Date and Composition of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- written in Middle English, probably
sometime between 1375-1400
- probable written in England's
northwest Midlands judging by the poem's conservative style
- alliterative long-line poetry
- incorporates stanzas of
irregular length made up of unrhymed, alliterating lines which are
followed a bob-and-wheel stanza of five rhyming lines
- author is unknown but is often
referred to as "The Gawain Poet" or "The Pearl
Poet" after one of the other works that appears in the manuscript with
Sir Gawain
- appears in only one manuscript,
formerly British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x Art.3
- The other works in this ms.
are Pearl, Patience, and Purity (a.k.a. Cleanness).
- considered "the greatest
of the Arthurian romances produced in England" (Longman 193).
The Internal Structure(s) of Sir Gawain
- The poem can be seen as a single
unit:
- begins and ends with description
of Troy
- can be "read" forward
or backward (generally speaking)--starts with Troy, moves to Arthur's
court, then progresses through the tale of Gawain's adventure with the
Green Knight (when read from beginning to end we see the actual events
transpire and then hear Gawain's recounting of them; end to beginning,
we hear of the events through Gawain's account and then see them as they
actually happened.)
- We can also see the poem as a
series of opposing forces, character sets, and locales:
- Camelot vs. Bercilak's world
- Arthur's power sphere
(male-oriented) vs. Morgan le Fay's power sphere (female-oriented)
- antipathy between 2 "queens"--Morgan
le Fay and Guenevere
- youthful innocence (Arthur
and his knights, games, and frivolity) vs. worldly age (Morgan as
old woman, lust and deceit)
- magical power vs. mortal willpower
and intellect
- loyalty to knightly honor
(lord/host) vs. loyalty to self
- personal honor vs. carnal
desire
- self-preservation vs.
cowardice
- oath vs. need
- host/guest obligation
vs. courtly love obligations
- host/guest obligation
vs. obligation to self
- secular feast vs. sacred feast
(eucharist)
- matriarchal vs. patriarchal
power
- The 4 fits (or sections of the
poem in the manuscript) roughly correlate with the 4 seasons.
- Plus, scholars interested in numerological
symbolism have seen the 5 points of Gawain's pentangle reflected, not only
in Gawain's 5 virtues, but in significant multiples of 5 that appear in the
line numbers of the poem:
- The narrative of Gawain's
adventure ends and poet returns to Troy at line 2525.
- After line 2525, there are
5 more lines, which bring us to
- line 2530, whose total number
(2+5+3+0) is 10, a divine number in medieval numerology.
Links to Gawain sites of interest
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Arthur and the Matter of Britain
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