Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ~ 1/99 ~ Great Boo Export

Now Barbara, don't cry...come over here and sit by me. Take a deep breath! If you press the little roundtable icon in the heading here, you can see that you have a place at the Roundtable. You are all signed up and ready to roll on Monday.

Actually, several folks have contacted me to say they do not yet have their translations, so we will spend next week talking about background, the author (notice we have no author up there yet...who is Pearl Poet?), and I will copy and print that first page up in the heading since it is giving some people hissy fits.

I am going to place several background sites up in the heading as clickables tonight.

Do you feel better? Nothing has started without you. We always tend to get a bit hyper here when starting something new. Perfectly normal. Feel free to post anything you want, anytime you want, as we gear up for this exciting adventure!!!

Joan

Whew - Thanks.

this is a good Gawain website but, I cannot seem to copy it on this post so that you can click to the site. If anyone can transpose this please do so.

http://www.csis.pace.edu/grendel/proj2b/main.html

And this is a terrific URL site that again, needs to be made into a clickable. I don't know why they won't copy as clickables.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A late 14th-century verse romance preserved in the same manuscript as Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness.

URL: www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Union/6747/gawain.html

Barbara, I will put them up in the heading right now. Thank you so much! This is exactly the kind of input we need this busy season to get as much as we can from the tale.

Do you know the html for making clickables?
Between these little brackets <...>, you type: a href="URL you wish to make clickable between the quotation marks", then name the site anything that describes it, then close with more <...> between which you write:/a, To show you what it will look like, I'll use (...) or else you won't see it. When you make the clickable, you must use <...>.
Otherwise, here's what it should look like:

(a href="http://www.csis.pace.edu/grendel/proj2b/main.html")Sir Gawain(/a). Now I will substitute the <...> for the (...) and you should see the clickable:
Sir Gawain

I'll let you practice posting the second one you found... Thanks again. Valuable sites!

Hope to get my copy this weekend. B&N, or my favorite used books store. I guess we aren't all reading the same translation, That should make for interesting discussions.

I agree, Jackie!
Since many of us don't have the book yet, I think we'll just work on the introductory page and some background information this week. Then when we actually start the tale next week, hopefully we'll all have our copies. I had really hoped to provide a clickable to on-line text as we have done with all of our other Great Books, but all I can find is the MIDDLE ENLGISH!!!. Would you like me to put it up in the heading anyway, just to see what it looks like?

I have a full day (who doesn't?), but if anyone who already has a translation has some extra minutes, please consider typing out the first stanza of your translation as a post, and I'll put it in the heading as a clickable for the week's discussion. Then everyone will see it. I typed out three translations, but they got lost!
If you don't have the time, I'll try to do it tomorrow pm. But if you do, be sure to label which translatation you are typing, so no one else repeats!
From the first line down to the first mention of King Arthur would be great! be sure to put a little br for break between <...>at the end of each line, so they don't all run together.
Doctor is waiting..
Later!!! Joan

Good luck at the doctor's, our Joan. I'm really confused (what else is new??) over the three translations? I liked # II best, which one was that, do you recall? Looking forward to seeing the different first stanzas.

Ginny

Here goes for the sixth time;

Many More Gawain Sties

Barbara: I fixed it for you, you were close!

It's fabulous, thanks.

Will write.

Ginny

I found still a different translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the library; one by M.R. Ridley. They did have the Tolkien and other translations listed in the catalog but the one I got was the only one available.

What is interesting is that I also have a modern fantasy version of the same story called The Green Knight by Vera Chapman which I reread quite recently.

Looking forward to the start of the discussion.

Nellie

There are so many sites discussing Sir Gawain it is amazing! This site is a long essey on the role of woman in Sir Gawain and touches on the Catholic Church's influence and authority prescribing that role 14C. Role of Woman

I am glad we are reading Sir Gawain and that I decided to participate instead of occasionally lurking, as in the past. I have wanted to read it since I read Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight a few years ago. She is one of my favorite writers and her book, about modern times, bears many parallels to the original poem. It will be very interesting to figure it all out! June

Just a note to say our Joan is having the devil of a time getting in here, her Netscape has crashed, she's having to reload, and you can just picture her frantically chewing up her nails and the keyboard and the mouse, trying to get back in.

So she's on the way!!

Ginny

During this preliminary week may I ask a preliminary question regarding the plot?

I didn't understand the movie AT ALL, and so far there is a fundimental key to understanding the plot which I don't comprehend.

By what stretch of the imagination can the concept of accepting a challenge to kill a protagonist outright without battle, in return for submitting to being done in without resistance, a year later, be considered "Chivalrous"?

