6. Gawain

In the Days and Knights of Old
Vol. 1A, pages 20-25 and 163-200 from the Longman Anthology.
The Return of English" and "Politics and Society in the Fourteenth
Century" 1A 20-25. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" 1A 200-258.

An internet version of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,"
translated by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon is available from University of Michigan. Other translations and materials are available
online at Luminarium

Two heads are better than none!

NOTES AND COMMENTARY
Much adapted and enlarged by Dr. G from David Damrosch, et al.,
Teaching British Literature (New York: Longman, 2003)

Romance
Gawain and the Green Knight's lady What our editors call romance is not exactly what you call romance. They mean the genre of Arthurian, Carolingian and Roman story-telling that emerged, primarily in French and Anglo-Norman verse, in the middle and later decades of the twelfth century, the genre that was to flower in courtly literature for the next 400 years as the great nation-states of Europe were born, a genre that is no longer aristocratic today but that is more popular than ever. From the beginning these stories were composed in the romance languages, and that is why they are known as romances. They were written in the vernacular (chiefly French, Spanish and Italian) as opposed to Latin. Their authors were courtly (like Marie de France) as opposed to religious (like Geoffrey of Monmouth).

It is only by extension that we speak of "English romances." In its origin, English is not a romance language but a Germanic one. Nevertheless, stories of heroes written in English by courtly writers are called romances because they imitate the French.

Medieval romances have much to say about romance, as you understand romance, but what ultimately draws these varied works into a related group is their celebration of chivalry. Chivalry and knighthood are distinct terms: "knight" comes from the Anglo-Saxon cniht, meaning boy or servant (cf. German knecht), while "chivalry" and the related word "cavalier" come from the French chevalerie, and from chevalier or horseman (Latin caballus for horse). Where knighthood is a social status that defines privileges and duties, chivalry is a code of good manners, a way of cooperative life on and off the field of battle.

A king can't survive without knights, but especially in peacetime he is better off with better socialized cavaliers. For a kingdom to flourish and become a modern nation-state, its king needs just the sort of man as SGGK's Gawain, not simply a loyal vassal and brave risk taker, but one who is skilled in jousting, tournaments and games, a fellow who speaks politely and knows how to have a good time without making a scandal. A cavalier engages in fights when called upon, but he never starts them. Kings across Europe sponsored chivalric orders for this reason, to control the self-image of powerful aristocrats. Edward III’s Order of the Garter, whose motto is invoked at the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK), was just such a campaign.

Social Setting
SGGK was written (according to scholars’ best guesses) during the later fourteenth century in the midst of royal and baronial crises in which the Trojan and Arthurian legends were revisited for their propaganda value. Both Edward III and Richard II had interest in models of strong kingship and invoked their legendary Trojan and Arthurian genealogy. Edward in fact attempted to found a new Round Table in 1344, though the idea apparently fell through.

Chivalry was facing challenges at this time in England. Loyalties were dividing. There was mounting opposition to Richard II, the last of the Plantagenet kings. Richard was about to be deposed by a baronial faction led by Henry Bolingbroke of Lancaster in 1399. Urban merchants were beginning to grow richer than knights, and mercantile families had begun to rise into the aristocracy. The older model of aristocratic power based on provincial land tenure was shifting as nobles around the king became more like a paid bureaucracy. The importance of the mounted knight was declining with military innovations, such as new longbow and crossbow technology that enhanced the effectiveness of archers. All of these developments contributed to a longing among the traditional powerholders for the old days. The revival of romances expressed this.

Celtic Elements
The territory between Chester, Wirral and North Wales was very well known to the Gawain poet. It is reflected in the geography of Gawain’s wanderings (esp. lines 691 and after). This a borderland area between English and Welsh, a multicultural region where Welsh speakers can shift into English and vice versa. SGGK's alliterative meter derives from English models, but it has other features of metrics and form, rhyme, assonance, and repetition of key words, which have correspondences in Welsh poetry. (See the poem "Alisoun" in the Longman Anthology.) Explore repetition at the level of key words: accord, contract, covenant, game; adorn, array; knot, lock, bind/bound; leap, hurtle; figure, sign, blazon.

Celtic references are dense in the description of the Green Knight himself. The green man is a common figure of Welsh folklore, the pivotal figure who represents simultaneously the dying of the old year and the birth of the new. “Morgan the Goddess” is a figure from pre-Christian Celtic myth, the witch who reveals the spirit world and realm of death. Her place of nature, beyond the artifice of courts and castles, becomes ever more frightening, raw, and lonely as Gawain naively approaches his supposed beheading by the Green Knight.

