ABSTRACT

Beginning with a consideration of double identity that the Gawain-poet develops for Aeneas and his band of Trojan exiles — on the one hand, a scattered and traumatized people marked by the loss of their ancestral homeland; on the other hand, a colonizing force establishing dominance throughout Europe — this article examines the mingled diasporic and colonial formations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK) through the lens of Avtar Brah’s concept of “diaspora space,” as well through overlapping ideals of the neighborhood and neighboring. I propose that the Gawain-poet generates in his work a fictive diaspora space defined by hybridity and mutual benefit, one that insists on the productive presence and interpenetration of indigenous, diasporic, and colonial groups within the region of “Norþe Walez.” This sunny vision of the Anglo-Welsh borderlands, however, is strikingly at odds with the realities of the Anglo-Welsh relationship in the fourteenth century, one that may indeed have been defined by hybridity but that was hardly mutually beneficial, at least not where the Welsh were concerned. I argue here that SGGK not only willfully misrepresents the Anglo-Welsh relationship in its fictive diaspora space but that, in so doing, it tacitly provides literary cover for the English subjugation of the Welsh and implicitly supports England’s nascent colonial ambitions.

摘要

从考虑双重身份开始，加因-诗人为埃涅阿斯和他的特洛伊流亡者集团发展了一个方面-一方面，散布着创伤的人们以祖先祖国的丧失为标志。另一方面，殖民势力在整个欧洲确立了统治地位-本文通过阿夫塔·布拉（Avtar Brah）的“流散空间”概念以及重叠的理想，考察了高文爵士和格林骑士（SGGK）混合的流放和殖民形成。邻居和邻居。我建议高文诗人在他的作品中产生了一个假想的散居空间，该散居空间由杂种和互惠互利所定义，该空间坚持在“诺勒维勒兹”地区内土著，散居和殖民群体的生产性存在和相互渗透。然而，对盎格鲁-威尔士边疆地区的这种乐观的看法与十四世纪的盎格鲁-威尔士关系的现实是惊人的矛盾，这一事实可能确实是由混杂定义的，但几乎没有互惠互利的关系，至少在哪里威尔士人对此感到担忧。在这里，我认为SGGK不仅在虚构的侨民空间中故意歪曲了盎格鲁-威尔士关系，而且这样做是在默示地为英国对威尔士的征服提供了文学掩护，并隐含地支持英格兰的新生殖民野心。