Best

LJ, that's an excellent question, and one on which we will have to spend more than just the coming week ! I've been doing some reading on this, and the origins of the poem...
...especially the beheading scene,(yuk! but so funny!) which has Celtic and then French origins - the French seem to have added the "chivalrous" element. Of course Pearl Poet has added his own take on the whole thing, but we are going to have to look at what had been handed down to him before we understand his contribution.

Your excellent questionwill be the first to go up on the question board!
So glad June is joining us! Lots to consider, but most of all to enjoy!

ps Netscape Communicator successfully downloaded the second time around!!!

LJ, what movie? What have I missed by tuning in only sporadically?

Do you think chivalry really enters into this at all? It was produced at a time when people accepted the possibility of the supernatural even more readily than many people do now. Religious beliefs aside, don't movie and television audiences swallow ghosts, shape-changers, superhumanly powerful individuals, androids with human emotions, vast celestial plots to destroy the earth, etc., without question and with great enjoyment? What is "X-Files" but a vast allegory of the supernatural?

Isn't there general critical belief that the Gawain story is the descendant of an earlier myth? This pattern of death and resurrection and ultimate defeat of threatened evil is recurrent in the oldest stories in the oldest civilizations. However, I'll leave the explication of these phenomena to the leader, who can decide the appropriate time for such analysis.

Ros

Ros!, the "leader" is only a "host", a greeter and welcomer. The host says "seize the moment!" If you know something, say it right away! -or you will probably forget it later, if you are anything like the host!

Later!!!

This is what I get out of the challange and the beheaded challanger. My "Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols" by J.C. Cooper says: the head along with the heart of chief members of the body, the seat of life force, soul and its power. The head is the seat of both intelligance & folly and is the first object of both honor and dishonor. Catholic Church: the head of the church is Christ. Celtic: is Solar, devinity, other-world wisdom and power. The Janua coeli: the Winter solstice in Capricorn, the 'door of the gods' and the ascent and increasing power of the sun.

Green: Ambivalent, as both life and death in the vernal green of life and the livid green of death, also youth, hope and gladness but equally change and jealousy. Green is Spring, paradise, aboundance,properity and peace. An unripeness it is sumbolic of inexperience, hence folly and naivety.

Axe:Solar emblem of the sky gods, power, thunder, sacrifice. Celtic: a divine being, chief or warrior.

Knight: his quest represts the journey of the soul through the world and it's temptations, obstacles, trails, testing and proving character and development towards perfection. He aslo typifies the initiate.

My Anthology of "The Arthurian Legends" explains the Beheading game in its earlist form is from an Irish epic "Bricriu's Feast" where it passed to France via Wales and Brittany. The changes in the story are in agreement with the different colors in each story for the horse, the huntsman etc.

I do not remember when I learned that most trials where for 1 year and 1 day and usually started on either one of the Christmas holydays or one of the Spring holydays. That, historicaly, and for that matter in Irland today, rather then saying it happened on the 3rd of whatever month, or New Year's day it is named by the holy day. This challange is taken up on the feast of the Circumscission.

For me this is going to be a symbolic story rather then thinking a mortal body. I understand they believed the Church as the head and seperate from the desires of the body was the entrance to perfection and heaven. As a child, attending Catholic Schools I remember when various Martyer stories were told, the nuns challanged us to be willing to die for our belief in Christ and Church. Therefore, I could just see the belivablity of Sir Gawain leaping at the chance to prove his courage once he got passed his "natural" fear.

To me this story is now set up to be the push and pull between nature and celtic magic belief vs. honor, and idealism as represented by the willingness to live by the beliefs of Christianity, and the journey of the soul dealing with the obstocles on the way to paradise.

Another preliminary question: -- have we decided how much we should read and discuss each week? Or at least this first week? Carolyn

Barbara!, what a wealth of information! We will definitely have to mark your message for reference! So much to think about! I found some "stuff" on the Celtic and French tales which I'll try to put up in the morning, but will put your conclusion up top as 'thought of the week'!

...and Carolyn asks a good question! How much for each week, for this week?

I think we will just talk author, background and first introductory stanzas, since so many have not yet acquired a copy. I have almost finished with three translations of the first stanza and if I can figure out how to get them into the heading as clickables, I'll do that for those of you without them. Trying to do that right now!

What sort of a November day are you having in Norway, Carolyn?

I wanted to solve the "Chivalry" question before explorind the Irish legend and CuChulain (We've heard a lot about him in the past year here on these boards). The Max notes emphasize "The ethic of the nobility in the middle ages known as Chivalry" and emphasizes its importance to the story. I saw a movie on T-V a while back, starring an ageing and somewhat overweight 007, of this story. Couldn't comprehend it. I'll try to do better this time around.

Best

LJ, this site explains the oath of chivalry in a way that complements a Knights character. I wonder what your definition of chivalry is and how it may differ from this explination. I wonder if you are thinking "deeds" rather then ideals. And yes, I would agree believing is in the doing. There does seem to be a difference in 12C.Chivalry vs.15C. Chivalry

Ahh yes, Sean Connery (spell)

Barbara, Thank you, but I can't read black on dark blue, not enough contrast for my eyes.

