The Wild Hunt

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The Wild Hunt In the early medieval period, hunting was a game or sport often used by royalty and the upper class. It was more than a past time as the rules of the hunt were an integral part in court etiquette, and skill in hunting was akin to a person’s prowess in chivalric wars. During the hunt, the game would be something as nimble as a deer to something sluggish and powerful as a wild boar. The Hunt has appeared as a setting, movement of story, or as a metaphor in several poems in the past. Two of which will be mentioned are Wyatt’s Whoso List to Hunt and Sidney’s Sonnet 20. As the Hunt was not just about chasing boar with the aristocrats down the block, but more about the bonding of the King’s or Queen’s fellow man. In the later Renaissance, the use of the hunt became a term for chase or capture. As it is archaic in the sense that the hunt would be a chase for a woman, and that treating them as the prey was their goal. It was also their goal to note that the Hunt became a metaphor or term for love. While it also showed their status, it gave them a sense of who they are. The hunt may be a thing between a band of brothers in arms, but it was also a show of status, loyalty, and honestly, an ego puffer. Something that writers of the period could show that the King trusted them, that the King or Queen was good and trustful of their appearance. Albeit there is show that the hunt was a way to test loyalty that whomever the King invited would have to prove their worth. This is less common and the more common was a knight trying to prove themselves to a lady, as they did not write poems, or many of them did not write poems. A call upon Sidney’s use of the hunt is very brief and quite shallow in the sense that his is very loose. Sidney did not mean the true hunt or the visage of animals in his writing. Instead he takes the use of the hunt
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