Gawain and the Green Knight, page 1
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
With an introduction by Alan Lupack
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FLAME TREE 451
London & New York
Series Foreword
Stretching back to the oral traditions of thousands of years ago, tales of heroes and disaster, creation and conquest have been told by many different civilizations in many different ways. Their impact sits deep within our culture even though the detail in the tales themselves are a loose mix of historical record, transformed narrative and the distortions of hundreds of storytellers.
Today the language of mythology lives with us: our mood is jovial, our countenance is saturnine, we are narcissistic and our modern life is hermetically sealed from others. The nuances of myths and legends form part of our daily routines and help us navigate the world around us, with its half truths and biased reported facts.
The nature of a myth is that its story is already known by most of those who hear it, or read it. Every generation brings a new emphasis, but the fundamentals remain the same: a desire to understand and describe the events and relationships of the world. Many of the great stories are archetypes that help us find our own place, equipping us with tools for self-understanding, both individually and as part of a broader culture.
For Western societies it is Greek mythology that speaks to us most clearly. It greatly influenced the mythological heritage of the ancient Roman civilization and is the lens through which we still see the Celts, the Norse and many of the other great peoples and religions. The Greeks themselves learned much from their neighbours, the Egyptians, an older culture that became weak with age and incestuous leadership.
It is important to understand that what we perceive now as mythology had its own origins in perceptions of the divine and the rituals of the sacred. The earliest civilizations, in the crucible of the Middle East, in the Sumer of the third millennium bc, are the source to which many of the mythic archetypes can be traced. As humankind collected together in cities for the first time, developed writing and industrial scale agriculture, started to irrigate the rivers and attempted to control rather than be at the mercy of its environment, humanity began to write down its tentative explanations of natural events, of floods and plagues, of disease.
Early stories tell of Gods (or god-like animals in the case of tribal societies such as African, Native American or Aboriginal cultures) who are crafty and use their wits to survive, and it is reasonable to suggest that these were the first rulers of the gathering peoples of the earth, later elevated to god-like status with the distance of time. Such tales became more political as cities vied with each other for supremacy, creating new Gods, new hierarchies for their pantheons. The older Gods took on primordial roles and became the preserve of creation and destruction, leaving the new gods to deal with more current, everyday affairs. Empires rose and fell, with Babylon assuming the mantle from Sumeria in the 1800s bc, then in turn to be swept away by the Assyrians of the 1200s bc; then the Assyrians and the Egyptians were subjugated by the Greeks, the Greeks by the Romans and so on, leading to the spread and assimilation of common themes, ideas and stories throughout the world.
The survival of history is dependent on the telling of good tales, but each one must have the ‘feeling’ of truth, otherwise it will be ignored. Around the firesides, or embedded in a book or a computer, the myths and legends of the past are still the living materials of retold myth, not restricted to an exploration of origins. Now we have devices and global communications that give us unparalleled access to a diversity of traditions. We can find out about Native American, Indian, Chinese and tribal African mythology in a way that was denied to our ancestors, we can find connections, match the archaeology, religion and the mythologies of the world to build a comprehensive image of the human experience that is endlessly fascinating.
The stories in this book provide an introduction to the themes and concerns of the myths and legends of their respective cultures, with a short introduction to provide a linguistic, geographic and political context. This is where the myths have arrived today, but undoubtedly over the next millennia, they will transform again whilst retaining their essential truths and signs.
Jake Jackson
General Editor
Introduction
The Alliterative Revival
The Alliterative Revival was a literary movement of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, predominantly in the north and west of England, in which poets used alliteration as the controlling metrical device. Some would argue that the movement is not actually a ‘revival’ but a reflection of a continuing tradition dating back to Old English verse and found in Layamon’s Brut, an early Middle English poem, and other works that make heavy use of alliteration. The Alliterative Revival produced poems in a variety of genres. These include ‘historical’ poems like Siege of Jerusalem and The Wars of Alexander; debate poems like Winner and Wastoure, The Parlement of the Thre Ages, and Death and Liffe; religious poems like St. Erkenwald and Susannah; dream visions like Piers Plowman and Pearl; and Arthurian romances like the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Golagros and Gawain, The Awntyrs off Arthure and, of course, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Early criticism on the poems of the Alliterative Revival assumed that, with a few notable exceptions, they were provincial and generally poorly crafted and constructed – certainly not in the same league as the works of Chaucer and Gower. Study of the broad scope of this body of literature, however, reveals that this is not the case. Although the alliterative line these poets used is less strict than that of Old English verse, the best poets of the movement used it to great effect. And the structure of many of the works is less haphazard than some early scholars recognized. A number of the poems combine two different narrative episodes, but they are usually linked thematically in a manner comparable to the diptychs so common in medieval art. In short, the movement produced many fine poems, some of which are masterpieces not only of alliterative verse but of medieval literature in general – and chief among these is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK).