However, let me reiterate my question.

Note that the action takes place in the realm of Chivalrous Knighthood. Note that somebody comes in and says If YOU cut off my head, I'll meet you a year hence and kill you. I won't resist you and you won't resist me.

Now what's chivalrous about that?

Furthermore, even as a myth or "Fairy Tale" It defies logic, to say nothing about reason.

Best

Joan, yesterday when you asked that question about the weather everything was gray and gloomy, but today's lovely, blue amd sparkling. I'll take a stab at the third question. These introductory stanzas bind the founding of Britain to to the tradition of the great classical epics. This has two effects. First, it puts the history of Britain in a flattering, ennobling light, calculated perhaps to delight the poet's audience. But the main effect is to lift the tale out of "real" time and place it in the framework of myth. Most of the poet's listeners would thus realize from the beginning that they were about to hear a story containing elements of the non-natural and of allegory. In other words, these stanzas invite the listener to an appropriate "suspension of disbelief". The frame is closed by the classical references in the final stanza of the poem. Carolyn

LJ,, even if we have read the tale recently, this is not an easy question you are asking! We'd need to define our own understanding of chivalry and also some idea of what was considered chivalrous in Celtic times, in France (especially) and finally in the Pearl Poet's own fifteenth century England, as the tale was embellished!

I wish I had your gift - you get right to the heart of the matter, as your question reflects, while I must look at all aspects first, before I can answer and I don't have them all in front of my right now... But for you, I'll try!!! At least I'll give you my own sketchy feelings on the matter.

The Celtic, the French and now Pearl poet's tales all have this much in common:

A very unconventional stranger (always huge, ugly, and wielding an ax - or a sword) appears during a banquet, attended by the best soldiers of the land. He always makes the same preposterous challenge to the bravery, manhood of the gathered knights. "Cut off my head today and I'll come back in a year and cut off yours!" No takers. He taunts! Finally, one steps, a young nephew, about to be honored, steps forward and accepts the challenge - Cuchulainn, the Celtic (remembering Frank McCourt's father's hero here), Caradoc, the French and now Gawain of Camelot.

In the French tale, where much is made of chivalry and the honor of the knights, the huge stranger asks Caradoc if he is the best knight of the gathering and he answers, no, but he is the most foolish! He accepts to preserve the honor of his men. This is difficult for us to understand and it will be interesting to read the beheading scene and try to understand it in that context.
Then of course, there is the year Gawain must wait for his turn to lose his head. This to me is the real torture!

We have to suspend our understanding that beheading means death - always. It is accepting a challenge that has great potential for disaster, and putting oneself in great personal danger and fear - in order to preserve the honor of the whole that constitutes chivalry here.
Maybe...We shall see!

Carolyn, I hope your Tuesday is another "sparkler"! I do love the fall. Tell about your trees. I imagine a land of evergreens...spruce!
That was a sparkling response to #3! I love the "myth" reference, preparing us for the tale to come:

"we're about to hear a story containing elements of the non-natural and of allegory. In other words, these stanzas invite the listener to an appropriate "suspension of disbelief".

Thanks for that!!!

Joan

Carolyn, I salute your lucid and sensible explanation of the appropriate way to approach this work, though I'm not sure it will actually pry LJ loose from his insistence on linking it to chivalry. If we could swallow the Odyssey, with its men turned into pigs, one-eyed giants who crunched up sailors in a single bite, and Olympians capable of shape-shifting into everything from a bull to a butterfly, we ought to be able to settle back and enjoy this tale without trying to connect it to reality or wringing our brows over every esoteric figure of speech. My own intention is simply to read it for fun, find out what happens (well, actually I already know), and then maybe, just maybe, go back and deal exegetically and hermeneutically with all the minutiae.

Have we all forgotten the wonderful tales of our childhood, that began "Once long ago, when giants roamed the earth and beasts could talk..."?

Ros

JOAN' the key phrase in your post is "to preserve the honor" Are we to assume that anybody could make ANY challenge and have it accepted??? As an old "Down-town" person I see that as an open invitation to every "Con Artist" on earth. What "Black Knight" wouldn't revel in that scenario?

Ros: A linkage to chivalry is the ONLY hope of setting up a story line, Mythical or real, Natural of supernatural, Believable or fantastic.

Best

LJ, note it is always the young knight, (translate that to immature perhaps), who accepts such a challenge...who feels the honor of his group is compromised if no one speaks up and accepts the "I dare you!" We will certainly look for more understanding as we read the challenge, and hopefully, enjoy the tale along with Ros
What about this Pearl Poet? Did anyone come upon any information about him?

