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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late
14th century alliterative romance recorded in a single manuscript, which also contains three other pieces of an altogether more
Christian orientation. The four poems are linked by a commonality of the North-Western Midland dialect—a form of Middle English. The core of the story of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is far older and embraces many elements, the most prominent being the "severed head" theme, central to
Celtic mythology, though it is also coloured by events of the time, chief amongst which was the
Black Death.
The manuscript,
Cotton Nero A.x is in the
British Museum. The first modern edition was published by
J. R. R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon in 1925.
The poet
The three other pieces found with
Gawain, although untitled in their longhand exposition, have come to be known as
Pearl,
Patience, and
Cleanness . It is understood that the Cotton manuscript is in the hand of a copyist and not of the author. There is thus nothing explicit that says all four poems in the manuscript are by the same poet. However, from a comparative analysis of dialect, verse form and diction, some scholars accept single-authorship, but there is by no means universal support for this. Though the name of this poet is unknown, some inferences about him can be drawn from an informed reading of his works.
Tolkien, in the introduction to his translation, writes
- He was a man of serious and devout mind, though not without humour; he had an interest in theology, and some knowledge of it, though an amateur knowledge perhaps, rather than a professional; he had Latin and French and was well enough read in French books, both romantic and instructive; but his home was in the West Midlands of England; so much his language shows, and his metre, and his scenery.
The manuscript has been dated to the round year of 1400, and it is believed that the poet flourished some short time before that; he was thus a contemporary of
Chaucer, although remote from him in almost every other way. Before the manuscript came into the possession of Robert Cotton, it had found a place in the library of Henry Savile of Bank in
Yorkshire, who lived from 1568–1617. Nothing is known of it, or its author, before that. The most commonly suggested candidate for authorship is John Massey of Cotton, Cheshire.
One additional poem,
St. Erkenwald, has sometimes been attributed to the same poet. However,
St. Erkenwald does not occur in the same manuscript, and instead can be found in British Library, Harley 2250. Further, other than some similarities in language, and a general level of excellence, there is no reason to ascribe authorship of
St. Erkenwald to The Pearl Poet.
The verse form
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is written in the style that linguists have termed the Alliterative Revival of the fourteenth century. Instead of focusing on a metrical syllabic count and rhyme, the
alliterative form relied on the agreement of stressed syllables at the beginning of the line with a third and fourth at the end of the line. The line always finds a "breath-point" at some point after the first two stresses, dividing the line into two half-lines, separated by the pause called a
caesura.
Although the Gawain-poet was somewhat freer with convention than his predecessors, this more or less had been the form of alliterative poetry going back into the Old English. The Gawain-poet, however, did embellish the form with some end-rhyme, as it happens. His structure has come to be known as the bob and wheel. The poet broke his alliterative lines into variable-length groups and ended these nominal stanzas with a rhyming section of five lines known as the
bob and wheel: one one-stress line rhyming
a and four three-stress lines rhyming
baba . These lines also alliterated.
Plot synopsis
The Challenge
The story begins at
King Arthur's court at Camelot on New Year's day. As Arthur's court is feasting, a stranger, the gigantic Green Knight, mounted on horseback and armed with an axe , enters the hall and lays down a challenge. One of Arthur's knights may take the axe and strike a single blow against the Green Knight, on the condition that the Green Knight will return the blow one year and one day later. Sir Gawain, the youngest of Arthur's knights, diffidently accepts the challenge and chops off the giant's head. The Green Knight, still alive, picks up his own head, reminds Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel in a year and a day, and rides off.
Sir Gawain's journey
Almost a year later, on the day after
All Hallows Day, Sir Gawain sets off in his finest armour, on his horse Gringolet, to find the Green Chapel and complete his bargain with the Green Knight. His shield is marked with the
pentangle, which the poem attributes to
Solomon [Stanzas 27-28], and which is to remind him of his knightly obligations. The journey takes him from the isle of
Anglesey to a castle somewhere in the West Midlands, where he arrives on Christmas Eve. Gawain meets the lord of the castle and his beautiful wife, who are pleased to have such a renowned guest. After the feasting of Christmas Day, the lord enquires why Gawain has journeyed so far from home during the holiday season. Gawain tells of his New Year's Day appointment at the Green Chapel and that he must continue his search the next day. The lord laughs and insists Gawain must prolong his visit, for his search has ended: the Green Chapel is not two miles away! [ll. 1068-78]
The lord's bargain
That night, the lord announces that while he spends the next day hunting, the travel-weary Gawain shall stay at the castle, sleep as late as he wants , and eat whenever he chooses to arise; the lady will keep him company. But to add a little interest to the day, the lord proposes a bargain: he will give Gawain whatever he catches, on condition that Gawain gives to the lord, without explanation, whatever he might gain during the day. Gawain accepts. The next morning, after the lord has gone, the lady of the castle visits Gawain's room and tries to seduce him, claiming that she knows of the reputation of Arthur's knights as great lovers. Gawain, however, keeps to his promise to remain
chaste until his mission to the Green Chapel is complete, and yields nothing but a single kiss. When the lord returns with the
deer he has killed, he hands it straight to Sir Gawain, as agreed, and Gawain responds by returning the lady's kiss to the lord. According to the lord's bargain, Gawain refuses to explain where he won the kiss.
