(Breaking) the law: Social control, self-help and violence in "The Tale of Gamelyn"
Loading...
Date
2013
Authors
Advisor
Editor
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Adam Mickiewicz University
Title alternative
Abstract
Fourteenth century England experienced social changes which influenced the attitude to crown
law and triggered a growing distrust to law and its representatives. The progressing development
of the gentry complicated the defining of offences, and diversified the means of punishing them.
The Tale of Gamelyn presents a conflict between two brothers, sons of a knight, which went
beyond the confinements of the household, transforming itself into a conflict between law and
justice. Their feud is a cross-complaint concerning land, which soon turns into a spiral of violence
in which one brother uses law to control and punish, and the other uses crime and violence to
achieve justice. Using Donald Black’s theory of the sociological geometry of violence (2004) and
of crime as social control (1983), this article will analyze the law in the tale as a tool of social
control represented by Johan, and justice acquired with the use of self-help by Gamelyn. The
article will attempt to prove that the story presents a complex relation between justice and law
pinned across the varied spectrum of social classes, which Gamelyn changes a number of times,
and will argue that the tale is an affirmation of violence as an underlying force of both law and
justice, differing in presentation and realization according to social class.
Description
Sponsor
Keywords
mediaeval, law, violence, social control, outlaw tales
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 48.4 (2013), pp. 63-77