Pearl Poet Much more information, including the Pearl Poem on this site. Just follow the flashing "Next Page" Icon.

The following copied from the site.

Pearl is a 14th-century poem known only to students of English literature--if to them. (I was at university in a graduate course on medieval literature before I discovered it.) It is written in English--although not so you could read it. During six hundred years the language has changed perhaps even more than have our intellectual biases. The poem has come down to us in a single manuscript copy, currently housed in the British Museum. This original uses letters that are no longer in our alphabet. It stands without any sort of punctuation--except for a capital letter at the beginning of each canto. It bears neither a title for the work nor a name for the author. It is bound together with several other poems that likely are by the same poet.

For obvious reasons, the work has come to be known as Pearl and the poet (for lack of any other identification) as the Pearl Poet. The poem currently is in print, available in two or three different translations. However, these editions all present it as a specimen for literary analysis; this one as a valuable word of Christian counsel for the brokenhearted. Even so, the translation offered here makes no pretense of putting the poem into Modern English. I have changed it only enough to get it within the understanding range of a modern reader--bringing it forward, say, to the language of the King James Bible or Shakespeare. I consider it most important that we read Pearl for what it is, a word spoken to our day be an elder (a much elder) brother. (See the Appendix for a more technical discussion of the translation.)

Oh, Barbara, thanks for this valuable information! I couldn't see us going through the entire tale referring to the author as the Pearl Poet, without understanding where this term came from! I copied out another section from your excellent source and will add that source to the material in the heading:

"If you have not guessed it from this first stanza, it will soon become apparent that the speaker actually is describing the death of a baby girl (not yet two years old, we are told later) who was close to him--presumably his daughter. The herb garden is, of course, the graveyard. It is possible, I suppose, that the baby was even named "Pearl"--or more likely "Margery" [from the French word for pearl, "margarite"]--although this can be only conjecture.

However, it is likely, here at the outset, that the poet wants us to be reminded of Jesus' parable about the pearl of great price (Mt. 13:45-46)--to which he will make explicit reference later. One lesson is that the father will have his daughter as being the pearl of great price. No, only the kingdom of God--his sovereign rule--is the pearl to be sought before, and at the cost of, everything else."

Barbara, how fascinating. Love your research, and Joan, thanks for that, too. How intriguing this all is!!

LJ, are you perhaps hinting that the Crusades and Chivalry were something other than what one thinks??

Ginny

I've ordered the Spearman text which is mentioned in one of the headings, the Raffel and the Winney, which has the Medieval English on one page and the translation facing. Thought that would be interesting. I think I'm going to need all the help I can get, tho I have probably learned more from the discussion already than I would have alone, this is great!!

Ginny

No GINNY, The facades etc. of the age are too well known for me to "Hint".

I guess there's something I've completely missed, so I'll just keep looking for it as I enjoy reading the poem.

Everyone else seems to understand and accept without question, the premise of WHY, Gawain was disposed to accept the challenge. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, It must be an intellectual shortcoming on my part. (But till I figure it out, I'll assume that the Emperor is naked)

Best

LJ, for the moment, think of youth, immaturity, unwillingness to look "chicken" and walk away from a dare!
You know, I never could understand that game of "chicken" some teens used to play with cars speeding toward one another in the middle of the road, waiting for the other to swerve out the way! Why? To test manhood? To show how brave facing death! But I'll agree, tis hard to understand!!!

Maybe, as you say, other credible reasons for accepting such a dare will surface as we read!

Ginny!, those are wonderful resources you've ordered! It will be such fun to hear the variations in translation from the original text! Especially since there are different versions of the original text!
I found it particularly interesting to see the differences in translation in the first stanza! I put the Borroff in the clickable above (right under question #3) for those of you who do not yet have your own copies.

"And far over the French Sea, Felix Brutus On many broad hills and high Britain he sets,most fair..."

The "French sea", the English channel? Borroff was translating from a version which referred to the English channel as the French sea! When did it become "English"? I haven't noticed in the other two translations I have in front of me any such reference! What does yours say? Also, my history of the founding of Britain...lacking! Does anyone know of Brutus? Are we talking about a Roman here?

The first elements in the definition of chivalry are fealty to God and king. When Gawain asks to take the challenge for himself it is because he wishes to serve Arthur and to prove himself worthy to be one of his knights. He estimates himself as relatively worthless compared to Arthur; he is ready to risk the jeopardy involved in the green Knight's challenge in order to protect his king. It seems to me that the outcome is always questionable; nobody, Gawain included, knows for sure what will happen when he confronts the Green Knight in a year and a day, only that he will be expected to submit to the blow of the ax. His antagonist rides away, still speaking to Gawain and onlookers! Anything can happen in this situation of totally suspended disbelief.