On the second morning, Gawain again receives a visit from the lady, and again politely refuses her advances. That evening, when the lord returns, there is a similar exchange of a hunted
boar for two kisses. On the third morning, when the lady visits his chamber, Gawain maintains his chastity but accepts a green silk girdle, which is supposed to keep him from harm, as a parting gift. But, the lady insists, he must not tell her husband. That evening, the lord returns with a fox, which he exchanges with Gawain for three kisses. However, Gawain keeps the girdle from the lord so that he can use it in his forthcoming encounter with the Green Knight, thus violating their agreement.
The meeting with the Green Knight
The next day, Gawain leaves for the Green Chapel, with the lady's silk girdle hidden under his armour, and accompanied by a guide from the lord's castle. Leaving the guide, who is afraid to approach the Green Chapel, Gawain finds the Green Knight busy whetting the blade of an axe in readiness for the fight. As arranged, the Green Knight moves to behead Gawain, but only strikes him on the third axe-swing, the blow barely cutting his neck and only injuring him slightly. The Green Knight then reveals himself to be an
alter ego of the lord of the castle, Bertilak de Hautdesert, and explains that the three axe blows were for the three occasions when Gawain was visited by the lady. The third blow, which drew blood, was a punishment for Gawain's acceptance of the silk girdle. There is much speculation as to whether the girdle would have really kept Gawain from dying had the Green Knight desired to kill him. The lady, it seems, has lied to Gawain insofar as the girdle has not kept him completely from harm. On the other hand, it has kept him from death. The author leaves the exact powers of the girdle undefined and open to interpretation, but makes it clear that the Green Knight would not have willingly spared Gawain's life had he failed to resist the lady's sexual advances. Assuming it has no life-saving powers, it is meant to be ironic that the girdle, the one thing that Gawain thinks will save him, is actually the thing that harms him; furthermore, assuming the girdle has no real powers, it would have been the thing that led to his death had he taken it as a love token, which is what the lady originally offered it to him as.
The Green Knight explains that Gawain's trial was arranged by
Morgan le Fay, mistress of the wizard
Merlin and now a guest at Hautdesert castle. The two men part on cordial terms, Gawain returning to Camelot. There, Sir Gawain recounts his adventure to Arthur and explains his shame at having partially succumbed to the lady's attempts, if only in his mind. Arthur refuses to blame Gawain and decrees that all his knights should henceforth wear a green sash in recognition of Gawain's courage and
honour and to recognize the fallability of men.
Similar stories
There is a similar character present in the
Qur'an, by the name of
Al-Khidr . Al-Khidr, in his encounter with
Moses, tests him three times with three seemingly evil acts. Eventually, the "sins" of Al-Khidr prove to be noble deeds to prevent greater evils or reveal great goods. Both the Green Knight and Al-Khidr serve as teachers to holy and upright men , who thrice put their faith and obedience to the test. It has been suggested that the character of the Green Knight may be a literary descendant of Al-Khidr, brought to Europe with the Crusaders and blended with Celtic and Arthurian imagery.
A certain "Green Knight" is also referenced in the stories of
Saladin. The knight in these stories is a
Spanish warrior in a shield
vert and a helmet brandished with a stag's horns. Saladin had respect for this honourable fighter.
In Sir Thomas Malory's
Morte d'Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory [i]'s compilation of some French and English [i]...
, chapter 20, Gawain's brother Gareth fights "two brethern whych were called the Grene Knyght and the Rede Knyght". It is unknown if Thomas Malory was aware of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or if he drew any influence from it.
Notes
References
Editions
- Tolkien, J. R. R. and E. V. Gordon editors; 2nd edition by Norman Davis. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. ISBN 0-19-811486-9.
- Andrew, Malcom and Ronald Waldron. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fourth ed. 2002. ISBN 0-85989-514-9.
Translations
- Merwin, W.S. Sir Gawain & and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation. New York: Random House, 2002. ISBN 0-375-41476-2.
- Borroff, Marie. Trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967. ISBN 0-393-09754-4.
- Stone, Brian. Trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1959; second edition 1979. ISBN 0-14-044092-5.
- Tolkien, J. R. R. T. Trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975; repr. 1988. ISBN 0-345-27760-0.
Commentary and criticism
- Benson, Larry. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 1965.
- Brewer, Elisabeth. From Cuchulainn to Gawain: Sources and Analogues of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, selected and translated by Elisabeth Brewer. Cambridge, England: D. S. Brewer. 1992.
- Burrow, J.A. A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: Barnes and Noble. 1966.
- Condren, E.I. Beyond Phi: The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2002.
- Farrell, John. "The Responsible Knight," chapter two of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau .
- Howard, Donald R. and Christian Zacher. Ed. Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1968.
- Loomis, Laura Hibbard "Gawain and the Green Knight" in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Roger S. Loomis . Clarendon Press: Oxford University. 1959. ISBN 0-19-811588-1
- Raffel, Burton. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". Harmondsworth, Middesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. 1970.
External links
