Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th century alliterative romance recorded in a single manuscript, which also contains three pieces of a religious character. The four poems are in a North or West Midland dialect of Middle English. The poem revolves around two games – first an exchange of beheading, and secondly an exchange of winnings. The two appear at first to be unconnected, but it is later revealed that the hero's survival of the conclusion of the story of the first game depends on his honesty and his purity in the second. Both elements appear in other stories, the beheading game appearing first in the Middle Irish narrative Bricriu's Feast. However, the linkage of outcomes is unique to this story.[1].
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 (alternatively Purity). 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 (or poets) 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 (usually a pair of) stressed syllables at the beginning of the line with (usually) 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 more free 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 (the bob) and four three-stress lines rhyming baba (the wheel). These lines also alliterated. (See the next section for an example.)
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 (but ambiguously he also carries a spray of holly, suggestive of peace), 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 inquires 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 (even through Mass), 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 armor, 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 "Morgne the goddes", Morgan le Fay, mistress of the wizard Merlin and now a guest at Hautdesert castle. A passage of rhetorical anti-feminism follows which has excited considerable discussion in the critical literature, where Gawain blames his troubles on women in general. 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 honor and to recognize the fallibility of men. The poem concludes with the motto: "HONY SOYT QUI MAL PENCE", which is a form of 'honi soit qui mal y pense', which is the motto of the Order of the Garter and means "Shame be to the man who has evil in his mind." From this, it has been theorised that Gawain's peers wearing the sash is meant to represent the origin of the Order of the Garter, although, in the parallel poem, The Greene Knight, the lace is white and is said to be the origin of the collar worn by the knights of the Bath.[2]
Similar stories
The closest parallel is a rhyming retelling of what is almost the same story in a poem of the Percy Folio Manuscript which is known, in order to distinguish it, as The Greene Knight. The plot is simplified, and there is more extensive explanation of motive, and some of the names are changed. A further parallel of the beheading game exists in Sir Gawain and the Turke.
There is a similar character present in the Qur'an, by the name of Al-Khidr (Arabic, the "Green" Man). 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 (Gawain, Moses), 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 Le Morte d'Arthur, chapter 20, Gawain's brother Gareth fights "two brethren whych were called the Grene Knyght and the Rede Knyght". It is unknown if Malory was aware of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or if he drew any influence from it.
Significance of the Colour Green
In English folklore and literature, Green has traditionally been used to symbolize nature and its embodied attributes, namely those of fertility and rebirth, however, green is also known to have signified witchcraft, devilry and evil for its association with the faeries and spirits of early English folklore and for its association with decay and toxicity. In the Celtic tradition, green was avoided in clothing for its superstitious association with misfortune and death. Given these varied and even contradictory interpretations of the colour green, its precise meaning in the poem remains ambiguous. Many scholars believe the Green Knight to be a manifestation of the Green Man vegetation deity of pre-Christian Europe, while others see him as being an incarnation of the Devil himself. Another possible interpretation of the Green Knight is to view him as a fusion of these two deities, at once representing both good and evil and life and death as self-proliferating cycles. This interpretation also embraces the positive and negative attributes of the colour green and ties in with the enigmatic motif of the poem. The green girdle too, originally worn for protection, is later worn as a symbol of shame and cowardice and is finally adopted as a symbol of honour by the knights of Camelot, signifying a transformation from good to evil and back again displaying both the spoiling and regenerative connotations of the colour green.
Sources:
The Idea of the Green Knight, Lawrence Besserman, ELH, Vol. 53, No. 2. (Summer, 1986), pp. 219-239. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Why The Devil Wears Green, D. W. Robertson Jr., Modern Language Notes, Vol. 69, No. 7. (Nov., 1954), pp. 470-472. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
External links
- Dr. Anthony Colaianne, Chris Baugh - Medieval English Narrator- listen to recorded excerpts of Medieval English literature with text alongside for translation help. Several excerpts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight included.