I don't think it is so hard to understand the daring behavior of a young man, especially when coupled with perceived nobility of cause. We have many examples of that sort of thing today. Though it is not hard to understand, it is hard to agree with from the vantage point of maturity.

June

Joan, I'll copy a longish quote from J. A. Burrow's A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight published by Barnes and Noble in 1966 back when that was primarily an educational publisher, about Brutus (pp. 172-173):

....The author, drawing on the tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth, places Arthur in his historical context -- as one of a line of rulers running from Aeneas through Romulus and Brutus to the 'Bretaygne kynges.' Of course Aeneas, Romulus and Brutus are, from a modern historical point of view, little better than the elf-queen; but it is necessary to realize that the "legendary history of Britain" was not yet recognized as legendary in the Gawain-poet's day. There was still general confidence in Geoffrey's veracity, even among the Latin chroniclers; and an official map of about 1360 marks Dartmouth as the place where 'Brutus landed with his Trojans.' So we may be fairly sure that the contents of the poet's prologue would have impressed an educated contemporary audience as sober historical fact, and that the poet himself understood them as such.

You'll have noted that Burrow refers to "the Gawain-poet" rather than the "Pearl-poet" as he is usually designated.

Well, I've finished reading the poem and can now enjoy all the attendant folderol. My local library yielded three well-annotated translations and a book of analysis with the original text.

I want to say that I had very little difficulty reading straight through the poem, simply saying "Yada-yada-yada" when I came to an unfamiliar term, and moving on. Tolkien's is a very readable version, mostly perfectly clear, and there's a wee glossary at the end for words that he couldn't replace with 20th-century English.

Ros

I'm not sure how far ahead I should be in the reading, but I have read through the Green Knight's challenge and it is King Arthur who originally accepts the challenge and has taken the proffered axe in hand to give the blow the Green Knight has agreed to. As Arthur so prepares Gawain makes the request that the match should be his. And Gawain cites kinship as the main reason he should be chosen; and that the challenge is foolishness, not fit for a king to accept. I don't get any sense of the game of chicken or of 'I'm so brave and great' at all. Gawain is very humble, almost self-denigrating as he gives the reason why he should be the one to accept the challenge in place of the king.

And he is courtious beyond the commonplace. He does not just jump up from where he sits but asks if the king would bid him come to his, the king's, side so that he will not be discourteous to the queen.

At first this seems just a sort of faerie tale, but it is much deeper than that...

Nellie

AHA, Nellie, you got ahead!!! (That's what makes "Curve shattering A+ Students). I confess, went only to the challenge which I'm still mulling over. At this point my concern is the acceptance of the challenge by an unarmed challenger which must assuredly result in the challenger's demise. I wonder how Arthur felt about that?

Best

Well, finally got my copy (the Tolkien). Although I read Milton (Paradise Lost) and Chaucer in College, I'm embarrased to admit - I'd never even heard of this!!

The Beheading Game! Wow. And to think we talk about the violence on television and in video games!!! But I think Barbara makes a very good point about Gawain needing to "prove" his courage - his spiritual worthiness - but having to overcome his natural (human) fear first.

And Carolyn…thanks for sharing your clear and concise understanding of the introductory stanzas. Really good!

LJ: Doesn't this challenge have some odd similarities to "duels of honor" later in our 'evolution'? Ok, let’s see. The offended party gets the first shot, I think?

Well Nellie you have gone ahead! I haven't read Part I yet, but from what you say, my premise that it was youthful immaturity that leads a young knight to accept the challenge is shattered, since, as you say, Arthur was about to accept for himself! The bold and daring "chicken" theory - out the window too! I'll be reading it this weekend...back to you later on that!

What translation are you reading? If it's not Borroff, will you check and see how the "French sea", or the "English Channel" is described? Kenneth Hare is describing it as the silver strand! Can he and Marie Borroff be translating from the same text? I seem to remember you were not reading Tolkein, as I expected you would be!

June, what do you think of the mature Arthur accepting such a challenge? Do you understand that?

Ros, thanks for the history! I liked the "Gawain Poet" reference too. Why do you suppose he is referred to in our time as the Pearl Poet? Do you suspect that he was more widely known in his time for the Pearl poem?

Charles!, we were posting at the same time! WELCOME! So glad you have joined us at the table!

It's interesting that you should mention duels of a later time as parallel to the beheading scene, just as I was reading something on the sources for the beheading scene:

"Ultimately the tale was derived from folk tradition,perhaps from a seasonal myth of the recurrent battle of Summer and Winter, or, more likely, from the widespread "exchange of blows" folk tale ...In Richard Coeur de Lion Richard is challenged to an exchange of blows. A bare fist is the weapon; the challenger is to strike the first blow, Richard to return the blow on the day following. He returns it with such force that he breaks the challenger's jaw and kills him.

More like the modern duel? LJ what do you think?

