Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

It is textual content like this that seems to imply that the MedievalAge was anything but romantic. How, with texts like this governingthe feelings of mankind, would it ever be possible for friendshipsand loves involving dissimilar parties to be allowed and to prosper?With concepts of love so concretely grounded in the realm of sexualpleasure, it is no wonder that any other form of relationship wasat the very least scrutinized, never mind the utter disgust shownat relationships and attempts at friendship with a human beingconsidered abject from the dominant culture. The anonymousauthor of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight would have his/her workcut out for he/she if they wished to shed light on what they believedto be the true nature of love and it’s ability to include, rather thanexclude, any and all individuals regardless of difference.It was therefore very important that they go about the planting ofsuch subversive optimistic and compassionate ideals of love in a waywhich merely suggested, rather than broadcast. To state a completelyalternate reading of love, one which deviated from the normal ideasso radically, the author would have to deceive in order to show thetrue path to completely altruistic love, the kind which breaks downbarriers and builds relationships of understanding. S¿ren Kierkegaardpostulated upon a type of love which did just that: deceive. This sortof deceptive love involves “mystification to help the other recognizethe truth” (McCreary 43) which leaves the deceived better off thanbefore because they can now see that “love is not a being-for-itselfquality but a quality by which you are for others” (McCreary 27), aquality not ascribed to the greedy, satisfaction-based necessity of lovelaid out in the framework of the courtly code.It must be just outside of coincidence, then, that one can witnesssimilar behavior from Lord Bercilak, i.e. the Green Knight, whodeceives Sir Gawain into realizing what it truly means to love, thatit is a compassion for the individual in spite of obvious differences,which can put an end to the idea of monstrosity. In Sir Gawain andlauren apt 45