가웨인 경의 ‘인식 불가능’한 딜레마 로맨스, 남성성, 그리고 이성애의 위안 (Sir Gawain’s “Unintelligible” Dilemma: Romance, Masculinity, and the Consolation of Heterosexuality)

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초록

This paper reconsiders the issue of Gawain’s heteronormativity raised by Carolyn Dinshaw in her famously controversial 1994 article “A Kiss Is Just a Kiss.” Dinshaw is right to point out that homosexuality is “unintelligible within the heterosexual world” of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The poem’s modus operandi, however, is not “the principle of intelligibility” as she argues. On the contrary, the system ensures that the full scenario of the exchange/beheading game remains unintelligible to Gawain. In Bertilak’s castle, he is utterly unaware of the real dilemma he is faced with; after leaving it, he develops a series of false consciousness according to a relentless brainwashing program. Despite the massive dose of eroticism administered to Gawain in the seduction sequence, the consolation of heterosexuality is not ultimately available in his world, nor in the world of the medieval Arthurian romance. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not about the “fictitious unity” of the male hero’s sexuality, as suggested by Dinshaw in her later article, but about the process through which such unity is (de)constructed.

영어초록

This paper reconsiders the issue of Gawain’s heteronormativity raised by Carolyn Dinshaw in her famously controversial 1994 article “A Kiss Is Just a Kiss.” Dinshaw is right to point out that homosexuality is “unintelligible within the heterosexual world” of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The poem’s modus operandi, however, is not “the principle of intelligibility” as she argues. On the contrary, the system ensures that the full scenario of the exchange/beheading game remains unintelligible to Gawain. In Bertilak’s castle, he is utterly unaware of the real dilemma he is faced with; after leaving it, he develops a series of false consciousness according to a relentless brainwashing program. Despite the massive dose of eroticism administered to Gawain in the seduction sequence, the consolation of heterosexuality is not ultimately available in his world, nor in the world of the medieval Arthurian romance. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not about the “fictitious unity” of the male hero’s sexuality, as suggested by Dinshaw in her later article, but about the process through which such unity is (de)constructed.

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