Charles/ Joan. First, "Duels of Honour"? First Shot? I'd always thought it was "Turn and Fire". But even here, both men are armed. On the other hand, It might make sense if that is indeed the historically "Chivalrous" thing to do.

And the Green Knight DID say that anyone who accepted his challange was "Foolish"

Thanks

Best

Doesn't the Green kKnight provide the ax? "I shall give him as my gift this gisarme noble,/This ax, that is heavy enough, to handle as he likes...."

Ros, does Burrow mention Antenor, "The knight that had knotted the nets of deceit..."? I don't remember The Iliad well enough to identify him. (I know I should go and look!)
I think this poet assumes that the Greek heroes were the antecednts-in-valor of the Round Table group. Most of the population in the British Isles before and during Arthurian time was probably regarded as primitive and brutish, like some of the creatures Gawain encounters on his journey.

Kinda reminds you of the "Here There Be Monsters" on the ancient maps?

Ginny

That's the feeling I get in part I, which I guess we are not supposed to be discussing yet!

Jo, Antenor was a sage who thought the whole Trojan conflict could have been avoided by simply returning Helen to the Greeks. He was also believed to have sold out to the enemy, thus being labeled as a traitor but incidentally having his life spared.

From my reading of the history, it would seem that the Gawain-poet, like most other educated people of the period, believed everything that Geoffrey of Monmouth had included in his History of the British Kings, though later scholars realized it was a mishmash of myth, legend, and pure fiction. Geoffrey was responsible for implanting the whole idea of the legendary King Arthur and the Round Table, and he claimed that Brutus had settled Britain. (Don't imagine that Conspiratorially-based Fictionalized History originated with Oliver Stone.) He forged a link between the classic kings and heroes and the leaders of early Britain that took centuries to dissolve.

Here's another tidbit from Burrow that will interest all you Brother Cadfael fans: He sees a connection between the Gawain story and the (apparently real) martyred St. Winifred, who lost her head near the Holy Well that figures in some of Ellis Peters's tales. Then there's the French Saint Denis - didn't he lose his head in one place only to have it rise up and follow his body to its burial place?

Frazer's mammoth Golden Bough will tell you more than you might want to know about mock beheading games in early Britain as well as in medieval Westphalia, and also about various kinds of Green Men and what they signified.

Ros

Joan, just happened to glance at your question about "French sea" and "silver strand." Tolkien uses "French flood." It's my understanding that there was - literally - only a single manuscript, which incorporated all the works attribed to the Pearl Poet. Perhaps it would help to keep in mind that most of the translators worked very hard to maintain the strict alliterative pattern of the lines, requiring three alliterations per line - they abandoned this only under severe and serious stress.

I've assumed that the combination of this paucity of copies and the difficult Western-Midlands dialect discouraged dissemination of this work. (Gee, that alliterative business is contagious, isn't it?)

Ros

Thanks, Ros! That line about the "knight" and "the knots of deceit" was interfering with my concentration. I kept wondering who it was when I was supposed to be in Arthur's great hall at the Christmas celebration! The alliteration contributes heavily to the beauty of this work, and Borroff's essay on metrical form in the back of the book has enlightened me about the bob and the wheel, which I never understood before.

"...and proudly reigned
Over well-nigh all the wealth of the West Isles."

A.D. 418. This year the Romans collected all the hoards of gold that were in Britain; and some they hid in the earth, so that no man afterwards might find them, and some they carried away with them into Gaul.

This is another good site suggested in the discussion group "September" Celtic and Medieval Histories. It seems prior to the Romans collecting all the gold, Britain asked for help fighting the Picts and was turned down because Rome was busy fighting the Huns.

I'm thinking these early lines smack a little of sour grapes.

Hahoe - here it is: Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Gawain and the Green Knight. (1982) UK, Adventure, 101, Rated PG, Color Director: Stephan Weeks; Cast includes: Miles O'Keeffe (Gawain), Sean Connery (Green Knight), Trevor Howard (Arthur), Peter Cushing [From Mediev-l List "Worst Medieval Films" Discussion] Sword of the Valiant with Miles O'Keefe as Gawain. Great hair that didn't move...at all!!! Medieval theme taken to the mystic outer limits!. O'Keefe previously played Tarzan.

Jo: What's the bob and the wheel? I won't have that translation?

Barbara: A movie!! Never heard of it, Sean Connery? Oh, want to follow up the discussion with it!

Ginny

Barbara, another fabulous site! Have you read How the Irish Saved Civilization, a marvelous history of those early times! And a video too! Yes! Let's try to view the movie after we finish reading the poem! That's always fun! We've always hated the movies...remember the Odyssey?

