Almudena Negredo Navas

University of Alcalá de Henares

THE WANING OF THE HERO : A REFLECTION OF THE CHANGING MEDIEVAL WORLD.

The depiction of the hero, particularly in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century England reflects the merging of several factors: the warfare policy of the period, the socio-economic changes and the precepts of the Church. This paper explores the attitude of the hero at that time in relation to the threefold influence mentioned above. The choice of Gawain as the protagonist of this paper gives evidence for the evolution of the hero, since a wide corpus of romances from this period and earlier texts focus on him. The study of the attributes attached to the hero, bearing in mind different medieval stages, shows to what extent these factors contribute to the evolution of his description.