WONDER and Its Vocabulary in «Sir Gawain and the Green Knight»

Resumen

What role does the semantic field of wonder, with its multiple components, play in shaping the emotional dimension and narrative design of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? To address this question, this paper examines how wonder operates both within and beyond the text. Drawing on recent emotion research, theories of emotional communities in the Middle Ages, and a set of lexical tools on Old English, Middle English, and Anglo-Norman French, the study highlights the Gawain-poet’s lexical choices, revealing a minimal survival of Old English roots alongside several foreign loanwords that acquire semantic dimensions akin to the native vocabulary. Building on these findings and tracing the attestations of this semantic field in the poem, the paper then investigates how the affective response of wonder structures the narrative framework, with particular attention to class and gender dynamics. The lexical and contextual analysis suggests that wonder stands at the core of the poem’s affective dimension, and that describing, suggesting, and potentially eliciting wonder through linguistic choices and textual motifs is among the poet’s chief priorities.