The courtly games of boy Arthur’s New Year turn into the Green Knight’s mortal “game” (line 273) of ax blows, a game previously played in the Ulster Cycle by fearless Cu Chulainn.

Despite its strangeness to Gawain, Bercilak’s world (really Morgan's) is more powerful and illuminating than Arthur’s world. Women appear in extreme old age as well as youthful beauty, nature in the wider view is barren as well as bountiful, and the hunt is as violent as it is ritualized. Morgan reveals and helps to cure the fears of death in Arthur's court. "None power and pride possess too high for her to tame" (l 2456-7). The Celtic otherworld, the barrow tomb, winter, and "the old woman of Beare" are nowhere more wonderfully evoked than in this romance.

Green Are The Dead
As in Caedmon's Hymn and Beowulf, Genesis is the basis for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain's "fault" is a fall of Adam (l. 2415-2417) with distinctive Celtic and chivalric twists. The Lord in Genesis penalizes Adam's disobedience by re-creating him as mortal and setting him to work. Gawain's wish to avoid death is the flaw that puts him at odds both with the natural world and with the fearlessness that his lord and the code of chivalry demand of him. The wearing of the green means the full acceptance of death.

Left: Gawain and Bercilak's lady, from a medieval manuscript illustration. In service to Morgan, her temptation will help awaken him from his fear of dead.

Left: a medieval manuscript illumination for "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" depicts the beheading scene at Arthur's court. A green knight's fearlessness of death is a wonder of chivalry. (Recall Caesar's comment that the British are fearless warriors because they believe in the immortality of the soul and reincarnation of the body.)

Left: the boy king Richard II (ruled 1377-1399) promoted English literature and presided over a brilliant era that included the "Gawain" poet, Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. The usurper Bolingbroke who deposed Richard in 1399 charged him with personal immorality and inattention to serious duties of the state and the church. This turbulent time was later celebrated by Shakespeare in his great tragedy Richard II.

Relief sculpture of Eve (or is it Morgan?), a door lintel over the north entry on Autun Cathedral, Saint Lazare, Burgundy (cir. 1130).

OTHER RESOURCES & AMUSEMENTS

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Tolkein and Gordon, rev. Davis (Oxford 1967) from the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse from University of Michigan.

The beheading game in Sir Gawin and the Green Knight is an old Celtic story. A version with Cu Chulainn as the hero appears in a story from the Ulster Cycle called Bricriu's Feast.

Courtly Love Study Guide
http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/eng251/amourstudy.htm

Luminarium: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/gawain.htm

Knighthood, Chivalry and Tournament: A Glossary of Terms
http://www.chronique.com/Library/Glossaries/glossary-KCT/glssindx.htm

Epic tradition. The Norman French Brut (cir. 1155) by the poet Wace, a Norman epic that greatly expands on Geoffrey of Monmouth, was translated into early Middle English as early as 1215 by Layamon, and this mythic pseudo-history was further popularized in fourteenth century retellings. Middle English versions of the Troy story were written in alliterative verse, in the same general time and area that produced SGGK and likely for the same provincial courts, loyal to the crown. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his Troilus and Criseyde, an episode of the Troy story, while working within the government of Richard II.

Students are not examined on these "other resources and amusements." However, if you know of an excellent website that would wonderfully complement this lesson, please send it to Dr. G. If he adopts it in his list, extra course credit will be awarded.

ASSIGNMENTS FOR THIS LESSON

The lesson includes both a quiz and a journal writing assignment to be submitted on the interactive course site at SUNY Learning Network. See General instructions on Journaling for this course. For a sample journal, see Dr. G's 2007 Brit Lit 1 Journal.

Journal

Write for an hour (or more if you have time). Summarize the reading. If time remains after you finish your summary, tackle one of the following questions--or a question of your own which arose during your reading.

How is Gawain the same as and different from Beowulf, Cú Chulainn or Lanval? For example, compare the Green Chapel and Beowulf's Barrow. Or compare the temptations of Lanval and Gawain. Or compare Celtic elements in Cú Chulainn's story with those in the Gawain poem.

How do Arthur's court and Bercilak's compare and contrast?

Why do you imagine that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight might have been written? Do you think that it may have had its intended effect?

Compare Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with the Eden story in Genesis.