The Gawain Poet
Most of the authors of alliterative poems are unknown. (One notable exception is William Langland, the author of Piers Plowman, who names himself in the text.) Since four poems – SGGK, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience, written in the same northwest Midland dialect late in the fourteenth century and surviving in a single manuscript, Cotton Nero A X – are surely by the same anonymous author, he is referred to as the Gawain Poet (and sometimes as the Pearl Poet). A fifth work, St. Erkenwald, not appearing in the Cotton Nero manuscript, has sometimes been attributed to the Gawain Poet, but most scholars consider this unlikely and certainly unproven.
Each of the four is clearly the work of a master craftsman; and Pearl and SGGK are among the best literary works of the Middle Ages. The genres and subject matter of these poems vary. Pearl is a dream vision, rich in symbolism and imagery, in which a father sees his ‘pearl’, his dead daughter, across a river that separates him from her and from the heavenly realm; and, in a reversal of roles, he is instructed by her. Patience and Cleanness are homiletic poems that use lively accounts of Biblical stories – such as ‘Jonah and the Whale’ and ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ – as exempla to teach about their eponymous virtues. The moral concerns of these three works help to explain the interest of the author of SGGK in the ethical dilemma with which Gawain is faced.
Gawain’s Reputation
Gawain is King Arthur’s nephew, and in much Arthurian literature he is considered the best of Arthur’s knights. In his Perceval, Chrétien de Troyes asserts that Gawain is the most courteous knight in the world. In this work, as in numerous others, Gawain is contrasted to Kay, whose boorishness is a foil to Gawain’s courtliness. In several Dutch romances, Gawain is called the Father of Adventure, and he has great skill in healing as well as in fighting and diplomacy. In many of the French romances of the twelfth through to the fourteenth century, Gawain is the most important hero, although Lancelot eventually replaces him in this role. In the thirteenth-century Vulgate Cycle, for example, Gawain is said to be the second-best worldly knight after Lancelot.
In Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, Gawain is at times brave and noble and at times vengeful and treacherous. He keeps alive the feud between the house of Lot and the house of Pellinore by unchivalrously killing Pellinore and then Lamorak. He is also unforgiving when Lancelot accidentally kills Gareth, and Gawain refuses to allow Arthur to make peace with him. Before this, however, he tried to dissuade Mordred and Agravain from accusing Lancelot; and he ultimately realizes that Lancelot is noble and Mordred wicked. In the English verse romances featuring Gawain, however, he is typically nearly flawless in his courage and courtesy.
Gawain’s Reputation in Alliterative Romances
In the alliterative romances besides SGGK in which Gawain appears, he is presented as the epitome of knightly courtesy and chivalry. In the late-fourteenth-century northern romance The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne (The Adventures of Arthur at Tarn Wadling), a knight named Galeron accuses Arthur of wrongfully winning his lands in war and giving them to Gawain. Galeron offers to fight for the disputed territory, and Gawain accepts the challenge, thus placing his right to the lands in dramatic opposition to Galeron’s. Neither knight wins the battle, but Galeron is so moved by Gawain’s courage that he renounces his claim. Arthur, in turn, impressed with Galeron’s respect f
In SGGK, Gawain’s ‘honour’ is said to be ‘praised above that of all men on earth’. This reputation is scrutinized by the poem and by Gawain himself. Therefore, it becomes a question that readers must consider, and that is one of the keys to understanding and enjoying the poem.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the greatest and most intricately crafted of the English verse romances. Written in alliterative stanzas of irregular length with a rhyming bob and wheel (a short one-stress line followed by four three-stress lines, rhyming ABABA) at the end, SGGK employs intricate patterns of parallelism through which its meaning is revealed. Narrative elements reflect one another and interweave to bind the poem together much as the alliterating syllables bind lines together.
SGGK begins with a reference to the fall of Troy and to Brutus, a descendant of Aeneas. Geoffrey of Monmouth and many other medieval chroniclers considered Brutus to be the founder of Britain and the first in the line of British kings that leads to Arthur. This legendary origin story aggrandizes Arthur by giving him a heroic and historic heritage and by declaring that he is the ‘most valiant’ of all the British kings since Brutus.
Camelot at Christmas-time is the setting for the opening action. As often happens in Arthurian romance, something strange from outside the court intrudes and challenges its people and values. A knight, green not just in his livery but also in his person, enters astride a green horse and carrying contrasting symbols: a holly bob (a symbol of peace) and a great axe. Interpreted by critics as everything from a force of nature to a demon, the Green Knight proposes to the court a beheading contest: he will endure a stroke of the axe and then give one in return. (Morgan le Fay, the old woman Gawain meets later in the poem, is said to have instigated the challenge in order to test the Round Table and to frighten Guinevere.)
The beheading contest is a motif that is found in several other medieval works, from its earliest appearance in the French La Mule sans frein (The Mule Without a Bridle) to the late English poems The Carle of Carlisle and The Grene Knight. It is typically Gawain who undertakes the adventure. In the French prose romance Perlesvaus, however, Lancelot accepts the challenge. But nowhere is that motif interwoven into the structure or integrated with the theme of the work as skilfully as in SGGK.
