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The Meaning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Alan M. Markman
Alan M. Markman*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow; their ease is weariness and sweat; they have one good day after many bad; they are vowed to all manner of labour; they are for ever swallowing their fear; they expose themselves to every peril; they give up their bodies to the adventure of life in death.… Great is the honour which knights deserve, and great the favour which kings should shew them, for all the reasons which I have told.… Of what profit is a good knight? I tell you that through good knights is the king and the kingdom honoured, protected, feared and defended.… I tell you that without good knights, the king is like a man who has neither feet nor hands.—Gutierre Díaz de Gámez

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 4-Part-1 , September 1957 , pp. 574 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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Footnotes

*

A shorter version of this paper, titled “Romance Hero and Antagonist in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’,” was read to the Comp. Lit. II discussion group (Arthurian) of the MLA at its 1955 meeting in Chicago.

References

1 El Vitorial, trans. Joan Evans, The Unconquered Knight (London, 1928), p. 61.

2 Erec und Enide, ed. W. Foerster (Halle, 1890), VV. 1691–1692.

3 All citations of the text are from the Gordon and Tolkien edition (Oxford, 1925); translations are my own.

4 The form Bercilak appears to be better supported than Bertilak; see R. L. Smith, “Guinganbresil and the Green Knight,” JEGP, XLV (1946), 15 ff.

5 J. Speirs, “ ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’,” Scrutiny, XVI, IV (1949), 277; H. Braddy, “Sir Gawain and Ralph Holmes the Green Knight,” MLN, LXVIII, IV (1952), 240–242.

6 In one sense it might be said that Gawain received supernatural assistance. His prayer to Mary, we know, appeared to be answered almost at once. Yet he had already managed to exist on his own, passing the ordeal of nature's most severe torment.

7 Life, temporarily, as a misshapen creature may be a punishment, a form of “penance,” or a disguise. Disenchantment, usually prescribed by the enchanter, may take almost any form; a kiss, a word, or a specific act are common in romance. Disenchantment by decapitation is the most astonishing.

8 We scarcely need to be reminded that it is not a “love token.” Incidentally, I do not think, as Roger S. Loomis suggested some time ago (“More Celtic Elements in Gawain and the Green Knight,” JEGP, XLII [April 1943], 149, 153), that Bercilak was wearing that same lace about his waist when he appeared as the Green Knight at Arthur's court. The lace, to be sure, belonged to Bercilak (VV. 2358–2359), but it appears more likely, if indeed he took it to Arthur's hall, that it was wrapped around his ax helve, not about himself. (Cf. the lace, VV. 1829–1833, with the description of the ax, VV. 217–220.) At any rate, he survived Gawain's blow because of Morgan le Fay's power; he would not have needed an additional magical warranty. If, as I think, Bercilak did not rely on the lace, the lace then becomes an object of curiosity indeed, for it is a magic talisman never put to the test. Since Gawain, as it turns out, has no opportunity to rely on it either, we have no grounds for belief in its efficacy. We may perhaps conclude that a man who relies on his own integrity and honor has no need of a magic talisman.

9 The power of Morgan le Fay has apparently overwhelmed at least one reader. D. E. Baughan, in “The Role of Morgan Le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” ELH, XVII (1950), 241–251, insists the poem is “an apotheosization of chastity.” To make his case, Baughan argues that the “Beheading Test” and the “Love Test” illustrate the same virtue, the hero's chastity. There is no need, of course, to suppose that only one virtue in man must be held out for our evaluation; the poem is not that restricted. Baughan, it seems, works it out this way: the Lady of the Castle tests Gawain's chastity; the “Beheading Test,” ideally, ought also to test Gawain's chastity; therefore Bercilak's intent, imposed upon him by Morgan le Fay, was to demonstrate that Arthur was unchaste, and so failed to decapitate Bercilak, and that Gawain, because he was chaste, succeeded in striking off Bercilak's head. Unfortunately, there is no authority in the text for such a reading. The passage Baughan refers to, “Now hatз Arthure his axe, & pe halme grypeз,/& sturnely stureз hit aboute, pat stryke wyth hit з” (VV. 330–331), states that Arthur, the Green Knight's ax in his hands, “grips the helve and whirls it about sternly as if he intended to strike with it.” Baughan wants to read “… struck with it.” (Baughan, p. 246: “the poet gave the account something of Morgan's magic so that it seems almost as if Arthur did not strike.”) But it is not possible to read “зat stryke wyth hit зt” struck with it; literally, the phrase is rendered “that thing he seemed to strike with.” (ME зynken <OE зyncan, imp. vb., “seem, appear.” The Gawain poet, had he meant “struck,” would have written stroke, as he did in V. 671.) The “many and seemingly insoluble questions that have been raised regarding the plot” (Baughan, p. 251) are not to be answered by forcing the text to say something it does not.