Jo, haven't read Part I yet, but from reading of the Celtic and French versions which preceded this one, the big ugly interloper who interupted the Christmas celebration (aren't we seasonal with this selection?), is always wielding a sword or an axe. So if he hands it to Gawain and asks him to lob off his head and confidently promises to return in a year to cut off Gawain's, perhaps he knows his is a very special, magical sword?

All this talk of losing one's head (losing one's life?) and then returning reminds one of the resurrection after death, doesn't it? Ros, I adore Brother Cadfael!

Say again your take on the differences in the translations...There was one manuscript and many translators working hard to maintain the alliterative pattern found in the Middle English version - so I can understand Tolkein coming up with "silver strand", but how do Borroff and Hare come up with "French sea" and "French flood"? Someone is taking liberties while translating the original? Shall I put the electronic Middle English text up in the heading under a clickable so that we can try to see this for ourselves? Would probably be a good idea since it is available...

By the way, another element of style to be watching for besides the alliterative (difficult to translate) examples, is the poet's heavy use of synonyms. I read that this is one great difference between the Pearl Poet, and his contemporary, Chaucer, who used very few!

Joan, my impression is that some translators concentrated on the vocabulary and produced a literal prose version, while others, wanting to convey the feeling of the rhyme, meter, and alliteration, occasionally used modern English words or phrases that were not literal translations of the original. I found the same kind of variation in the 9 translations of the Odyssey that I collected. We're currently considering, in the Poetry folder, the way in which a translation reflects the translator's period - contrasting Pinsky's Dante with Longfellow's Dante, or for that matter Sayers's with Ciardi's as well. (My own clumsy efforts to translate some of Ronsard's poems taught me that I could make a stab at the sense or the structure, but not both.)

Many, if not most, translations include a note about the translation, an apologia or explanation of the process. Here's an excerpt that precedes the 1959 translation of Gawain by James L. Rosenberg:

John Ciardi ... likened verse translation to taking a tune written for the piano and playing it on the violin.The melody is the same, but the texture of the music is significantly different.... [T]his is what my endeavors consisted of: taking the melody composed by an unknown author in the fourteenth century and transcribing it as best I could for my own instrument - Modern English....Where the original author draws his bow across the strings and plays "There hales in at the halle dor an ahglich mayster," I blow into my twentieth-century kazoo and out comes "When suddenly came crashing in a frightening great creature."

Great Books members who have a reading knowledge of any other language - and, in fact, all fluent readers of English -- will surely recognize that, once beyond the painful decoding of one word at a time, we perceive literature in chunks, not single words, and that within our minds there is always a translator at work.

Ros

Joan: I did find the Tolkien translation at the library and that is what I am using now. And I've made another interesting discovery.

"But Arthur would not eat until all were served;
his youth made him so merry with the moods of a boy,
he liked lighthearted life, so loved he the less
either long to be lying or long to be seated:
so worked on him his young blood and wayward brain."

This piece appears to indicate that Arthur is not the mature, older man we think him to be. It would certainly explain why he is the original accepter of the Green Knight's challenge; he is the one who is young and rash and can't let a taunt go unanswered. I almost get the idea that Gawain and the other knights of the Roundtable may all be older than Arthur. But your idea of the game of "chicken" still fits, only it was directed at Arthur and not Gawain or the other knights.

LJ: You ask how Arthur feels about being asked to "kill" the Green Knight. Actually the challenge is to exchange one stroke for one stroke. But you are right to assume that both strokes would be deadly ones. Since the Green Knight is obviously a magical creature, perhaps Arthur senses that any blow struck against him might not be as deadly as it would seem. To me the challenge is a test of courage, specifically the courage to face death with honor and dignity.

Nellie

May I suggest that no one view the film The Sword of the Valiant until we have nearly concluded discussion? It is terrible and funny -- a real distortion, although I must admit I used to show the opening banquet scene to students. Always enjoyed Sean Connery as the Green Knight! Gawain's blond pageboy hairdo was always good for chuckles.
Joan, Old Greenie not only supplies the ax, he also instructs Gawain to find him at the end of the year and a day. Then ol' Greenie will take a swing with the ax at Gawain! What a deal -- he has to travel through scary, unknown territory to seek his own execution!

Ginny, I'm having trouble posting this: Bob and a Wheel: a section of shorter lines following the long stanza of lines with four stresses. The "BOB" has two stresses; the "WHEEL" has four stresses. I'm trying to indicate the stressed syllables with CAPS.
Example:
A BELdame, by GOD, she WELL may be DEEMED,
of PRIDE! (bob)
She was SHORT and THICK of WAIST,
Her BUTtocks ROUND and WIDE;
More TOOTHsome TO his TASTE
Was the BEAUty BY her SIDE. (end of wheel)

