Study Questions &
Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. The host’s
wife goes after the man she wants, and uses a great deal of rhetorical
and argumentative skill to seduce him. To what extent would you
describe the host’s wife as a powerful or progressive female character?
2. What are the
three reactions to Gawain’s sin at the end of Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight? How do they compare to one another?
3. Names—or a
lack thereof—play an important role in Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight. Discuss a few of the ways that the naming process or a name
itself functions in the poem.
Suggested Essay Topics
1. Why might the Gawain-poet
wish to frame his Arthurian, courtly romance within the context
of classical epic?
2. What different ideological
systems govern morality in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?
Do they seem to compete with one another, or do they overlap? Which
systems appear to dominate by the end of the tale, and why?
3. What forms of love (brotherly
love, spiritual love, courtly love, erotic love, and so forth) exist
in the text, and in what types of relationships do they appear (friendships,
marriages, relationships with God, and so forth)? Does love most commonly
manifest itself as suffering or as ennoblement? Why do you think
so many scholars analyze this text as part of the courtly love tradition?
4. In Part 4,
the Green Knight and Gawain agree that all their problems can be
blamed on women. Do you think we’re meant to take the “woman blaming”
ending seriously or to question it, and therefore (perhaps) to question
the entire misogynist tradition to which Gawain alludes?
5. Many scenes and characters
in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are doubled
or multiplied. Why do you think the writer structures his poem this
way? What effect does the repetition of passages have on the reader?
How does this formal element of poetic composition relate to what
is happening at the content level? You might choose one doubled
scene (like Gawain’s departures from Camelot and Hautdesert) or
character (Bertilak and the Green Knight) or something otherwise
multiplied, like the “five fives” of Gawain’s pentangle.
