The Gawain Poet and
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Notes by J. Zimmerman
Contents
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a narrative poem of an Arthurian legend
in which Arthur's knight Sir Gawain is allowed to behead a green-skinned green-clad knight —
on condition that one year later Gawain will allow the Green Knight to behead him.
It seems like just the usual knightly fun ... until the beheaded Green Knight picks up his head and rides out
into the wintry night, leaving Gawain with the responsibility of finding the Green Knight and keeping his promise.
Often considered one of the finest Arthurian romances in English,
the poem was probably written in the 14th century.
It is available in many translations into modern English.
Form and content of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Interweaves two traditional stories:
- The Beheading Game, that is usually reported as Celtic in origin.
Cawley attributes it to the eighth-century Irish saga
Bricriu's Feast,
on the annual struggle between the old sun-god and the new sun-god.
[John Speirs (in the collection of essays edited by Denton Fox on the poem)
sees the Green Knight as a variant on the Green Man
of vegetative and re-birth traditions.]
- The Temptation or Seduction, usually reported as French (e.g.
Borroff)
although
Merwin
and
Cawley
report it as probably Celtic.
The poem is usually divided into four parts:
- New Year's Day in King Arthur's court. The Green Knight makes a challenge,
Gawain takes up the challenge, and promises to meet the Green Knight one year
later at the Green Chapel to accept a return blow.
- After a joyful ten months from New Year to All Saint's Day (1st November),
Gawain has a miserable two-month journey in search of the Green Chapel.
On Christmas Eve in the wasteland of Wirral he arrives at a castle where he
is welcomed warmly by its lord, who offers:
(a) to have Gawain escorted to the Green
Chapel on New Year Day and
(b) that on the last three days of the year, he and Gawain will exchange
anything they win each day.
- The last three days of the year, in the castle, Gawain is tempted each day
by the lady of the castle. Each day the lord returns from the hunt with a
trophy and appears surprised when Gawain gives him kisses for the trophies.
However on the last day, Gawain conceals the green belt that the lady gives him,
because the belt is said to save him from the Green Knight.
- The anniversary New Year's Day in the Green Chapel.
The Green Knight strikes three blows (not just one)
and Gawain is embarrassed about his deception with the green belt.
On his return to King Arthur's Court, however, he is encouraged not to take life to seriously.
The poem has many trinities, including:
- Arthur, the Green Knight, and Gawain in Arthur's court.
- Berilak de Hautdesert, Berilak's lady, and Gawain in Berilak's castle.
- Three hunts (the deer or timidity, the boar or ferocity, and the fox or cunning).
- Three successive days, each with a temptation.
- Three blows that the Green Knight aims at Gawain.
- The Christian God, Jesus, and Mary.
The form of the long poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
in its only medieval manuscript (the Cotton MS)
blends Germanic and Romance traditions is (after Borroff) based on:
- The 'alliterative long line':
"there was a flowering of alliterative poetry in the outlandish districts of England during the
fourteenth century"
(Cawley).
- Groups of long lines are punctuated by 5-line rhyming (of French descent) groups, each comprising:
- the 'bob', a 2-syllable line, followed by
- the 'wheel', 4 three-stress lines,
- these five lines (five having some resonance with Gawain's pentangle) rhyming a-b-a-b-a.
Gawain Books
| Author.
| Poetry form.
|
| Armitage, Simon
| Translated into 20th-(barely 21st)-century English with some sporadic insertions of slang expressions.
A robust yet jarring version.
|
| Borroff, Marie
| Translated into 20th-century English.
One of the best versions.
|
| Burrow, John A.
| Alliterative poetry.
|
| Cawley, A.C.
| In the original poetry.
|
| Gardner, John
| Essays and alliterative poetry.
Gawain presented without line numbers
in numbered sections,
each ending with its bob-and-wheel.
|
| Moorman, Charles
| [Essays not poems.]
|
| Tolkien, J.R.R.
| Essays and poems.
|
For comparison, the description of the Green Knight
("Ande al grayþed en grene þis gome and his wedes" [Line 151.])
is shown for each translation or version.
|
Simon Armitage
"And his gear and garments were green as well"
In poetry. The book contains:
- Armitage's "Introduction".
- James Simpson's "A Note on Middle English Meter".
- All four sections of the poem, translated into 20th-century English
(though with occasional erratic and jarring use of slang or informal expressions).
Retains the alliterative long line of the original,
together with the punctuating 5-line rhyming groups ("bob and wheel"), each comprising:
- the 'bob', a 2-syllable line, followed by
- the 'wheel', 4 three-stress lines,
- these five lines (five having some resonance with Gawain's pentangle) rhyming a-b-a-b-a.
- Parallel text with the original middle English.
- Notes on the Gawain poet and on Armitage.
