Essay Proposal

Saint George: Chivalric Hero, Arrogant Egotist, or Human Knight?
Saint George is the patron saint of England, and consequently, he is a great national hero. According to Naomi Conn Liebler, Richard Johnson writes The Seven Champions of Christendom “as a working-man’s Faerie Queene, minus the allegory and the poetry” (115); Saint George as written by Johnson is a hero for every Englishman instead of being only a hero of the upper class. Saint George however, is not always the hero that he should be as a Christian saint: he is bloody and merciless, he is patronizing and condescending, and he is aloof and arrogant. Johnson’s Saint George is a vastly different character from the St. George of the Saint’s Lives who is merciful, benevolent, peaceful and godly in all circumstances. Still, despite his lack of saintly virtues at times within Johnson’s story, Saint George still has redeeming qualities that allow him to be a more realistic and human character rather than a perfect saint. Consequently, Johnson’s hero is not only admirable for his chivalric deeds, but rather he also becomes one that is more relatable to the middle and working-class population of England. Saint George is not a perfect knight, although at times he is a typical chivalric hero, there are times when he is arrogant, bloody, and merciless, and yet it is the combination of these qualities that makes him a saint that is truly human.

Works Cited

Davis, Alex. Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance. Rochester, New York: D.S.
Brewer, 2003. 40-72

Alex’s article will help me to see what kind of traits are associated with Romance heroes; how many heroes have lost or disguised parentage, but that all are of noble blood. Saint George is a character who has lost parentage, and yet is of noble blood and it will be interesting to see how this helps to create him to be a chivalric hero.

Liebler, Naomi Conn. “Bully St. George: Richard Johnson’s Seven Champions of Christendom
and the creation of the bourgeois national hero.” Early Modern Prose Fiction: the cultural politics of reading. Ed. Naomi Conn Liebler. New York: Routledge, 2007. 115-129.

Naomi looks at how Saint George can be just as bloody and merciless as the enemies that he is fighting against. In some instances, Saint George is even ordinary and fairly normal because he experiences feelings of fear, and selfishness. This article will be very important to my argument because it will help me look at some of the ways that Saint George is more human instead of always being a glorified chivalric hero.

Matzke, John E. “The Legend of Saint George; Its Development into a Roman d’Aventure.”
PMLA. 19.3 (1904): 449-478. JSTOR. Simon Fraser U Lib. 29 May 2008.

John looks at the legend of Saint George and how it has evolved from other legends and myths to become the version that we get from Richard Johnson. Within his article, Matzke also looks at some of the typical characteristics of a hero, and I would like to see whether these are characteristics that Saint George embodies or not. This article will help me to examine in what ways Saint George is a hero in Johnson’s text, and in what ways he falls short.

Ricker-Wilson, Carol. “Gender, Reading, and the Popular Romance.” The English Journal. 88.3
(1999): 57-64. JSTOR. Simon Fraser U Lib. 26 June 2008.

Carol talks about popular romance and about an exercise she did with some of her students in getting them to read these romance novels critically. Some of the questions that she raises will be interesting to apply to Richard Johnson’s The Seven Champions. In particular I would like to look at how Saint George has social, economic, and sexual power in the story, especially in relation to other characters.