Stanzaic Guy of Warwick

Preserved exclusively in the fourteenth-century Auchinleck Manuscript, the Stanzaic Guy of Warwick represents part of a piecemeal trilogy of Middle English romances that tell of the pious Guy of Warwick, one of the most celebrated national heroes of medieval England. Adapting one third of the grand thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman romance Gui de Warewic, the Stanzaic Guy of Warwick begins with Guy’s marriage to his beloved Felice, the earl of Warwick’s daughter and the original inspiration for the conquests in continental Europe that established him as a paragon of knighthood. The festivities are barely over when remorse strikes Guy for neglecting God while pursuing earthly glory, and he departs in disguise on a series of penitential pilgrimages overseas before returning to Warwick to live as a solitary hermit. Combining travel literature, pilgrimage, and chivalric romance, the Stanzaic Guy of Warwick helped cement its pilgrim-knight hero’s status as a late medieval cultural icon.