Study guide
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
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Overview
- Composed
- Late fourteenth century, probably in the last quarter; the unique manuscript was copied around 1400
- Manuscript
- British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x (Art. 3), the only copy, which also contains Pearl, Cleanness and Patience
- Language
- Middle English of the North-West Midlands, most often placed on the borders of Cheshire and Staffordshire
- Genre
- Arthurian romance, part of the fourteenth-century Alliterative Revival
- Form
- 2,530 lines in 101 stanzas; each stanza has a variable run of unrhymed alliterative long lines, closed by a short 'bob' and a four-line 'wheel' rhyming ababa
- Divisions
- Four fitts (lines 1–490, 491–1125, 1126–1997, 1998–2530), marked by large initials in the manuscript
- Setting
- Arthur's court at Camelot at Christmas and New Year; the wilderness of North Wales and the Wirral; the castle of Hautdesert; the Green Chapel
- Protagonist
- Sir Gawain, Arthur's nephew, bearer of the pentangle
- Key devices
- The beheading game; the exchange of winnings; three hunts interlaced with three temptations; the pentangle and the green girdle
- On this site
- Jessie L. Weston's verse translation (1912), quoted here; her prose version (1898); and the Middle English text (ed. Morris, EETS 1864, 2nd ed. 1869)
Context
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight survives in a single manuscript, now British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, a small, plainly written volume copied by one scribe around 1400. It contains four poems in the same dialect and with shared habits of style and thought: Pearl, a dream-vision of a father and his dead daughter; Cleanness and Patience, two biblical homilies in verse; and Sir Gawain, the last in the book. The manuscript also has a set of rough coloured illustrations, four of them for Gawain. Because the four poems are so alike, most scholars attribute them to one author, called for convenience the 'Pearl poet' or the 'Gawain poet', though common authorship cannot be proved and the poet's name is unknown (Andrew 2007) (Putter 1996) (Brewer 1997).
The language belongs to the North-West Midlands, and dialect study has placed it close to the borders of south-east Cheshire and north-east Staffordshire. That region was remote from London, but it was not provincial in any simple sense: Cheshire gentry served in the households and armies of the Black Prince and of Richard II, and the poem's knowledge of fashionable armour, architecture, dress, cooking and hunting suggests an author at home in an aristocratic household (Bennett 1983). The landscape of Gawain's journey, through North Wales and 'the wilderness of Wirral', is the poet's own country, and the Green Chapel has often been compared with real rocky sites in the Staffordshire moorlands.
The poem is the finest work of the Alliterative Revival, a flowering of unrhymed alliterative verse in the West and North of England in the second half of the fourteenth century, which also produced Piers Plowman, the alliterative Morte Arthure and the Destruction of Troy (Turville-Petre 1977). Its long line descends, at some distance, from Old English metre: each line falls into two halves, joined by alliteration on the main stresses (for example 'Þe snawe snitered ful snart, þat snayped þe wylde', SGGK 2003). The poet adds a feature of his own: each stanza ends with a 'bob' of two or three syllables and a 'wheel' of four short rhyming lines, which sums up the stanza or turns it towards what follows. There are 101 stanzas, the same number as in Pearl, and the last line of the long-line narrative returns to the words of the first, so that the poem itself becomes a kind of endless knot.
The story combines two motifs known separately in older literature. The beheading game, in which a stranger offers his own neck in exchange for a return blow, appears in the Middle Irish Fled Bricrend (Bricriu's Feast) and in French romance, notably in the Livre de Caradoc of the First Continuation of Chrétien's Perceval; the temptation of a knight by his host's wife also has French analogues (Kittredge 1916) (Brewer 1973) (Putter 1995). Gawain himself was a much older figure than Lancelot, celebrated in French and English romance as the model of courtesy, though some French writers had made him a seducer. The poet's achievement lies in joining the two motifs through a third device, the exchange of winnings, so that a test of courage becomes a test of truth.
The poem was unknown to readers until the nineteenth century. The manuscript passed from the library of Henry Savile of Banke to Sir Robert Cotton, survived the fire at Ashburnham House in 1731 that damaged other Cotton books, and entered the British Museum. Frederic Madden first printed the poem in 1839, in a collection of Gawain romances for the Bannatyne Club, and Richard Morris edited it for the Early English Text Society in 1864 (Madden 1839) (Morris 1869). The Middle English text on this site follows Morris's second edition; Jessie L. Weston, a scholar of Arthurian romance, translated it into modern prose in 1898 and into rhymed verse imitating the stanza in 1912 (Weston 1898) (Weston 1912). The standard modern editions are those of Tolkien and Gordon, revised by Norman Davis, and of Andrew and Waldron (Tolkien 1967) (Andrew 2007). Line references in this guide follow their numbering of the Middle English; Weston's translation keeps almost line-for-line with the original.
Plot overview
The poem opens with the fall of Troy and the founding of Britain by Brutus, then turns to Arthur's court at Camelot, keeping Christmas and New Year with feasting and games. Arthur will not eat on New Year's Day until he has heard of some marvel. A gigantic knight rides into the hall, green in skin and clothing, with a holly branch in one hand and an axe in the other. He proposes a 'Christmas game': anyone may strike him with the axe, on condition that he may return the blow in a year and a day. When Arthur himself takes up the challenge, his nephew Gawain asks for the adventure. Gawain cuts off the Green Knight's head; the stranger picks it up, reminds Gawain to seek him at the Green Chapel next New Year, and rides away.
The year turns through its seasons, and on All Saints' Day Gawain arms himself, with the pentangle on his shield, and sets out. He rides through North Wales and the Wirral, fighting wild men and beasts and suffering bitter cold. On Christmas Eve he prays to the Virgin for shelter, and a splendid castle appears. Its lord welcomes him, tells him that the Green Chapel is nearby, and proposes a game: for three days he will hunt while Gawain rests, and at evening each will give the other whatever he has won.
