Interrogating Chivalry and the Hunt in the Auchinleck Guy of Warwick

Due to their complex textual affiliations, great popularity, and historical significance, Guy of Warwick and its Anglo-Norman progenitor, Gui de Warewic, have been a favourite subject for textual criticism, thematic analysis, and cultural studies. Following in that vein, this paper will examine the cultural and textual contexts of several morally problematic episodes. Chief among them is a passage in which Guy kills the Earl Florentine’s son after the young man had attacked him for poaching, and then defeats the father in battle when the latter seeks to avenge his son’s death. This ‘Florentine episode’ can be tied to two other critical passages: one, prior to it, detailing how Guy’s ally, the Duke Segyn, is driven to kill his liege lord’s nephew, and another, later, in which Guy rejects secular chivalry for a divinely oriented path. Each passage, while present in some witnesses of the romance, is altered or absent in others.