(late 1300s) poem
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight survives in a single medieval manuscript along with the poems Patience, Purity (also called Cleanness), and pearl. Though it is clear that the same person composed these poems in the latter half of the 14th century, the author’s identity has been a subject of long debate. Well-educated and highly literate, which suggests training by or for the church, the poet also reveals through his detailed descriptions of hunting and etiquette that he was familiar with life in the higher social classes. He may have been attached to a noble household; we might imagine the poem read or sung aloud in the hall of a castle by a skilled minstrel who would need to employ every trick he knew to keep his listeners enthralled and thus earn his dinner.
Though he little knew it, the Gawain poet lived in a time when the social order was changing: The feudal system in England was slowly turning into a constitutional monarchy; a new way of life and a new middle class were emerging in the growing towns; and the long-accepted authority of the Catholic Church was being questioned. The Hundred Years’ War introduced a climate of constant violence and devastation, but the close contact with France also exposed the literate class to a rich tradition of poetry. The subject matter of the troubadours’ songs and tales such as Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose had a powerful effect on English literature, as shown in the works of Geoffrey chaucer and others.
But in telling the story of the Green Knight, the Gawain poet called on an already-ancient native legend. King Arthur and his warriors had been a subject of popular literature for centuries, for instance in the pseudo-chronicle of Geoffrey of Mon-mouth and the romances of de France and Chretien de Troyes. The figures of Merlin, Gawain, Guinevere, and the fairy princess Morgan had their roots in Celtic myth but took on new forms in the Arthurian romances of the 14th century and later in the works of Thomas malory and Edward Spenser. Just as there is a real man behind the legendary Arthur, the motifs of the green knight and his chapel, the beheading ceremony, and the plot device of the tested hero contain echoes of a distant past with its rituals of death and regeneration.
The poem reflects the paradox of knighthood: The demands of courtly love created a conflict of loyalties, and the chivalric code romanticized the real-life violence. The poem embodies this conflict in the spectacle of the Green Knight, who barges in on Arthur’s feast and challenges the best knight to a beheading contest. When Gawain responds with ease, the knight picks up his head and issues another challenge: A year hence, Gawain must let the Green Knight behead him in turn. Thus Gawain, the most exemplary of knights, takes up the quest to find the Green Knight’s chapel and stand good on his oath. During the course of the poem his integrity is repeatedly tested, most famously by the seductive wife of his host. Gawain’s nobility is perhaps best shown in the lines where he takes leave of Arthur, feeling himself bound to uphold the terms of his dreadful promise. In a stanzaic form peculiar to this poem alone, he conveys his resolution to face his fate, no matter what:
“The knight ever made good cheer, saying, ‘Why should I be dismayed? Of doom the fair or drear by a man must be assayed.”‘
The poem continually returns to the themes of fidelity to promise, upright behavior, honesty, and bravery even in the face of certain doom, while the active language and vivid detail create a textured world full of suspense, magic, and mystery.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a favorite in the canon of English literature for its gripping narrative and fascinating language and detail. Readers find themselves, like Gawain, undertaking a dangerous and perplexing task, and though new discoveries lie in wait with each return, part of the poem’s appeal is that it is continually baffling. Critic W. S. Merwin says: “In the figure of the Green Knight the poet has summoned up an original spirit with the unsounded depth of a primal myth, a presence more vital and commanding than any analysis of it could be.” Gawain reminds readers of the sheer power—and pleasure—of a good story.
English Versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Harrison, Keith, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Merwin, W. S. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
Works about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Brewer, Derek, and Jonathan Gibson, eds. A Companion to the Gawain-Poet. New York: Boydell and Brewer, 1999. Morgan, Gerald. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Idea of Righteousness. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992.
Putter, Ad. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the French Arthurian Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
