Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

(ca. 1375–1400)

   Often considered the most elegantly written and stylistically perfect ROMANCE in MIDDLE ENGLISH, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight survives in only one copy and is found with three other poems in MS Cotton Nero A.x, Art. 3, in the British Library. The four poems are thought to have been written at the end of the 14th century, and all are generally considered to be the work of one author, although there are substantive differences between the poems. Of the four, Gawain alone is romance in genre; two are moral exempla with overt didactic intents, and the third is a DREAM VISION whose moral and spiritual ethos connects it with the exempla poems. As a romance, and a fashionably chivalric romance, Gawain seems at some remove from its companion poems.Yet it shares with them a common dialect and composition tradition— they all belong to the native ALLITERATIVE VERSE tradition in which the structure of the poems is determined by alliteration rather than rhyme. This form of verse was more common in the West and North during the later medieval period, and we can speculate that the poems were composed outside the court circles in which poets such as Geoffrey CHAUCER were writing. Nonetheless, the poems should not be read as unsophisticated productions— they are highly stylized in form and content, and none more so than Gawain. In addition to their shared alliterative form, the poems also share thematic concerns and moral beliefs, and the links (both verbal and thematic) between the four are a strong argument for common authorship. As the one representative of romance in the manuscript, Gawain may be less overtly didactic, but under cover of fashionable romance the poem offers a moral ethos as highly developed as that found in its companion poems. If there are differences in moral tone, the differences may be found in the nature of the narrative: Gawain is an Arthurian romance, and, as such, courtly concerns (love, social life, fine arts, details of clothing) are ever present. Additionally, while Gawain clearly demonstrates a spiritual dimension in its moral exposition, the moral and spiritual testing that transpires in the poem, and from which the reader is to learn, is located in real events and in tests located in real-life situations. Nonetheless, whereas the three other poems seem more concerned with moral certitudes, Gawain deals less with certitude than with uncertainty and the ways in which moral failing may be open to interpretation. In Gawain the poet has artfully combined numerous folklore motifs such as “the exchange of blows,” “the exchange of winnings,” and “the sexual temptation of a knight by his host’s wife,” and the interlocking of these motifs is echoed in the very structure of the poem itself. Divided into four fitts or chapters, the poem is also structured in stanzas of varying lengths but all ending with a “bob and wheel,” which consists of a short line (the “bob,” which is usually two words in length) followed by a four-line stanza rhyming abab (“the wheel”). Similar in some ways to the couplet of a Shakespearean sonnet, the wheel often reflects back on the stanza it concludes. In Fitt 1, the poem opens with an invocation of the Fall of Troy, a very popular theme, and an allusion to the mythic foundation of Britain by Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas. The invocation of the Troy story is also found at the poem’s end, and thus the poem is framed by allusions that are mythic and subtly convey the issues of identity with which the romance is concerned. The action of Fitt 1 opens in King ARTHUR’s court during the Christmas holidays where Arthur has vowed not to feast until he has seen some marvel or wondrous thing. The king’s desire is fulfilled when a very large and very green knight rides into the hall on an equally green horse. Arthur and his knights are astonished into silence and the Green Knight declares that he has not come to fight but to beg a game of the court: He will allow a knight to behead him with an axe on the condition that the knight will meet him a year hence to accept a blow in return. Although Arthur is eager to take on this exchange, his nephew, Gawain, convinces the king that Gawain should be the one to accept the challenge. Gawain cuts off the Green Knight’s head, and the now-headless Green Knight mounts his horse, picks up his head from the floor, and before he rides out, addresses the court in words that confirm the exchange of blows agreement he has been granted. Fitt 2 begins with the passing of the seasons until almost a year has passed and Gawain needs to make ready for his quest to find the Green Knight and fulfill his oath by allowing the knight his axe blow.

   There is an elaborate “arming of the knight” scene, the highlight of which is the description of the pentangle on Gawain’s shield and how it represents all the virtues, chivalric and Christian, that are embodied in Gawain. Gawain sets off and, after many adventures barely alluded to, takes winter refuge in a castle where he is warmly greeted by his host and his host’s wife and court. In the sociable atmosphere of the court, Gawain agrees to stay for a while and during the stay he will exchange with his host, at the end of each day, whatever they received that day. This “exchange of winnings” seems innocent enough, until Gawain (and we) realize in Fitt 3 that what Gawain will receive each day are the very obvious sexual advances of his host’s wife. As a true, chivalric knight, Gawain’s days pass in exquisite agony:He cannot insult a woman, but he also cannot betray his host. The elegance and perfection of the poem’s structure is showcased in the account of the next three days: Each day the host goes out to hunt, leaving Gawain in his bed and susceptible to the host’s wife. And the poem goes back and forth between descriptions of the host’s “real” hunting endeavors and the seduction scenes played out between Gawain and the host’s wife. At the end of the first and second days, Gawain and the host exchange their winnings: The host gives Gawain the animal (a deer and a boar) he has hunted, and Gawain gives the host the kisses he has received. The moral dilemma in which Gawain finds himself is complicated on the third day when the host’s wife offers him a belt that protects the wearer from harm or injury. Knowing he will be leaving soon to keep his bargain with the Green Knight, Gawain accepts the belt.Yet at day’s end, when the host gives him the fox he has hunted, Gawain repays him with kisses, and says nothing about the belt.

   Fitt 4 opens with Gawain setting out from the hospitable castle to seek the Green Knight.Wearing the lady’s green belt, Gawain meets with the Green Knight but flinches at the first blow of the axe. The second blow is a feint, and with the third and last blow, Gawain is lightly nicked. The Green Knight then reveals who he is (the host of the hospitable castle), the plot (to trick and test an Arthurian knight), and why he nicked Gawain with the third blow (on the third day at the castle Gawain did not,with perfect honesty, exchange his winnings with his host). Gawain is mortified and shamed when the plot and his own behavior are revealed and returns to Arthur’s court wearing the green belt as a reminder of his chivalric failure. The perfect interdependence of action and motifs is made manifest when Gawain, and we, realize that the real test was not the beheading game but the exchange of winnings. Yet the poem ends having raised more questions than it answers, and one of the key uncertainties is just what constitutes Gawain’s moral and chivalric failure.

   The critical writings concerning Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are vast and varied. Some look at the folklore origins of the plot and the figure of the Green Knight; some discuss chivalry and morality, while others discuss the impossible ideals of the chivalric code as it is written into romances. The artistry of the poem has long been the focus of many critics, yet more recent criticism involves historical, feminist, and cultural readings of characters, plot, and moral lessons. Issues of identity, both personal and national, are the focus of some current readings of the poem, as are the homosocial possibilities latent in the exchange of winnings motif. The poem is a masterpiece of the ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL, an elegant romance within which we find essential moral issues raised and only partially resolved in a tale of a flawed, but very human, Arthurian knight.

   Bibliography

   ■ Andrew, Malcolm, and Ronald Waldron, eds. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript. York Medieval Texts, 2nd ser. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

   ■ Benson, Larry D. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1965.

   ■ Bercovitch, Sacvan. “Romance and Anti-Romance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Philological Quarterly 44 (1965): 30–37.

   ■ Green, D. H. Irony in the Medieval Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

   ■ Narin, Elisa. “ ‘ ´?at on . . . ´?at o´?er’: Rhetorical Descriptio and Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Pacific Coast Philology 23 (1988): 60–66.

   ■ Tolkien, J. R. R., and E. V. Gordon, eds. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 2nd ed., revised by Norman Davis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

   Elisa Narin van Court