10 In the romance an imaginary boundary is established between the “real” world and the “romance” world, the principal action usually taking place inside the romance world. It may be an obvious feature of terrain, such as the mysterious mound into which Gawain and the Turk disappear (The Turk and Gowin, ed. Hales and Furnivall, Percy Folio MS., VV. 66–68), or an inconspicuous line of brush where a strange knight lurks, waiting to snare Arthur (The Weddynge of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell, ed. Laura Sumner, Smith Coll. Stud, in Mod. Lang. [Northampton, Mass.], V, IV, 1924, VV. 44–45). Whatever its nature, this boundary exists, and the hero must cross it to reach his goal. Once across the line inside the romance world, geography, on purpose, is obscure. We could, for example, follow Gawain's route for a time, but we would have no more chance of finding Bercilak's castle than Master Wace had of finding faeries in the forest of Broceliande.

11 Principally J. R. Hulbert, “ ‘Sir Gawayn and the Grene Knyзt’,” MP, XIII (Dec. 1915; April 1916), 433, 691, et passim.

12 G. J. Englehardt, in “The Predicament of Gawain,” MLQ, XVI (Sept. 1955), 218–225 however, sees in the poem a lesson more suited to the pulpit than to the castle hall. With Englehardt's judgment I have no quarrel. By restricting his inquiry to the predicament of Gawain, he draws attention to the force and tension of the extreme dilemma which the hero, in his test at the castle, has to face. Further, his explication of what he calls the “pentagonal” Gawain is masterly. But when I apply Englehardt's demonstration— essentially the consideration of Gawain's “predicament… in terms of the three virtues (valor, piety, and courtesy) that would govern the three domains of activity… in which the complete knight… might demonstrate his perfection, or… his traupe” (p. 219)—to the total structure of the poem, I find that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight becomes, not a moral romance, but a theological dissertation, a Christian demonstration of the imperfection of man. The poem thus turns out to be “a humane and sympathetic presentation designed to reveal how human and imperfect is even a supposedly perfect knight such as the pentagonal Gawain” (p. 225, n. 14,? 2. Note the justice of Englehardt's objection to Baughan's reading of VV. 330–338; ?1 of this note is utterly convincing.) I may have misread Englehardt, but I detect here a denigration of the hero, not unlike what we see in certain of the Welsh lives of the saints, in which Arthur, Bedvere, and Kei are knocked down a peg. It is, I think, unfair to Gawain. Where we ought to congratulate the hero for his superior quality as a man, Englehardt seems to chastise him for his failure to equal the behavior of Christ. So far as we can determine the poet's intention (design), I should prefer to state that the poem is a “humane and sympathetic presentation” of a guide for human conduct, of a model man. Gaw'ain is a splendid man, to be sure, but not an impossible one. The poem seems to tell us that we must do our duty, and that we must not avoid action because we might be forced to place our life, or our soul, in jeopardy. It also seems to tell us that we are allowed an occasional slip, provided we learn humility. We need not, I think, look to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a reminder that, after all, only Christ could spurn Satan.

13 In the last 5 or 6 years, accompanying a wholesome revival of interest in medieval life and literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has received its share of attention. Apart from the Baughan and Englehardt articles which I had to take some account of, the following works deserve notice: John Speirs, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Scrutiny, XVI, IV (1949), 274–300; Dorothy Everett, Essays on Middle English Literature, ed. Patricia Kean (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), pp. 75–77, et passim; H.L. Savage, The Gawain-Poet (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press), 1956.