Product Description

From the north-west midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight dates from the second half of the 14th century.Gawain,a knight in Arthur's court,takes up the challenge of the Green Knight,and cuts off his head.The Knight informs Gawain he will have his revenge.Journeying to the Knight's abode to receive his lot Gawain takes thehospitality of a Lord,and endures the advances of his wife.The Lord is the GreenKnight and,when the time comes,merely nicks Gawain's neck for his infidelity and dishonour.Is Gawain a failure,or a hero?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87253 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Customer Reviews

'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' (Everyman edition)
The story of this poem is pretty weird: Arthur's knights are eating their Christmas dinner when a hefty green man (why is he green? I've no idea!) walks in and challenges one of the knights to a duel. The poem follows Gawain, the knight who takes up the challenge, as he travels, in classic Arthurian fashion, through a wood, where he gets lost. A castle appears, Gawain goes in, and the kind host suggests offers him a bed for the knight: the bed in which his (the host's) daughter sleeps. We later learn that this host is the green man, disguised, and his offer is designed to test Gawain. Though Gawain is tempted, he keeps to his side of the bed, and travels on to meet the green man for a beheading game, unaware that he has already passed the test.

The poem is a combination of two mediaeval stories: the beheading challenge, and the temptation story (an good example of the latter, with a misogynistic twist at the end, can be found in 'Three Arthurian Romances', also in Everyman paperback). The poet (we don't know his name) has combined them in a sophisticated way: so that Gawain triumphs not through his bravery, but his morality. (This is itself a twist, because Gawain was usually depicted as a womaniser!)

There are a number of translations of this poem into modern English, but, needless to say, a lot is lost in translation. (The poet for example, has invented or mastered a form that mixes alliterative verse -- using repeated consonants -- with rhyming verse.) The Everyman edition gives the poem in the original, but has helpful glosses of all the strange words that crop up in this strange poem. (It also includes two other poems which might have been written by the same poet.)

Magical and human
Middle English is a diverse collection of different dialects and styles, when it comes to literature. At the same time that Chaucer was writing in the southeast of England, with good command of French and Italian poetic sensibilities, there was a strong tradition in the north and west country of alliterative poetry, the kind that owed as much to the Old English forms of verse and use of language as to the new influences post-Norman Conquest-wise. Among the products of this time and place, the anonymously composed 'Sir Gawain and Green Knight' is one of the most outstanding.

This poem has all the hallmarks of being a work of many influences - it has the heroic aspects that one might expect from Old English epics such as Beowulf; it has a decided romantic streak reminiscent of French and Norman influences; it has virtue and church/Christian overlaying influences that come from Latin and ecclesial sources; it has magical and mystical ideas that are most likely Celtic in origin. Perhaps more like a tapestry, the various strands of influence are woven together into a glorious pattern that stands as a towerig achievement of the synthesis of language that Middle English achieved between its Germanic and Latinate streams.

Gawain's story is a very popular one. The most virtuous of the Round Table knights, his bravery and his resourcefulness at seeking the Green Knight, the annual challenger at the court of Arthur, is legendary. Gawain's small fault (and indeed, Gawain was portrayed as a virtuous human, but human nonetheless) warrants a very small penalty, but he is deemed upon reporting back to Camelot that he has brought honour upon the whole fellowship of knights. There is something magical about the Green Knight, however, and this can be seen as metaphor for the way in which temptation seems to have a magical power over humanity.

Medieval poetry at it's best
Having studied a lot of medieval writing at university I was pleased to find something as fresh as Gawain and the Green Knight. There are so many levels to read this book on. You can look into all the allusions and the imagery, or you can read for pure enjoyment of the action in the story. The narrative is clear and even though it is written in an old style of English it does not take long to get into that way of thinking - it is not difficult to understand. I would recommend this to all lovers of good fiction, and tales of knights of old!