Marie Borroff
"And in guise all of green, the gear and the man"
In poetry. Contains:
- Introduction.
- All four sections of the poem, translated into 20th-century English
yet retaining the 'alliterative long line' of the original,
together with the punctuating 5-line rhyming groups, each comprising:
- the 'bob', a 2-syllable line, followed by
- the 'wheel', 4 three-stress lines,
- these five lines (five having some resonance with Gawain's pentangle) rhyming a-b-a-b-a.
- Metrical form (8 informative pages).
- Reading suggestions, including references to books by
Tolkien and by
Burrow.
John A. Burrow
In poetry. Contains alliteration.
I am a big fan of
the Marie Borroff translation
(even though the Burrow version is praised for the undergraduate classroom).
- The original Middle English with notes and a glossary.
- Explains the type-setting and spelling alterations.
- Lacks a introduction to the story.
A.C. Cawley.
"Ande al graythed in grene this gome and his wedes"
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Edited with an Introduction by A.C. Cawley.
|
In the original poetry. Contains:
- Preface.
- Introduction.
- Select Bibliography.
Reading suggestions, including references to books by
Tolkien and by
Burrow.
- Pearl.
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
All four sections of the poem, in the original language and format, with
- the
þ (thorn) and the ough translated into 20th-century English
sounds.
- Specific words glossed on half of the lines on the right-hand side of the page.
- About half of the lines glossed at the bottom of each page.
Of all versions, this approach gives the best sense of the original poem.
- Appendix 'on Spelling and Grammar'.
- Appendix 'on Metre'.
John Gardner.
"He came there all in green, both the clothes and the man"
Contains:
- Six essays of introduction and commentary, giving some of the most helpful background on the conventions
and traditions of the poems, their interpretations, and their forms.
- Five poems translated into 20th-century English: the four traditional 'Gawain poet' poems
from the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript in the British Museum, plus a poem that
was also probably by the Gawain author:
- Pearl:
- Theme of loss, Heaven, courtesy, and loyalty.
- 101 (possibly intended by the poet to be cut to 100) 12-line
tetrameter stanzas with rhyme ababababbcbc.
- Stanza linked in groups of five by word
repetition in all last and selected first lines, the link word being changed 20 times.
- Purity:
- Theme of purity, faithfulness, and God's punishment of one person (such as Adam),
cities (such as Sodom and Gomorrah except for Lot
and his daughters), and the whole world (except for Noah and his family and the animals he chose).
- 18 sections.
- Patience:
- Theme of patience and faithfulness, poverty, and purity; the absurdity of wilfulness.
The discourtesy that results from fear and shame.
Tells the story of Jonah.
- A simple structure: may have been an earliest poem by the Gawain poet
or else a poem by a different poet.
- A prologue then four sections.
- Quatrains.
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
- Human selfishness versus selfless courtesy.
- Retains the 'alliterative long line' of the original.
- Printed in sections, each ended with a punctuating 5-line rhyming group (comprising
the 'bob' (a 2-syllable line) and the 'wheel' (4 three-stress lines),
these five lines off-rhyming a-b-a-b-a.
- St. Erkenwald
W.S. Merwin.
"And all in green this knight and his garments"
In poetry. Contains:
- 18-page Foreword.
- "J.R.R. Tolkien ... E.V. Gordon, in 1925 produced the authoritative text and edition of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
that I have used in this translation."
All four sections of the poem, translated into 20th-century English
yet retaining the 'alliterative long line' of the original,
together with the punctuating 5-line rhyming groups, each comprising:
- the 'bob', a 2-syllable line, followed by
- the 'wheel', 4 three-stress lines,
- these five lines (five having some resonance with Gawain's pentangle) rhyming a-b-a-b-a.
- Parallel text with the original middle English.
- Metrical form (8 informative pages).
- Reading suggestions, including references to books by
Tolkien and by
Burrow.
Charles Moorman.
The Pearl-Poet
collection of essays by
Charles Moorman.
|
Essays. Contains:
- Preface.
- Chronology.
- Six chapters:
- The Anonymous Poet.
- Pearl.
- Patience.
- Purity.
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
- Conclusion.
- Notes and References.
- Selected Bibliography.
- 5-page Index [very welcome!].
J.R.R. Tolkien.
"All of green were they made, both garments and man"
In poetry. Contains:
- Preface by Christopher Tolkien.
- Introduction.
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo
- Pearl
- Sir Orfeo
- Glossary -- a mere four pages.
- Appendix: "The verse-forms of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo
and Pearl.
- Gawain Leave-Taking, Tolkien's 1-page invention.
The Gawain Poet.
"Ande al grayþed en grene þis gome and his wedes" [Line 151.]
The four poems of the medieval Cotton manuscript appear to be by the same author,
on the basis of style and use of vocabulary and grammar.
Tradition call that author 'the Pearl Poet'
though we and
Gardner call him 'the Gawain Poet'.