On each of the three mornings the lord's wife comes to Gawain's bed and tries to seduce him. He resists with great courtesy, accepting only kisses, which he faithfully gives to his host in exchange for the deer, the boar and the fox that the lord has killed. On the third day, however, the lady offers him a green silk girdle that she claims will protect its wearer from death. Gawain accepts it, promises to keep it secret, and does not hand it over. He then goes to confession and is absolved.
On New Year's morning a guide leads Gawain to the Green Chapel and tempts him to flee; he refuses. The Green Knight feints with the axe twice (Gawain flinches the first time) and with the third stroke only nicks his neck. He then reveals that he is the lord of the castle, Bertilak de Hautdesert: the three blows answered the three days, and the nick punished the hidden girdle. The plot was devised by Morgan le Fay, the old lady of the castle, to test the pride of the Round Table and to frighten Guinevere. Gawain, ashamed, curses his cowardice and covetousness and vows to wear the girdle as a sign of his fault. Back at Camelot the court laughs, and adopts a green baldric in his honour.
Book by book
Book 1: The Challenge at Camelot
Summary
The poem begins far from Camelot, with the siege of Troy and the treachery of the man who betrayed it. From the fall of Troy, Aeneas and his descendants found the kingdoms of the West: Romulus builds Rome, Ticius settles Tuscany, Langobard Lombardy, and Felix Brutus crosses the sea to found Britain, a land of 'war and wrack and wonder'. Of all its kings Arthur was the most courteous, and the poet promises to tell an 'outrageous' adventure of his time, as he heard it told, a tale long fixed in 'loyal letters'.
Arthur keeps Christmas at Camelot with fifteen days of jousting, dancing and gift-giving. On New Year's Day the court sits down to dinner, with Guinevere at the high table among Gawain, Agravain, Bishop Baldwin and Ywain. Arthur, youthful and restless, refuses to eat until he has heard a marvel or seen a joust. The first course has hardly been served when a huge knight rides into the hall. He is handsome and richly dressed, but he and his horse are entirely green. He carries no armour, only a holly branch and an enormous axe.
The stranger asks for the leader of the court and mocks its silence. He has come in peace, he says, and wants only a Christmas game: whoever dares may strike him with the axe, if he will receive a return blow in a year and a day. When no one answers he laughs at the Round Table's famous pride. Arthur, angered, seizes the axe; Gawain, calling himself the weakest knight and his life the least loss, begs for the adventure, and the court agrees. Gawain swears to seek the stranger, who names the Green Chapel as the place. He strikes off the head, which rolls among the diners' feet. The body picks it up, the head opens its eyes and repeats the summons, and the knight rides out. Arthur makes light of the marvel and hangs the axe above the dais; the narrator warns Gawain not to shrink from the adventure he has taken in hand.
Analysis
The Trojan opening sets the story inside a long history of founding and betrayal. Its first sentence is famously ambiguous: the 'tulk' who wrought treason and was tried for his 'tricherie, þe trewest on erthe' (SGGK 3–4) may be Antenor or Aeneas, both betrayers of Troy in medieval tradition, and the phrase 'the truest on earth' can be read with the treachery or with Aeneas in the next line. The poem that will test Gawain's 'trawþe' (fidelity, truth to one's word) begins by setting truth and treachery side by side, and by calling Britain a land where 'bliss and blunder' have shifted often. The same lines return at the end (SGGK 2524–5), closing the circle (Burrow 1965).
Camelot is presented at its most splendid and its most youthful: Arthur is 'sum-quat child gered', somewhat boyish (SGGK 86), and his court is 'in her first age' (SGGK 54). The Green Knight's challenge exposes the gap between reputation and performance. The poet's description of him is a set piece of contradictions: he is half giant yet a well-made man, fierce yet elegant, carrying the holly of peace and the axe of war. His greenness can suggest the vitality of nature, the otherworld of fairy, or simply a marvel designed to unsettle the court (Benson 1965). He calls the knights 'beardless children' and turns their courtly game-playing against them: the beheading game is a Christmas 'gomen' whose rules must be kept.
Gawain's speech asking for the adventure (SGGK 341–61) is a masterpiece of courtly modesty, and it establishes the virtue on which the poem will turn. He claims no worth but his kinship to Arthur, and he acts to protect the king and the court's honour. Yet the bargain he accepts is literally impossible to survive, and the poet's narratorial warning in the last wheel of the fitt reminds us that games, once begun, must be played out. The fitt ends with a feast: the poem's world is festive and ceremonial even as it is threatened.
Since Troy's assault and siege, I trow, were over-past, To brands and ashes burnt that stately burg at last,
The opening places the Arthurian adventure in the line of history that runs from Troy through Rome to Britain. The Middle English, 'Siþen þe sege & þe assaut watȝ sesed at Troye', is echoed almost word for word near the end of the poem (SGGK 2525).
Men marvelled at his hue, So was his semblance seen, He fared as one on feud, And over all was green!
The wheel withholds the stranger's colour until its last word, the climax of a stanza that has described a perfectly formed knight. The original, '& ouer-al enker grene', means 'bright green all over'. Weston's 'as one on feud' renders 'as freke were fade', a phrase whose sense ('like a fairy man'? 'like a hostile man'?) editors still debate.
Naught but a holly bough he carried in one hand, (When all the groves be bare then fullest is its green),
The holly ('a holyn bobbe'), green in midwinter, is the first hint that the Green Knight is linked to the life of nature that survives the dead season. It is also a sign of peace, balanced against the axe in his other hand.
