The alliterative poem Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, likely written in the mid
to late fourteenth century, survives in a late-fourteenth-century
manuscript with three other poems—Pearl, Purity, and Patience—by the
same author. Very little is known about the author of these poems,
but most scholars believe him to have been a university-trained
clerk or the official of a provincial estate (this SparkNote refers
to him as the “Pearl-poet” or the “Gawain-poet”). Though it cannot
be said with certainty that one person wrote all four poems, some
shared characteristics point toward common authorship and also suggest
that the Gawain-poet may have written another poem, called St. Erkenwald,
that exists in a separate manuscript. All the poems except Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight deal with overtly Christian
subject matter, and it remains unclear why Sir Gawain, an Arthurian
romance, was included in an otherwise religious manuscript.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was
written in a dialect of Middle English that links it with Britain’s
Northwest Midlands, probably the county of Cheshire or Lancashire.
The English provinces of the late fourteenth century, although they
did not have London’s economic, political, and artistic centrality,
were not necessarily less culturally active than London, where Geoffrey
Chaucer and William Langland were writing at the time. In fact,
the works of the Gawain-poet belong to a type of literature traditionally
known as the Alliterative Revival, usually associated with northern
England. Contrary to what the name of the movement suggests, the
alliterative meter of Old English had not actually disappeared and
therefore did not need reviving. Nevertheless, Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight exists as a testament that the style
continued well into the fourteenth century, if not in London, then
in the provinces.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’s adapted
Old English meter tends to connect the two halves of each poetic
line through alliteration, or repetition of consonants. The poem
also uses rhyme to structure its stanzas, and each group of long
alliterative lines concludes with a word or phrase containing two
syllables and a quatrain—known together as the “bob and wheel.”
The phrase “bob and wheel” derives from a technique used when spinning
cloth—the bobs and wheels in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight help
to spin the plot and narrative together in intricate ways. They
provide commentaries on what has just happened, create or fulfill
moments of suspense, and serve as transitions to the next scene
or idea.
Told in four “fitts,” or parts, the poem weaves together
at least three separate narrative strings commonly found in medieval
folklore and romance. The first plot, the beheading game, appears
in ancient folklore and may derive from pagan myths related to the agricultural
cycles of planting and harvesting crops. The second and third plots
concern the exchange of winnings and the hero’s temptation; both
of these plots derive from medieval romances and dramatize tests
of the hero’s honesty, loyalty, and chastity. As the story unfolds,
we discover that the three apparently separate plotlines intersect
in surprising ways.
A larger story that frames the narrative is that of Morgan
le Faye’s traditional hatred for Arthur and his court, called Camelot. Morgan,
Arthur’s half sister and a powerful sorceress, usually appears in
legend as an enemy of the Round Table. Indeed, medieval readers
knew of Morgan’s role in the destined fall of Camelot, the perfect
world depicted in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
The poem’s second frame is a historical one. The poem
begins and ends with references to the myth of Britain’s lineage
from the ancient city of Troy, by way of Britain’s Trojan founder,
Brutus. These references root the Arthurian romance in the tradition
of epic literature, older and more elevated than the tradition of
courtly literature, and link fourteenth-century England to Rome,
which was also founded by a Trojan (Aeneas). Thus, Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight presents us with a version of translatio
imperii—a Latin phrase referring to the transfer of culture from
one civilization (classical antiquity, in this case) to another
(medieval England). The Gawain-poet at times adopts an ironic tone,
but he also displays a deep investment in elevating his country’s
legends, history, and literary forms—especially Arthurian romance—by
relating them directly to classical antiquity.
