Sir Gawain & the Green Knight

The manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x is in the British Museum. The first modern edition was published by J. R. R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon in 1925.

The poet

The three other pieces found with Gawain, although untitled in their longhand exposition, have come to be known as Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness (alternately Purity).
It is understood that the Cotton manuscript is in the hand of the copyist and not the author. There is thus nothing explicit that says all four poems in the manuscript are by the same poet. However, from a comparative analysis of dialect, verse form and diction, it has become generally accepted that each of the four poems does in fact have the same authorship.
We of course do not know the name of this poet, but just from an informed reading of his works, we still know a little bit about the man. Tolkien, in the introduction to his posthumous translation, writes
:He was a man of serious and devout mind, though not without humour; he had an interest in theology, and some knowledge of it, though an amateur knowledge perhaps, rather than a professional; he had Latin and French and was well enough read in French books, both romantic and instructive; but his home was in the West Midlands of England; so much his language shows, and his metre, and his scenery.
The manuscript has been dated to the round year of 1400, and it is believed that the poet flourished some short time before that; he was thus a contemporary of Chaucer, although remote from him in almost every other way.

Before the manuscript came into the possession of Robert Cotton, it had found a place in the library of Henry Savile of Bank in Yorkshire, who lived from 1568 - 1617. Nothing is known of it, or its author, before that.

Although there is less unanimity, the Gawain-poet may have also written the alliterative poem St. Erkenwald, believed to have been composed in 1386.

The verse form

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is written in the style of what linguists would later refer to as the Alliterative Revival of the fourteenth century. Instead of focusing on a metrical syllabic count and rhyme, the alliterative form relied on the agreement of (usually a pair of) stressed syllables at the beginning of the line with (usually) a third and fourth at the end of the line. The line always finds a "breath-point" at some point after the first two stresses, dividing the line into two half-lines, separated by a caesura.
Although the Gawain-poet was a bit freer with convention than poets of greater antiquity, this more or less had been the form of alliterative poetry going back into the Old English. The Gawain-poet, however, did embellish the form with some end-rhyme, as it happens. His structure has come to be known as the bob and wheel. The poet broke his alliterative lines into variable-length groups and ended these nominal stanzas with four three-beat lines rhyming abab (the wheel) and a one-beat tag that rhymes a (the bob). These lines also alliterate.

The language

As has been noted, the poem is written in the West Midlands dialect of Middle English, and that dialect must be considered as something of a dead tributary to the course of history that the English language would take. As a result, the untranslated poem is only dimly intelligible to those who have not studied Middle English. As Tolkien tells us, "[i]ndeed in their own time the adjectives 'dark' and 'hard' would probably have been applied to these poems by most people who enjoyed the works of Chaucer."

Here are the first four lines of the poem in its untranslated form:

Sižen že sege and že assaut watz sesed at Troye,

že bor3 brittened and brent to brondez and askez,

že tulk žat že trammes of tresoun žer wrot3,

Watz tried for his tricherie, že trewest on erthe;

In the story, Gawain, a knight of King Arthur in Camelot, becomes a guest at Hautdesert Castle. During this sojourn, three hunts take place, and are paralleled by three temptations laid before Gawain by the Green Knight's wife.

Plot synopsis

The Challenge

Sir Gawain's Journey

The Lord's Bargain

On his second night, Gawain again receives a visit from the lady, and again politely refuses her advances. Next day, when the lord returns, there is a similar exchange of a hunted boar for two kisses.

On his third night, when the lady visits his chamber, Gawain maintains his chastity but accepts a silk girdle, which is supposed to keep him from harm, as a parting gift. The next day, the lord returns with a fox, which he exchanges with Gawain for three kisses.

The Meeting with the Green Knight

The Green Knight explains that Gawain's trial was arranged by Morgan le Fay, mistress of the wizard Merlin and now a guest at Hautdesert castle. The two men part on cordial terms, Gawain returning to Camelot. There, Sir Gawain recounts his adventure to Arthur and explains his shame at having partially succumbed to the lady's attempts, if only in his mind. Arthur refuses to blame Gawain and decrees that all his knights should henceforth wear a green sash in recognition of Gawain's courage and honour.

References

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