Book 2: The Pentangle and the Journey
Summary
The poet reflects that men are merry when they have drunk, but a year passes quickly and its end rarely matches its beginning. A great passage on the seasons follows: Lent with its fish, the soft rains of spring, the blossoms of summer, the dry winds of harvest, the falling leaves of autumn, until Michaelmas brings the year round towards winter and Gawain thinks of his journey. On All Saints' Day (1 November) the court holds a sad feast in his honour.
On 2 November Gawain is armed, piece by piece, in splendid gear, and his horse Gringolet is harnessed. The poet pauses to describe the shield, red with a gold pentangle, and to explain why it suits Gawain: the five-pointed star, the 'endless knot', is a sign of truth, and Gawain is faultless in five fives, his five senses, his five fingers, his faith in the five wounds of Christ and the five joys of Mary (whose image is painted inside the shield), and five social virtues, generosity, fellowship, purity, courtesy and pity. The court grieves at his going and blames Arthur for letting him risk his life over a Christmas game.
Gawain rides north through Logres into North Wales, past Anglesey and Holy Head, and into the wilderness of the Wirral, asking everywhere for the Green Chapel. He fights dragons, wolves, wild men, bulls, bears and giants, but the poet says the winter was worse than the fighting: he sleeps in armour among frozen rocks. On Christmas Eve, in a dense forest of oaks, he prays to Mary for a lodging where he may hear Mass. At once a castle appears, shining 'as if cut out of paper'. He is welcomed by a large, ruddy, beaver-bearded lord, dressed in fine clothes and fed a lavish 'penance' meal of fish. When the household learns he is Gawain, they rejoice at the chance to learn 'love-talking' from the master of courtesy. At chapel he sees the lord's wife, more beautiful than Guinevere, beside an ugly old lady, richly honoured. Over three days of Christmas feasting the lord learns his quest, tells him the Green Chapel is two miles away, and persuades him to stay. He proposes the exchange of winnings, and Gawain agrees.
Analysis
The seasons passage (SGGK 491–535) is among the most admired in Middle English. It is not simply decorative. The year that 'turns' through its seasons has its own beginning and end, like the poem, and it measures the time Gawain has left; the cycle of growth and death also prepares for the reading of the Green Knight as a figure of nature's renewal. The passage opens with the reflection that 'the form to the finishing folds full seldom', that beginnings rarely fit their endings, a warning against the court's festive confidence.
The pentangle passage (SGGK 619–69) is the poem's most explicit statement of an ideal, and its length is announced as a digression ('though it delay me'). The pentangle can be drawn in one unbroken line; each part depends on every other, so that failure at one point is failure of the whole. It is thus a figure of integrity in the root sense, and of 'trawþe', which binds religious faith, chivalric virtue and keeping one's word. The geometry is also numerological: five times five, set out in two full stanzas of a poem of 101. Critics debate whether the ideal is meant to be attainable, and whether the later replacement of pentangle by girdle marks a fall or a growth into realism (Burrow 1965) (Spearing 1970).
The journey compresses months of hardship into a few stanzas, treating the monsters almost dismissively while lingering on the cold. The real landscape of the Wirral, notorious in the fourteenth century as a refuge for outlaws, gives the romance an unusual local truth. The appearance of the castle answers Gawain's prayer so promptly that it seems a gift of grace, and yet it is also the place of his trial: the poet's 'cut out of paper' image, recalling the elaborate paper models that decorated feast tables, hints at artifice. At Hautdesert courtesy itself becomes a danger, since Gawain's reputation as a lover sets the terms of the lady's approach.
Speedy, the year hath sped and cometh not again; Beginnings to their end do all unlike appear —
The original, 'A ȝere ȝernes ful ȝerne, & ȝeldeȝ neuer lyke, / Þe forme to þe fynisment foldeȝ ful selden', plays on 'ȝere' and 'ȝerne' and introduces the seasons passage. The warning that endings rarely match beginnings applies both to the year and to the game Gawain has begun.
For 't is in figure formed of full five points I ween, Each line in other laced, no ending there is seen. Each doth the other lock — in English land, I wot, It beareth everywhere the name of 'Endless Knot.'
The poet's 'endeles knot' is apparently not recorded elsewhere as an English name for the pentangle, despite his claim that the English call it so everywhere. Its interlocking lines express the interdependence of Gawain's virtues: break one and the figure is broken.
To Wirral's wilds, methinks, nor long therein abode Since few within that land, they love or man, or God !
A dry joke about a real region, the Wirral peninsula of Cheshire, which suggests that the poet and his audience knew it well. The romance wilderness here has a map.
Book 3: Three Hunts and Three Temptations
Summary
Early on the first morning the lord rides out with his hounds to hunt deer. The poet describes the chase in technical detail: the harts and bucks are let pass, since it is the close season for them, and the hinds and does are driven to the bowmen and greyhounds. Meanwhile the lady slips into Gawain's bedroom, sits on his bed and teases him that he is caught. She offers herself, or seems to; Gawain deflects her with humble courtesy. As she leaves she wonders aloud whether he can really be Gawain, since Gawain would not have let a lady leave without a kiss; he gives her one. In the evening the lord displays the butchered deer, and Gawain gives him the kiss, refusing to say where he won it.
On the second day the lord hunts a huge old boar, which kills hounds and wounds men before he faces it alone in a stream and kills it with his sword. In the bedroom the lady presses harder, asking why a knight so famous for love has taught her nothing of it. Gawain pleads that he could never teach her and keeps to light talk. She kisses him twice, and he gives the lord two kisses in exchange for the boar's head.
