Emotion and Narrative Empathy in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

ABSTRACT

This article proposes that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight presents emotionally focused content that actively invites readerly empathy with its flawed hero. This poem recruits the potential of the literary text both to represent human emotion, and also to arouse emotional responses in the reader (or hearer). This twofold affective capacity has yet to be analyzed as a key component of the text’s durable appeal and cross-cultural intelligibility. Gawain works as an engaging narrative because it invites from the reader a full understanding of the hero’s hesitant embodied experience, and in turn encourages an empathetic response to a finely nuanced dilemma. Through the representation of mental and emotional states, it primes the reader to simulate the emotional experiences of the hero; to invest affectively in his situation by entertaining the emotions presented in the textual fiction; and to enter a text world that stresses joy over other possible emotional keys.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant DP120101279, and has benefitted from the research assistance, made possible by that funding, of Michelle Hamadache.

Notes

1 Anderson, 160.

2 Ibid., 227.

3 Andrew and Waldron, eds., 23.

4 Anderson, 226. On shame in this text, see also: Wasserman; Kindrick; and Burrow. On shame in medieval literature more generally, see Flannery.

5 Pearsall, 353 and 358.

6 Hogan, What Literature Teaches Us, 68, 302.

7 Bruner, “Narrative Construction.” See the development of this idea in his later work: “Self-Making and World-Making” and Making Stories.

8 Herman, “Stories as a Tool.”

9 Gerrig.

10 See Oatley, “Fiction and Its Study,” 160.

11 Oatley, Such Stuff as Dreams, x.

12 Dancygier, 20.

13 Ibid., 29. See also Tomasello.

14 Damasio, Descartes' Error; and Looking for Spinoza. Damasio's most recent book advances from an evolutionary perspective even more evidence for a biological basis of human consciousness (Self Comes to Mind). As with his other studies, he places memory at the centre of consciousness and the self.

15 Damasio, Feeling of What Happens, 287–8.

16 Ibid., 51.

17 “Emotion has important effects on mental functions that are indisputably cognitive, such as memory, attention, and perception.” See Lane et al., 4.

18 LeDoux and Rogan, 270.

19 Oatley, Keltner, and Jenkins, 401. See also Oatley, “A Taxonomy.”

20 Nussbaum, esp. 457–613. Nussbaum's work, though influential, has been the subject of serious criticism. See, for example, Hale.

21 Robinson, 105–7.

22 Feagin, 648–9.

23 Coplan, “Catching Characters’ Emotions,” 37.

24 For a good overview on philosophical perspectives on readers’ empathetic engagement with fictional narratives and characters, see Coplan, “Empathetic Engagement.” See also Carroll. Both scholars emphasize the powerful emotional triggers of audiovisual cues, especially facial expressions, and come up with different explanations for the viewers’ emotional response. Carroll denies that consumers of fiction simulate the emotional experience of characters, as some scholars argue, but suggests rather that they “mobilize an affective stance” that is distinctly produced in response to a fiction whose content we imagine rather than believe (91). Coplan prefers the theory of “emotional contagion”, whereby an automatic affective response is produced when we observe the experience of emotion in others, a phenomenon requiring the sensory input of a visual experience as occurs when viewing a film; literary fictions, on the other hand, can produce reactions that are more cognitive, but less affective because they produce experiences more removed from real-world sensations (“Catching Characters’ Emotions,” 35).

25 Keen, 208; and Carroll, 177–80.

26 Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 190.

27 See McFee.

28 Indeed, according to Hogan, “story structures are fundamentally shaped and oriented by our emotion systems,” (Affective Narratology, 1).

29 Kringelbach, 41.

30 Damasio includes on this list: embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, and shame, and lists six primary or universal emotions, with surprise in the place of guilt and shame in the list above (Feeling of What Happens, 51).

31 The literature is huge, and dominated by studies of particular groups of words and specific cultural contrasts. For the cognitive semantics view, see Tissari, Pessi, and Salmela; and Kövecses. For an Old English example, see Geeraerts and Gevaert. For a broader overview of key concepts and readings in cultural studies, see Harding and Pribram.

32 Damasio, Feeling of What Happens, 52.

33 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ll. 1764–5 (Andrew and Waldron). All subsequent quotations are from this edition.

34 Hogan, What Literature Teaches Us, 175.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 218.

37 Ibid., 217.

38 Spearing, 227.

39 Anderson, 226.

40 Woods, 209.

41 Ibid., 224–6.

42 Bolens, 161.

43 Owen, 200–1.

44 Mann, 105–17.

45 Wesling, 198.

46 Palmer, 175.

47 Bruner, Acts of Meaning, 113.

48 Herman, “Character,” 129.

49 Hogan, What Literature Teaches Us, 287.

50 Ibid., 300, 49.

51 Miall and Kuiken, 221, cited in Keith Oatley, Such Stuff as Dreams, 121.

52 Oatley, Such Stuff as Dreams, 126.

53 Hogan, Mind and Its Stories, 53.

54 Hogan, What Literature Teaches Us, 22.

55 Hogan, Affective Narratology, 56.