The initial reluctance of any of Arthur’s knights to accept the Green Knight’s challenge prompts him to question the reputation of the court. He asks, “Is this Arthur’s hall, and these the knights whose renown hath run through many realms?” This question introduces a controlling theme, that of renown or reputation. Gawain underplays his own reputation: when he accepts the challenge, he says that he is the weakest and the least of Arthur’s knights. It is not clear that he or anyone else believes this; after all, the device on his shield is a pentangle, which is a symbol of perfection. As we learn in the extended explanation of its significance, the pentangle implies that Gawain is the ‘truest of heroes and gentlest of knights’.
In order to keep his vow, Gawain endures the hardships of winter and the dangers of travel through lands outside the protection of Arthur. When he prays that he might find lodging where he can hear Mass on Christmas Day, almost immediately he sees a castle belonging to a lord named Bernlak (as Weston, whose version is used in this book, gives the name – though the standard edition of SGGK reads ‘Bertilak’ and some editions and translations call the lord ‘Bercilak’). There, he is well received and honoured because he possesses ‘all fame, and valour, and courtesy’. At the castle, he enters into a second bargain, which parallels the beheading contest begun at Camelot. He agrees to an exchange of winnings with the lord of the castle, who goes out hunting each of the three mornings that Gawain is his guest. In return for the game the lord brings home, Gawain must give him whatever he wins during the day.
On each of the three days, while his host hunts a deer, a boar and a fox respectively, Gawain is tempted by Bernlak’s wife. As critics generally agree, there is a correspondence between the animals being hunted and the actions of Gawain as he responds to his host’s wife. On the first day, he is shy and elusive like the hart; on the second day, he faces his pursuer and resists like the boar; and on the third day, he is deceitful like the fox.
In her temptations of Gawain, Bernlak’s wife uses his reputation to undermine his resistance to her. She first praises his fame. As he was in Arthur’s court, Gawain is self-deprecating. But when she says that she can hardly believe he is Gawain because a man such as he is reputed to be would not have spent time with a lady without asking for a kiss, he does kiss her – once on the first day, twice on the second, and three times on the third. On the third day, she also tries to give him a ring, which he refuses; then she offers her ominously green ‘lace’ (a girdle or belt) and tells him that it will protect him from harm. Seeing a chance to save his life, he accepts the gift. To fulfil his part of the bargain, each evening when the lord returns from the hunt, Gawain gives him the kisses he has received (without saying from whom he received them) in exchange for the game the lord has brought home. But when he exchanges the winnings with the lord on the third evening, he gives him only the three kisses and not the green girdle.
Before Gawain sets out from the castle to fulfil his obligation to meet the Green Knight, he is armed again; in this instance, however, the arming culminates not in his taking of the shield with the device symbolic of virtue, but in his putting on the green girdle, perhaps an indication of a lack of faith or at least a shift in faith from virtue to magic. As he rides to fulfil his pledge to the Green Knight, he undergoes another temptation, this time of his courage. The guide Bernlak has provided to take Gawain to the Green Chapel advises that he ride away without meeting the Green Knight and swears not to tell anyone what Gawain did. Gawain responds that even if the guide were true to his word, he, Gawain, would be a coward if he took this advice, and so he rides on to meet his fate. This brief scene is significant because it shows Gawain beginning to understand that he must define – and act according to – his own moral code.
As he prepares to receive the blow from the Green Knight’s axe, Gawain swerves aside, prompting the Green Knight to say that he cannot be Gawain, who never feared any opponent, because he flinches before he feels the blow. The attack on Gawain’s reputation steels him, and he does not move as the axe descends a second time; but it stops before striking him. The third time, the stroke nicks Gawain’s neck and draws blood but does no real harm. As the Green Knight explains, the three strokes reflect the three days of temptation and exchanges. On the first two, Gawain kept the bargain. On the third, he was not completely faithful to his pledge, and so he receives a slight wound. Though Gawain is greatly ashamed at his failing, the Green Knight says he lacked only ‘a little’ (was only slightly at fault). For the Green Knight, the fact that Gawain acted as he did because he loved his life is a mitigating factor. Nevertheless, Gawain says he will now wear the green girdle ‘in sign of my frailty’ – that is, as a symbol of his failing.
When Gawain returns to Camelot, the court views the adventure much as the Green Knight did. Arthur orders that the green girdle be worn by each member of the court in recognition of the fame that Gawain has brought to the Round Table. Like the displaying of the axe with which he beheaded the Green Knight so that all men might see it and know of Gawain’s deed, this act is another visible sign of the honour in which he is held. But the girdle that the court considers a sign of his renown, Gawain perceives as a reminder of his shame. Thus, he has come to the realization that virtue and honour are not matters of public approval and that his knowledge of his own deeds is more important than the regard of others. Yet the poem seems to appreciate that people of honour sometimes hold themselves to a higher standard than others might. It also displays a joy in life that is reflected in the lively scenes of feasts, hunts and temptations; in its elaborate structure; in the vitality of the alliterative verse supplemented by rhyme; and in its recognition that imperfections are a part of life that need not overshadow heroic action.
