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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with Pearl and Sir Orfeo

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/Pearl/Sir Orfeo

Ryan LaFerney

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the most famous Arthurian legends, written by an unknown author in the 14th century. One Christmas Eve, King Arthur and his court are visited by the Green Knight who challenges them to cut off his head, on the condition he can return the blow. None among the court is brave enough to step forth, save young Sir Gawain! Gawain embarks on a journey to the green chapel to face the Green Knight that will challenge his honor and virtue. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honor is called into question by a test involving the lord and the lady of the castle where he is a guest. 

Now the lord proposes a bargain: he goes hunting every day, and he will give Gawain whatever he catches on the condition that Gawain give him whatever he may gain during the day. Gawain accepts. After he leaves, his wife visits Gawain's bedroom and behaves seductively, but despite her best efforts he allows her nothing but a single kiss in his unwillingness to offend her. When the lord returns and gives Gawain the deer he has killed, Gawain gives a kiss to him without divulging its source. The next day the lady comes again, Gawain again courteously foils her advances, and later that day there is a similar exchange of a hunted boar for two kisses. She comes once more on the third morning, but once her advances are denied, she offers Gawain a gold ring as a keepsake. He gently but steadfastly refuses but she pleads that he at least take her sash, a girdle of green and gold silk. The sash, the lady assures him, is charmed and will keep him from all physical harm. Tempted, as he may otherwise die the next day, Gawain accepts it, and they exchange three kisses. The lady has Gawain swear that he will keep the gift secret from her husband. That evening, the lord returns with a fox, which he exchanges with Gawain for the three kisses – but Gawain says nothing of the sash.

The next day, Gawain binds the sash around his waist. At the so-called Green Chapel, only an earthen mound, he finds the Green Knight sharpening an axe. As promised, Gawain bends his bared neck to receive his blow. At the first swing, Gawain flinches slightly and the Green Knight belittles him for it. Ashamed of himself, Gawain doesn't flinch with the second swing; but again the Green Knight withholds the full force of his blow. The knight explains he was testing Gawain's nerve. Angrily Gawain tells him to deliver his blow and so the knight does, causing only a slight wound on Gawain's neck ("It's merely a flesh wound" hehehe.). The game is over. Gawain seizes his sword, helmet and shield, but the Green Knight, laughing, reveals himself to be none other than the lord of the castle, Bertilak de Hautdesert, transformed by magic. He explains that the entire adventure was a trick of the "elderly lady" Gawain saw at his castle, who is actually the sorceress Morgan le Fay, Arthur's step-sister, who intended to test Arthur's knights and frighten Guinevere to death.

This is a poem to revisit again and again as it has many lessons it can teach us about honor, loyalty, virtue, ambition, temptation, and life/death. And the poem does not lend itself simply to one interpretation. There are feminist, homoerotic, postcolonial interpretations. J.R.R. Tolkien, himself being a devout Catholic, probably went with the chivalric romance/Christian interpretation of the poem. In the Christian interpretation, to some, the Green Knight is Christ, who overcomes death, while Gawain is the Every Christian, who in his struggles to follow Christ faithfully, chooses the easier path. In Sir Gawain, the easier choice is the girdle, which promises what Gawain most desires. Faith in God, alternatively, requires one's acceptance that what one most desires does not always coincide with what God has planned. It is arguably best to view the sash not as an either–or situation, but as a complex, multi-faceted symbol that acts to test Gawain in more ways than one. 

This is something like the fourth or fifth time I've read this poem and I always find something illuminating within its verses. It would be interesting to read other translations as well.

P.S.- If you haven't seen the David Lowery adaptation yet. Do yourself a favor and rush out to the cinema.

Jude Moon

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: 2/5. The beggining and the end were quite entertaining but the middle part... I wish that could have been so much shorter than it was. It just felt pointless to spend so many pages reading what seemed the less relevant fragment of the poem.

Pearl: 1/5. I consider myself intense but there's not such intensity as this poem being 50 pages of a mourning man. (To be honest, i skipped several pages)

Sir Orfeo: 3/5. This was good!!! It was short and cute and knightly, just what I expected from these stories.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with Pearl and Sir Orfeo

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