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MICHAEL JOHNSTON Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. pp. xvi + 301.
In this valuable study, Michael Johnston argues for the existence of a distinct genre of "gentry romance" appealing to a class that grew rapidly in importance in the late Middle Ages, confirming their sense of identity, expressing their interests, giving attention to their ambitions and concerns, and providing fanciful solutions to their problems. The gentry are defined as the group of knights, squires, and gentlemen lying at the bottom of the aristocratic pile, gentlemen just above yeomen. This was the decisive division in English society: between those who were "gentle" and those who were not. The manuscripts containing these romances are localized in the north Midlands.
In Sir Degrevaunt, the classic of the genre, the knight-landowner is threatened by the depredations of a neighboring earl upon his estates; this was a familiar reality for the gentry, who were always subordinate to the lords, subject to their intimidation and encroachment and unable to invoke the law without years of wrangling and harassment. The resolution is pure fantasy: Degrevaunt defeats the earl in chivalric combat and marries his daughter, so becoming an earl. Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle and the Avowing of Arthur have vaguely similar plots, in which a member of the gentry faces up to the Arthurian court and proves his equality or even superiority (the carle turns out to be himself an aristocrat).
As Johnston says, such romances "mediate gentry economic fantasies" (67). Octavian, Sir Isumbras, and Sir Eglamour all have gentry heroes whose wives and children are snatched away by wild animals. This was not a common problem for the gentry, but what Johnston emphasizes here is the special importance of families in the life of the gentry, the disturbance if they fell out or were broken up, the importance of secure inheritance, and the difficulties of marrying daughters successfully on a limited income. The reuniting of the families...