On the third day, the last before his appointment, the lord hunts a fox, which doubles and dodges until it is caught by the hounds. The lady comes to Gawain, who is troubled by dreams of his fate, dressed more temptingly than ever. He is close to yielding, caught between discourtesy and sin and treachery to his host. He refuses her love, and her ring. Then she offers her girdle of green silk, which, she says, no man can be killed while wearing. Gawain, thinking of the Green Chapel, accepts it and promises to hide it from her husband. She kisses him three times and leaves. He goes to a priest, confesses and is absolved, and spends the evening merrily. When the lord returns with the fox skin, Gawain gives him the three kisses but keeps the girdle.
Analysis
The third fitt is built on an interlace: each day begins with the hunt, moves to the bedroom, returns to the hunt's end, and closes with the exchange. The parallel invites comparison between the hunted beasts and the hunted knight. The timid deer, the fierce boar and the cunning fox have been read as images of Gawain's behaviour on each day, or of the sins he must resist; the fox, which escapes by trickery and is caught in the end, corresponds most clearly to the day on which Gawain conceals the girdle. Other readers stress contrast rather than allegory: the lord's open, violent world outside against the enclosed, verbal combat within (Burrow 1965) (Benson 1965) (Davenport 1978).
The temptation scenes are comedy of a high and dangerous kind. The lady attacks through Gawain's reputation: if he is the Gawain of romance, a courteous lover, he cannot refuse her without discourtesy; if he accepts, he betrays his host and his chastity. Her words 'ȝe ar welcum to my cors' (SGGK 1237) can mean 'you are welcome to my body', though some editors take them more mildly. Gawain's defence is to treat her as a superior to whom he owes service but whose meaning he does not understand. The poet shows a conflict between two codes the pentangle had joined: courtesy and 'clannes' are no longer the same (Spearing 1970) (Putter 1996).
The girdle reverses the pattern of the earlier days. Gawain is tempted not by desire but by the wish to live, and he accepts a gift that he has promised to hand over. The confession that follows (SGGK 1876–84) has provoked one of the poem's central debates. The poet says he was absolved as completely as if Doomsday were the next morning. But he still has the girdle, which he has no intention of returning; if keeping it is a sin of untruth, the confession lacks the restitution that the Church required, and his absolution is in question. Others reply that the exchange is a game, not a moral obligation, and that the poet's emphatic language means the confession to be sound (Burrow 1965) (Tolkien 1983).
My body 's at your will To use as ye think best,
Weston takes the lady's 'ȝe ar welcum to my cors, / Yowre awen won to wale' in its boldest sense. The offer comes in the wheel, the most memorable part of the stanza, and on the very first morning.
Whoso shall gird himself with this same woven lace The while 't is knotted well around him, 't is a charm, And no man upon mould may wreak him hurt or harm,
The lady's claim for the girdle. Weston's 'charm' is her own addition; the Middle English says simply that no man under heaven could cut him down 'for slyȝt vpon erþe', by any trick on earth. The word 'knot' links the girdle to the pentangle's endless knot.
Assoiled well he was, and set as clean alway As if the morrow's morn the day of doom should be.
The poet's emphasis on the completeness of Gawain's absolution ('As domeȝ-day schulde haf ben diȝt on þe morn') is the crux of the debate over whether the confession is valid when he keeps the girdle.
Book 4: The Green Chapel
Summary
On New Year's morning a storm of snow blows through the night. Gawain, sleepless, arms himself, wraps the girdle twice around his waist over his red surcoat, and leaves with a guide. On the hills, the guide warns him that the man of the Green Chapel kills everyone who passes, and urges him to escape by another road, promising to keep it secret. Gawain refuses: to flee would make him a coward, whatever the guide promised. Left alone, he finds the Chapel, a hollow grassy mound by a stream, and calls it a chapel fit for the devil to say his matins in. He hears the grinding of an axe on a stone.
The Green Knight appears and praises Gawain for keeping his word. Gawain bares his neck; at the first stroke he flinches slightly, and the knight checks the blow and mocks him: 'Thou art not that Gawain'. At the second Gawain stands like a stone, and the knight feints again. At the third the blade cuts the skin of his neck, and when he sees his blood on the snow Gawain leaps away, draws his sword and declares the bargain kept. The Green Knight, leaning on his axe, explains: the two feints were for the two days when Gawain faithfully gave up his winnings, the nick for the third, when he held back the girdle. He made his wife tempt Gawain; Gawain lacked a little in loyalty, but only for love of his life, and he blames him the less.
Gawain, burning with shame, curses cowardice and covetousness, throws the girdle back and confesses his fault. The knight laughs, declares him cleansed, gives him the girdle and invites him back to the castle. Gawain refuses, and in a bitter speech says it is no wonder a man is ruined by women, since Adam, Solomon, Samson and David were all deceived. He will keep the girdle as a reminder of his fault. The knight names himself Bertilak de Hautdesert and explains that Morgan le Fay, Gawain's aunt and the old lady of the castle, sent him to Camelot to test the court's pride and frighten Guinevere to death. Gawain rides home, wearing the girdle as a sign of shame, and tells his story. Arthur and the court laugh and agree that all the knights will wear a green baldric in his honour. The poem ends by returning to Brutus and the siege of Troy, and with a prayer to Christ who wore the crown of thorns.
Analysis
The Green Chapel is a mound, not a church, and Gawain's reaction to it mingles fear with the comic: he expects a devilish rite. The guide's temptation (SGGK 2091–2125) is a final and straightforward test of courage, which Gawain passes; it is also, in hindsight, a test of truth, since the guide offers to lie for him, and Gawain has already accepted one such offer of secrecy. The flinch at the first blow exposes the gap between Gawain's resolution and his body, 'the faintness of the flesh' he will later name (Burrow 1965).
