The Gawain Poet
Belatedly following on from ‘Reading Malory’, after an interesting seminar and a few more thoughts on this and also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Once again this week I have found that one of the most interesting aspects of the reading has been the element of courtship in chivalry. The attributes of courtly love seem to become more and more perplexing with each piece of information I am given.
With courtly love being by nature adulterous confusion is introduced when personal feelings become involved in knightly matters, as chivalry is meant to concern the selfless, yet in times of peace there were little selfless acts to be made.
Perhaps this is what leads to the notion I mentioned in Reading Malory that the characters are not the cause of the issues which arise within the Morte Darthur but instead are vehicles for the display of the issues within the imposing force of chivalry.
Reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight it appears once again, similar to what I found reading Malory, that chivalry is an issue for the Knight. The presence of this unnatural set of values acts as a catalyst for deviations from what might otherwise be considered morally correct and results in many of the conundrums within the narrative.
Despite being aware that chivalry was a very real aspect of knighthood I found I had to constantly remind myself that this is not a literary device being used to land Sir Gawain in various situations. Granted, the fictional events which take place within the narrative are not necessarily like to true events, however I cannot escape the notion that the problematic conflict of conscience must have been very real for knights of the age.
Looking at the narrative, there are unlikely events of course; The arrival of this Green Knight at the Christmas feast and the ‘game’ which follows is almost reminiscent of folklore.
An element of mystery is introduced to the poem. Who is the knight? Why suggest the unnecessarily dangerous game? And it may well be this element rather than that of chivalry which triggers the difficulties experienced by Sir Gawain further on in the narrative. Sir Gawain finds himself being seduced by the lord of the castle’s wife after he has become lost in search of the Green Chapel as part of the bargain with the Green Knight, and this is when he encounters moral issues which I will come to later on.
Be that as it may the reason for Sir Gawain taking on the bargain in the first place is surely due to the inconsistencies of chivalry; Should the Christmas party have believed that the Green Knight’s proposal for a game was absurd the far more sensible response would have been not to respond at all. Yet chivalry injects that when challenged a knight must accept, and the brotherhood of the round table adds that Sir Gawain should save Arthur from embarrassment by taking on this ridiculous challenge on his behalf. In such a way I believe once again the narrative is used to demonstrates chivalry as being the cause of irrationality. Perhaps the Gawain Poet is even using the text to mock these conventions.
I will admit to having been forced to resort to reading a translation along side Sir Gawain, as I found the language alien. Such a stark difference from previous week’s readings of Chaucer. With Gawain the meaning is more apparent when read aloud. The text having been more phonetically is apparent.
Despite this, looking more closely at the text, (with translation close by) it seems the Sir Gawain’s uncertainty of the correct moral course of action is shown between lines 1476 and 1507 as he is so easily convinced by the lady to let her kiss him. In line 1495 where the narrator has previously called the lady ‘lady’, she is here called ‘the mery wyf’.
Possibly this is a result of the alliterative scheme of meter used throughout the text or perhaps more can be read into it, as this works to highlight the lady’s connection with the lord of the castle immediately before she kisses Sir Gawain.
