. Hij overhandigde de prijs persoonlijk aan de winnares.

Abstract

This thesis analyses the interconnection between chivalric identity and attitudes to the natural world in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It discusses medieval conceptualisations of the animal, fourteenth-century socio-economic developments in chivalric culture and the concept of nature in late-medieval theology and philosophy. In the light of this context emerge two different notions of chivalric identity that are coupled with different attitudes to the natural world in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain upholds an absolutist understanding of chivalric identity, a hostile attitude to the natural environment, and cannot deal constructively with his own animalistic nature. Gawain’s point of view is grounded in High-Medieval concepts of divine order in society and the natural world, which had begun to lose credibility in the fourteenth century. For Bertilak chivalry is not an essentialist account of the aristocracy but rather an ideal for all to aspire to. This notion emerged in the context of late-fourteenth-century upward social mobility, and in Bertilak it goes hand in hand with a respectful attitude to the natural world. Bertilak is also lenient towards human natural inclinations: that even the greatest knights fall short of the chivalric ideal is cause for forgiveness rather than despair. Drawing on contemporary theological debates on human nature and the will, the Gawain-poet reinforces his argument for Bertilak’s understanding of chivalry by showing how Gawain’s archaic ideology is spiritually crippling, while Bertilak’s chivalric ideal emulates the Christian core values of love, forgiveness and spiritual regeneration.