The explanation scene recasts everything that has happened. The beheading game and the exchange of winnings were one test, and Gawain has nearly passed it: the Green Knight, now a genial host and confessor, calls him the most faultless knight on earth, as a pearl is worth more than white peas. Gawain's response is out of proportion. His self-accusation, 'Corsed worth cowarddyse & couetyse boþe!' (SGGK 2374), uses the language of the deadly sins, and he names himself 'faulty and false'. Readers have long debated whether the poem shares his judgement or the Green Knight's milder one, or the court's laughter, which may express relief, incomprehension or a wise refusal to take the failure tragically (Burrow 1965) (Spearing 1970) (Putter 1996).
The ending raises further questions. The revelation of Morgan le Fay as the author of the plot has struck many readers as perfunctory, though it ties the story to Arthurian tradition, where Morgan is the enemy of Guinevere. Gawain's antifeminist outburst (SGGK 2414–28) draws on a standard medieval catalogue and is undercut by context, since it shifts blame from Gawain to the women he has just praised. The girdle, finally, becomes a badge: for Gawain a mark of shame, for the court a mark of honour. After the poem's last line a later hand added the motto of the Order of the Garter, 'Hony soyt qui mal pence', suggesting that an early reader linked the green baldric to that order (Andrew 2007) (Dinshaw 1994).
'T was but for love of life, therefore I blame thee less — '
The Green Knight's verdict, 'Bot for ȝe lufed your lyf, þe lasse I yow blame', is understanding: Gawain's fault was not malice or lust but the natural wish to live. This milder judgement stands against Gawain's own.
'Covetousness, accurst be thou, and cowardice, In virtue's stead ye bring both villainy and vice — '
Gawain's first words after the revelation, in the Middle English 'Corsed worth cowarddyse & couetyse boþe! / In yow is vylany & vyse, þat vertue disstryeȝ'. Weston reverses the order of the two sins; the poet puts cowardice first, as the root of the fault.
This token of untruth, wherein I was held fast; And I this needs must wear long as my life shall last.
Back at Camelot Gawain calls the girdle 'þe token of vn-trawþe', the exact opposite of the pentangle, the sign of 'trawþe'. The court's decision to wear it as an honour follows immediately.
Characters
Camelot
- Sir Gawain
- Arthur's nephew, son of his sister, and the knight who takes up the Green Knight's challenge. He bears the pentangle as a sign of perfect 'trawþe' and is famous throughout the poem for courtesy, so that the lady's household expects to learn love-talk from him. He is courageous, modest and scrupulous, and he survives every test except one: he accepts the green girdle to save his life and conceals it. His fierce self-condemnation at the end is at odds with the judgement of everyone else, and the gap between them is the poem's central question.
- King Arthur
- The young, restless king of Camelot, 'somewhat childish' in his love of marvels. He takes up the Green Knight's axe when his knights are silent, and later treats the beheading as a fine Christmas entertainment. His court's comfortable laughter at the end may be read as generous or as a failure to understand Gawain's ordeal.
- Guinevere
- Arthur's queen, sitting in splendour at the high table in Fitt I. She says nothing, but Bertilak reveals that one purpose of Morgan le Fay's plot was to frighten her to death. The lady of Hautdesert is said to be lovelier than she.
- Agravain, Ywain, Bishop Baldwin and the court
- Agravain 'of the hard hand', Gawain's brother, Ywain son of Urien and Bishop Baldwin sit at the high table; the knights of the Round Table, silent before the challenge, grieve at Gawain's departure and finally adopt the green baldric.
Hautdesert
- The Green Knight / Bertilak de Hautdesert
- The gigantic green stranger who proposes the beheading game, survives decapitation and returns the blow at the Green Chapel; he is revealed to be the same man as Gawain's genial host, the lord of Hautdesert, transformed by Morgan's magic. As host he is hearty, generous and energetic, a mighty hunter; as the Green Knight he is mocking but finally merciful, acting almost as a confessor. His name appears in the manuscript as Bertilak (earlier editors, including Morris, whose text is on this site, read it as Bernlak; Weston writes Bercilak).
- The lady of Hautdesert
- Bertilak's wife, more beautiful than Guinevere, who visits Gawain's bed on three mornings. She is witty, persistent and skilful in argument, turning Gawain's reputation for courtesy against him. On the third day she gives him the green girdle. The poem never names her, and her motives are only partly explained: her husband says he sent her, but whether she shares Morgan's purpose is unclear.
- Morgan le Fay
- The ugly old lady honoured at the castle, Arthur's half-sister and Gawain's aunt, who learned magic from Merlin. Bertilak names her as the author of the whole adventure, sent to test the pride of the Round Table and to terrify Guinevere. Her late and brief appearance as 'Morgne þe goddes' has provoked much debate.
- The guide
- A servant of the castle who leads Gawain to the Green Chapel and urges him to flee, swearing to keep his flight secret. His temptation is the last test of Gawain's courage.
Others
- Gringolet
- Gawain's horse, a famous name in Arthurian romance, armed and harnessed as carefully as his master for the journey north.
- The Virgin Mary
- Gawain's patron, whose image is painted inside his shield so that he may take courage when he looks at it. He prays to her for shelter on Christmas Eve, and the castle appears; in the third bedroom scene the poet says that great peril stood between Gawain and the lady unless Mary remembered her knight (SGGK 1768–9).
- Brutus, Aeneas and the founders
- The Trojan exiles who found the nations of the West in the poem's opening and closing lines, setting the adventure within the long, unstable history of Britain.
Themes
Trawþe: truth, fidelity and the keeping of promises
The Middle English word 'trawþe' covers a range of meanings that modern English separates: faith in God, loyalty to a lord, truth in speech, and the keeping of one's word. The pentangle is called a sign of 'trawþe', and Gawain is tested on all of these at once. His adventure depends on two promises, to seek the Green Knight and to give his host his winnings, and both are framed as games.
