珠寶盒裡的騎士：《高文爵士與綠騎士》臥房片段中的文‧ 物

The Knight in the Casket: Text and Objects in the Bedroom Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

本篇論文探討中古英文頭韻詩《高文爵士與綠騎士》「臥房片段」中，高文爵士在下塌高皇城堡（Hautdesert）時，受城堡女主人誘惑試煉的過程。本文承接先前學者對此片段中性別顛倒和高文女體化的觀察與論述，在中世紀的文物互文（intertextuality）文化和宮廷愛情圖像傳統的框架下，從當代物質文化的角度切入，討論詩中對女性閨房用品如珠寶、盒子等的指涉，以及詩人如何透過這些文物當時的社會文化語意，生動而具象地刻劃高文爵士與城堡女主人之間「貓抓老鼠」的愛情遊戲，呈現女主人試圖牽制（contain）高文的舉動背後隱晦流露的戀物和偶像破壞（iconoclasm）意圖，為已被詳加討論的《高文》一詩提出不同的閱讀視角。

This article examines the well-noted gender subversion in the famousBedroom Scenes in the Middle English poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.In line with previous gender studies of this poem, it argues for Gawain’s feminizedand queered body, but departs from them by analyzing the scenes froma visually stimulating perspective achieved by means of examining Gawain’simages in Courtly Love literature, objects, and iconographical tradi-tions.Through a close textual reading, this paper shows how the Gawain-poet, withhis playful puns and verbal allusions to contemporary trousse de toilette forwomen, vividly represents the cat-and-mouse game between Lady Bertilak andGawain, to crystalize the knight’s “contained” body, and the poem’s fetishisticand iconoclastic sentiments detectable through the subverted gender relation.