Moorman [Preface] equates the terms Pearl-Poet and Gawain-Poet.
While we know little of the Gawain poet, he was:
- Writing toward the end of the fourteenth century.
- A contemporary of Chaucer.
- Living in the Midlands of England, variously suggested (using modern counties):
- 'Probably near [the town of] present-day Stafford (Borroff).
and wrote in a dialect of:
- "the North-west Midland area (south Lancashire, north Derbyshire, or the
West Riding of Yorkshire"
(Cawley).
- "the northwest Midlands, with Lancashire and Cheshire the strongest possibilities"
(Moorman p.33).
References to known places include:
- [Line 697.] Wales. Gawain wanders almost as far as North Wales.
But where from?
And at the time the story occurred, was the extent of North Wales the same as today?
- [Line 698.] Anglesey. Today this is an island county off the north-west corner of Wales.
He keeps Anglesey to his left.
Is he going north?
Or east?
Is he in present-day England?
- [Line 700.] Holy Head, where he 'comes over'.
Could this be Holyhead, a town on the west of Anglesey?
In which case, is he coming over from Ireland?
- [Line 701.] The Wilderness of Wirral. The Wirral is a wedge of land between the River Dee
(Chester is inland)
and the River Mersey (Liverpool is inland).
Writing symbols used in the Anglo Saxon of Gawain manuscript
Anglo-Saxon used a slightly different alphabet from modern English.
It contained several now-obsolete runic letters:
- þ (thorn); a soft 'th'. Eventually became interchangeable with eth.
- ð (eth); a hard 'th'. Eventually became interchangeable with thorn.
- 3 (yogh); various sounds, particularly a 'y' and a Scottish 'ch' (or throat clearing)
as in 'loch'.
History of Gawain manuscript
Borroff's Introduction says that
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is:
- A late-14th-century poem.
- In Middle English in the original single manuscript.
- An Arthurian romance.
- Known to us for only a century.
- Found in the library of Sir Robert Cotton, who obtained it from a library in Yorkshire.
- Also in the manuscript are the poems Patience
and Purity (both in the same alliterative verse form as Gawain)
and Pearl (in rhymed stanzas).
Timeline of the period
Much of the following is adapted from
Moorman's The Pearl-Poet Chronology.
- 5th and 6th centuries.
- Saxon invaders of modern-day England defeat and disperse the Celts.
- 1066
- Battle of Hastings.
Normans invaders of modern-day England defeat the Anglo-Saxons.
- Late 11th century.
- Courtly love (or fin amor)
"this new religion of love" [Moorman p.24],
which was probably of Arabic origin, reached Provençe.
- Early 14th century.
- Alliterative Revival: "revived both the forms
and the essential moral conservatism of pre-invasion England"
[Moorman p.22];
"This moral tone is strengthened for the first time in English verse
by a heightened social conscience, by a strong sense of the value of the human
spirit of whatever social class, and by the necessity of justice and fair play
in economic life
[Moorman p.23].
- 1322
- William Langland (b.): author of Piers Plowman,
most important poem of the Alliterative Revival.
- 1327-77
- Reign of Edward III.
- 1345
- Geoffrey Chaucer (b.).
- 1346
- Battle of Crécy.
- 1348
- Black Death.
- 1352
- Wynnere and Wastoure, another important poem of the Alliterative Revival.
- 1366
- Battle of Poitiers.
- 1356 (approx.)
- Mandeville's Travels (a source for Purity, probably by the Gawain poet).
- 1360
- Boccaccio's Olympia (a source for Pearl, probably by the Gawain poet).
- 1360 (approx.)
- Alliterative Morte Darthur, one of the last Arthurian romances in English.
- 1360-1390 (approx.)
- Gawain poet flourished.
- 1362
- First version (the 'B-text') of William Langland's Piers Plowman.
- 1370 (approx.)
- Chaucer's first important work, The Book of the Duchess.
- 1376
- Death of the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III.
- 1377
- 'B-text' of William Langland's Piers Plowman (parts of which may echo passages in
Patience, probably by the Gawain poet).
- 1377-1399
- Reign of Richard II.
- 1381
- Peasant's Revolt.
- 1385
- Wyclif Bible.
- 1385 (approx.)
- Chaucer's longest and most important narrative poem, Troilus and Criseyde.
- 1385-1400
- Chaucer composed Canterbury Tales.
- 1395 (approx.)
- 'C-text' of William Langland's Piers Plowman.
- 1399-1413
- Reign of Henry IV.
- 1400
- Death of Chaucer.
- 1400 (approx.)
- Date of the Gawain-poet (elsewhere called the Pearl-poet) manuscript:
"The manuscript itself, judging from the scribal handwriting, was copied not later
than 1400" [Moorman p.33].
Moorman [p.33]
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