His failure, when it comes, is a failure of the narrowest kind of trawþe: he breaks a promise in a game. Yet the poem insists that the virtues of the pentangle are linked, so that this small breach touches the whole. Gawain's final judgement, that the girdle is a 'token of untruth', uses the word in its full moral weight.
Courtesy and its limits
Gawain is the knight of courtesy, and the lady of Hautdesert makes courtesy her weapon: a courteous knight cannot refuse a lady. The temptation scenes show courtesy colliding with chastity and with loyalty to his host, so that the virtues bound together in the pentangle begin to pull apart.
Courtesy also governs the poem's world at large: the feasts, the hospitality, the elaborate speech of host and guest. The poet admires it while showing how it can conceal danger, and how much of it is performance.
Games, rules and play
The beheading game is a Christmas 'gomen'; the exchange of winnings is offered in festive mood over drinks; the temptations are conducted as a witty game of words. The poem's world is full of play, and its moral tests are hidden inside games whose rules turn out to be binding.
This blend of festive and serious is part of the poem's tone. The court's laughter at the end returns the story to the spirit of Christmas play, while Gawain insists that the game revealed something real about him.
The body, fear and the love of life
Gawain fails not through lust or greed but because he wants to live. The poem is unusually attentive to the body: the cold of the journey, the dreams before the appointment, the flinch of the shoulders, the blood on the snow. Gawain later speaks of 'the faintness of the flesh'.
The Green Knight's remark that he blames Gawain the less because he loved his life suggests a humane understanding of this weakness. The poem asks whether a perfect knight can also be a mortal man.
Confession, penance and grace
The poem is shaped by the Christian year, from Christmas to New Year, Lent, All Saints, and Christmas again, and Gawain's religious life is described with care. He prays to Mary, hears Mass and confesses before his ordeal. The Green Knight's explanation scene follows the pattern of confession, contrition and absolution, with a penance in the wearing of the girdle.
The poem's two confessions, to the priest at Hautdesert and to the Green Knight at the Chapel, sit side by side, and readers have asked which is the true one, and whether the second exposes a flaw in the first.
Reputation and identity
The question 'Are you really Gawain?' recurs. The lady doubts it when he fails to kiss her; the Green Knight denies it when he flinches. Gawain's identity is a reputation, built in other romances and spread by report, and he must live up to a name. The poem tests whether the man matches the legend, and leaves him painfully aware that he does not.
Motifs
Threes
Three days of hunting, three temptations, three exchanges, three kisses on the last day, three blows of the axe. The pattern of repetition with variation builds suspense and lets the reader compare each day with the others, until the third breaks the pattern.
Hunting
The three hunts are described in precise technical detail, from the rules of the close season to the ritual breaking up of the deer. They show the lord's vigour and the aristocratic culture of the poem's audience, and they run parallel to the 'hunting' of Gawain in the bedroom.
Feasting and the Christian calendar
The poem begins and ends in festivity, and its action is timed by the feasts of the Church: Christmas, New Year, All Saints, Michaelmas. Feasts frame the trials and give them their festive, playful character.
Exchange and bargaining
The poem is full of the language of trade, 'chaffer', 'chepe', 'forwarde'. Gawain and his host bargain over winnings, and the Green Knight frames the beheading as a covenant. Gawain's fault is called 'covetousness', an economic sin, though he desired life, not wealth.
Wildness and the wilderness
From the Green Knight's otherworldly greenness to the wild men and frozen forests of the journey and the eerie mound of the Green Chapel, the poem sets the courtly world against untamed nature, which proves to be no less ordered or courteous in its own way.
Symbols
The pentangle
The five-pointed star on Gawain's shield, an 'endless knot' drawn in one continuous line, represents his perfect and indivisible 'trawþe': five sets of five virtues, each dependent on the others. Its gold on red, and its link to Solomon, give it both chivalric and religious authority. It disappears from the poem after Fitt II, and its place is taken by the girdle.
The green girdle
A green silk lace with gold embroidery, offered by the lady as a talisman. For Gawain it becomes first a hope of survival, then a 'token of untruth' worn as penance, and for the court a badge of honour. Its shifting meaning, from love-token to charm to sign of shame to emblem, makes it the poem's most complex symbol, and it answers the pentangle as a knot that can be untied.
Green
The colour of the Green Knight, the holly, the girdle and the Chapel. Green suggests nature and renewal, but in medieval tradition it could also suggest the fairy otherworld, youth, inconstancy and even the devil. The poem keeps its meanings open.
The holly and the axe
The two objects the Green Knight carries into Camelot: the holly, green in winter and a sign of peace, and the great axe, an instrument of death. Together they sum up his double nature as a figure of life and of mortality.
Critical debates
What is the Green Knight?
Readers have interpreted the Green Knight in strikingly different ways. In the early twentieth century, under the influence of anthropology, he was read as a figure of seasonal myth: a vegetation god or 'green man' who dies and returns, his beheading a ritual of the dying year. John Speirs gave this view its most influential critical statement (Speirs 1957).
Others have seen him in Christian terms, as a figure of death and judgement whose blows weigh Gawain's soul and who acts at the end like a confessor. Larry Benson argued that the poet drew on the literary types of the 'green man' and the wild man of medieval tradition while making him an elegant courtly figure, and that his meaning lies in this unsettling mixture rather than in a single key (Benson 1965). Most modern critics resist a single interpretation, noting that the poet himself offers a rational explanation, Morgan's magic, which hardly exhausts the figure.
Is Gawain's confession valid?
At Hautdesert Gawain confesses and is absolved 'as if Doomsday were tomorrow', yet he keeps the girdle he has promised to hand over. J. A. Burrow argued that the poet means us to see this confession as flawed: true penance required restitution of what was wrongfully held, and the scene with the Green Knight provides the real confession and penance (Burrow 1965).
