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