Others have objected that the exchange is a game, not a moral debt, so that keeping the girdle need not be a sin for the confessor; on this view the poet's emphatic language is meant at face value, and Gawain's final fault concerns honour rather than salvation. Tolkien, in his 1953 lecture, took the absolution seriously and argued that the poem distinguishes moral law from the code of courtesy (Tolkien 1983).
How serious is Gawain's failure?
Gawain calls himself cowardly, covetous, faulty and false; the Green Knight calls him the most faultless knight alive; the court laughs. The poem gives three verdicts and does not choose between them. Critics have read his self-reproach as a sign of moral maturity, as the excessive scrupulousness of a perfectionist, or as a measure of the impossibility of the pentangle ideal (Burrow 1965) (Spearing 1970).
Much depends on tone. Some readers stress the comedy of the ending and the poet's gentle irony towards Gawain's despair; others the darker note of a knight who can never again be what he was. The girdle's double meaning, shame for Gawain and honour for Camelot, allows both readings (Putter 1996).
Morgan le Fay, the lady and the antifeminist speech
The late revelation that Morgan le Fay devised the plot has seemed to many readers an awkward afterthought, since nothing in the action depends on her. Others defend it as a link to Arthurian tradition, where Morgan works against the court, and as a final deflection of responsibility from Bertilak.
Gawain's speech against women (SGGK 2414–28), with its catalogue of Adam, Solomon, Samson and David, is drawn from a commonplace of medieval clerical writing. Feminist critics have examined how the poem first makes women the instruments of the test and then makes them the scapegoats of its failure. Carolyn Dinshaw's influential reading looks at the kisses passed between Gawain and Bertilak and argues that the poem works to contain the possibilities they open, securing a heterosexual order at its close (Dinshaw 1994). Whether the poet endorses Gawain's outburst or exposes it as defensive remains disputed.
Who was the poet?
The poet's identity is unknown. Shared dialect, vocabulary and themes lead most scholars to assign all four poems of Cotton Nero A.x to one author, though some doubt it. Several candidates have been proposed, most persistently members of the Massey family of Cheshire: Clifford Peterson argued for John Massey of Cotton, building on clues found in the manuscript and in the poem St Erkenwald, which some have also assigned to the poet (Peterson 1974).
None of these identifications has won general acceptance. What can be said with more confidence is that the poet was learned, familiar with Latin and French, theology and courtly culture, and wrote for a sophisticated regional audience, possibly one with ties to the royal court (Bennett 1983) (Putter 1996).
Numerology and structure
The poem's structure invites counting: 101 stanzas, like Pearl; 2,530 lines; a pentangle of five fives; three days, three kisses, three blows; a final line that echoes the first. Critics have proposed numerical schemes linking these features, and have also debated the poem's divisions, since besides the four large initials that mark the fitts the manuscript has other decorated capitals that suggest a different division into nine sections.
Such arguments range from the persuasive to the speculative. The circular structure and the patterning of threes are beyond doubt and are central to the poem's effect; more elaborate numerological readings depend on assumptions about how medieval poets planned their work (Spearing 1970) (Andrew 2007).
Chivalry and the court of Richard II
The poem's splendour of dress and architecture and its interest in fine manners have suggested to some historians a link with the court of Richard II, who drew many retainers and soldiers from Cheshire in the 1390s. Michael J. Bennett showed how Cheshire and Lancashire men made careers in royal and aristocratic service, and how the region could support a culture of sophisticated poetry (Bennett 1983).
Others read the poem as a critique, gentle or sharp, of chivalric pretension: the Round Table is tested and found proud, and its laughter at the end may suggest a court that does not understand the lesson. The later addition of the Garter motto has also led to speculation about a link with that order, but nothing certain connects the poem with its founding.
Rediscovery and reception
Unknown to Chaucer's later readers and to the antiquaries who catalogued the Cotton collection, the poem was first printed by Frederic Madden in 1839 (Madden 1839). Its reputation grew slowly through the editions of Morris and of Tolkien and Gordon, and through translations, among them Weston's (Morris 1869) (Weston 1898) (Tolkien 1967).
Kittredge's study of its sources established its place in Arthurian tradition (Kittredge 1916), and since the mid-twentieth century it has been regarded as one of the greatest poems in Middle English, with modern verse translations, from Marie Borroff's onward, bringing it to a wide audience (Borroff 1967).
Key passages
Men marvelled at his hue, So was his semblance seen, He fared as one on feud, And over all was green!
The wheel delivers the poem's first shock. After a long description of a magnificent, well-proportioned knight, the last line reveals that he is entirely green. The device of saving the decisive word for the end of the stanza is typical of the poet's handling of the bob and wheel.
Methinks, the weakest I, the feeblest here of wit,
Gawain's request for the adventure is a model of courtly humility: 'I am þe wakkest, I wot, and of wyt feblest'. His modesty is sincere and politic, sparing Arthur and claiming that his life is the least loss. The poem will test whether this self-deprecation hides a deeper pride.
For 't is in figure formed of full five points I ween, Each line in other laced, no ending there is seen. Each doth the other lock — in English land, I wot, It beareth everywhere the name of 'Endless Knot.'
The poet explains the pentangle as a figure without beginning or end, in which every line depends on every other. It is the poem's emblem of Gawain's integrity, and of the danger that one flaw will break the whole.
Speedy, the year hath sped and cometh not again; Beginnings to their end do all unlike appear —
These lines introduce the passage on the seasons. They warn that the merry beginning of Gawain's game will have a very different end, and they make time itself a theme of the poem.
My body 's at your will To use as ye think best,
The lady's first offer to Gawain, as Weston renders it. The boldness of the words, placed in the wheel, sets the stakes of the temptation from the start. Gawain answers with elaborate courtesy that avoids both acceptance and offence.
Assoiled well he was, and set as clean alway As if the morrow's morn the day of doom should be.
Gawain's confession after accepting the girdle. The poet insists on the completeness of the absolution, yet Gawain still holds the girdle he has promised to surrender. The tension between these facts is one of the poem's great interpretative problems.
'Thou art not that Gawain whom men aye deem so good,
After Gawain flinches at the first blow, the Green Knight denies his identity, repeating the lady's earlier doubt. Gawain's name is a reputation he must earn again in each moment of the test.
'Covetousness, accurst be thou, and cowardice, In virtue's stead ye bring both villainy and vice — '
Gawain's first response to the revelation of his fault is a curse on two vices. The Middle English, 'Corsed worth cowarddyse & couetyse boþe!', names cowardice first; his covetousness was the desire for life, not wealth. His judgement is far harsher than the Green Knight's.
For so was he betrayed, Adam, our sire, of yore, And Solomon full oft! Delilah swift did bring Samson unto his fate; and David too, the king,
Part of Gawain's antifeminist speech, which lists famous men deceived by women. The catalogue is a medieval commonplace, but in Gawain's mouth it shifts blame from himself to the women of Hautdesert, and many readers find it defensive rather than authoritative.
This token of untruth, wherein I was held fast; And I this needs must wear long as my life shall last.
Gawain presents the girdle to Arthur's court as a sign of his 'vn-trawþe', the reverse of the pentangle's 'trawþe'. The court, laughing, makes it a badge of honour, leaving the reader to weigh the two meanings.
Questions for study
Why does the poem begin and end with the fall of Troy?
Consider the ambiguity of 'treachery' and 'truth' in the opening lines, the theme of 'trawþe', and the circular structure. How does the long history of Britain frame Gawain's private adventure?
What does the Green Knight represent?
Weigh the readings of him as a figure of nature, as a Christian judge or confessor, and as a courtly host transformed by magic. Does the poem invite one interpretation, or deliberately sustain several?
Explain the meaning of the pentangle and why the poet spends so long on it.
Look at the five fives, the idea of the 'endless knot', and the link with 'trawþe'. Compare the pentangle with the girdle that replaces it.
How are the three hunts related to the three temptations?
Consider parallels between the deer, the boar and the fox and Gawain's conduct on each day, but also the contrasts between the open field and the enclosed bedroom.
Is Gawain right to accept the girdle?
Think about his motives, the lady's claims, his promise to his host, and the Green Knight's comment that he loved his life. Is the fault one of courage, of truth, or of faith?
Is Gawain's confession at Hautdesert valid?
Consider the requirement of restitution, the language of the passage, and whether the exchange of winnings is a moral obligation or a game. Compare the later 'confession' to the Green Knight.
Whose judgement of Gawain does the poem endorse: his own, the Green Knight's, or the court's?
Compare Gawain's self-condemnation, the Green Knight's praise, and the laughter of Camelot. Think about the poem's tone and the double meaning of the green baldric.
What is the role of women in the poem?
Consider the lady, Guinevere, Morgan le Fay and the Virgin Mary, and Gawain's antifeminist speech. Does the poem endorse his attack, or expose it?
How does the bob and wheel shape the reader's experience of each stanza?
Look closely at a few stanzas, such as the Green Knight's entrance or the lady's first offer. How does the short rhyming section summarise, delay or surprise?
In what ways does the poem play with the idea of a 'game'?
Think of the beheading game, the exchange of winnings and the bedroom conversations, and of the festive setting at Christmas. When does a game become a serious moral test?
Further reading
- Andrew, Malcolm, and Ronald Waldron, eds. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London: Edward Arnold, 1978; 5th ed. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2007.
- Bennett, Michael J. Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- Benson, Larry D. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965.
- Borroff, Marie, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967.
- Brewer, Derek, and Jonathan Gibson, eds. A Companion to the Gawain-Poet. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997.
- Brewer, Elisabeth. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Sources and Analogues. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992 (first published as From Cuchulainn to Gawain, 1973).
- Burrow, J. A. A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965.
- Davenport, W. A. The Art of the Gawain-Poet. London: Athlone Press, 1978.
- Dinshaw, Carolyn. 'A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.' Diacritics 24, no. 2/3 (1994): 205–26.
- Kittredge, George Lyman. A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916.
- Madden, Frederic, ed. Syr Gawayne: A Collection of Ancient Romance-Poems by Scotish and English Authors, Relating to That Celebrated Knight of the Round Table. London: Bannatyne Club (printed by Richard and John E. Taylor), 1839.
- Morris, Richard, ed. Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight: An Alliterative Romance-Poem. Early English Text Society, Original Series 4. London: Trübner, 1864; 2nd ed. 1869.
- Peterson, Clifford J. 'The Pearl-Poet and John Massey of Cotton, Cheshire.' Review of English Studies, n.s. 25 (1974): 257–66.
- Putter, Ad. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
- Putter, Ad. An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet. London: Longman, 1996.
- Spearing, A. C. The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
- Speirs, John. Medieval English Poetry: The Non-Chaucerian Tradition. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.
- Tolkien, J. R. R. 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.' W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture, Glasgow, 1953. In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983.
- Tolkien, J. R. R., and E. V. Gordon, eds. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925; 2nd ed., rev. Norman Davis, 1967.
- Turville-Petre, Thorlac. The Alliterative Revival. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1977.
- Weston, Jessie L., trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Middle-English Arthurian Romance Retold in Modern Prose. London: David Nutt, 1898.
- Weston, Jessie L., trans. Romance, Vision and Satire: English Alliterative Poems of the Fourteenth Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.