This "year long" pledge with death reminds me of a documentary shown on PBS, not too many years ago, of Indians in the Andes who celebrate the Sun God. This was not history but, a present day occurance. (maybe Nova) Each village chooses 1 man who could be sacrificed on the mountain the following year. During the year, he not only arranges all his affairs but, uses the year to become close to his family, help and love his friends and really be an elder to the community. One of the gentleman interviewed was peaceful and apprieciative of his year of loving and caring for others. He does not work for money but, devotes himself completly to his prays, family and community. (The community supports him and his family with food etc. and I think he gives away all his posessions. I don't remember that part as well)

When the time arrives, thousands of people all dressed in their village costume arrive on this snow covered mountainside. A specific tune is played over and over by every piper and each village performs their unique dance. The celebration goes on for several days. Finally, late one evening, the sacrifice representatives from each village along with the Shamans, carrying firebrands, climb this frozen mountain where there is a large cravis and a frozen lake that a hole in the ice was chopped through.

Not only is the film team not allowed to follow but, in the morning only some of the men return.(The man interviewed did not come back) The film team tried with long distance lenses to capture as much as they could and then they stay till nerly everyone has gone. On the hike into the steep mountain site they met and interview several times a Catholic Priest. They were amazed that he was in attendance. He explains that he is a priest and a whatever Indian.

Unexpectidly, as the film crew walk out of the area and just before dawn, they vault another hillside to see many of the thousands assembled along the curvature of the hillside. With the rising of the sun there is mass prayer, arms held high, the village pipers stop playing until the adoration time is over and then, continue this same tune over and over.

This practice seems to me to have elements of our Gawain story. It appears that sun worship comes after winter/night death, is celebrated, and the sacrificed not only prepares themselves but, ministers to their community.

Ginny, I just realized that I misspoke in yesterday's post: the "bob" has two syllables but only ONE stess; each of the lines inthe four-line "wheel" has THREE stresses. It's the preceding longer stanza consists of lines with FOUR stresses.
Barbara, thank you for the information about the practice of life sacrifice. I wonder how many religions, like Christianity, contain that element of individual sacrifice?

Nellie, Indeed, Courage to face death unflinchingly is part and parcel of "Chivalry"

I think the question is answered by combining several of the commentaries, but will wait till next week to post on that (When we will all have had an opportunity to read it)

Best

Jo: Thanks so much for that, bob and wheel, now why is it called that and where does it occur most, do you know? I really do not recall hearing of it.

Barbara: What an interesting post. It's amazing how many times a sacrifice appears in religious context of many cultures.

I wish my copy would come, I'll read the one on the Internet tomorrow and try to catch up as so far it sounds like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." ("'Tis but a scratch!")

Ginny

Anyone wanting to HEAR Middle English spoken can click here and choose for either a Mac or PC. Middle English read from Sir Gawain Gawain and the Green Knight; Specimens of Middle English Pronunciation, read by Alex Jones. The Chaucer Studio (a non-profit-making orgainization) assisted the English Departments of the the University of Adelaide and Brigham Young University

Barbara, thanks for the link. The audio for Mac was scratchy, but I was fortunately (through the reference to Holyhead) able to locate Stanza 30 and had the modern text in front of me. By repeating it several times I got a good sense of the pronunciation and the meter, including the bob-and-wheel. The reader's tone had a kind of hooting quality that reminded me of the way folks sound in Northern Michigan and parts of Minnesota, but I was glad to hear just how "Gawain" should be pronounced...a bit like "GO-awn," I thought. The printed word will always say "gaWAYN" to me, but I'm okay with the spoken version. It's like "Ada" in Cold Mountain: Read AYda but say AHda.

Ros

Reading the Introductions to this poem is fascinating in itself especially the origins of some of our present day knowledge. I'm using the Boroff translation with Max notes. According to the note on Chivalry, martial virtues of the pagan warriors were retained but in the service of other ideals. So, yes "accepting a challenge to kill a protagonist outright without battle, in return for submitting to being done in without resistence, a year later" would be considered "Chivalrous." It required loyalty (to King Arthur), and courage. The chivalric knight evolved into the English gentleman(!); the cowboy is a modern version of the knight wandering in search of adventure. Soap operas, with their preoccupation with power and adultery, owe quite a bit to chivalric romances.

The closest I came to understanding why the poet is referred to as the "Pearl Poet" is the fact that "Pearl" was one of three other poems in the book.

Apparently our Pearl Poet wove several myths in writing Sir Gawain: the Irish hero Cu Chulaind in the tale of Bricriu's Feast, he is mentioned in History of the Kings of England, in the Arturian romances of Chretien de Troyes, in Mallory's Mort D'Arthur. The Green Knight's predecessors may go back almost to the dawn of civilization: the giant Humbaba in the Epic of Gilgamesh, second millenium, B.C., and there is a possible connection to the Pagan god Woton (shades of the Ring!).

The poet placed the reign of King Arthur in the historical perspective which includes the fall of Troy. Aeneas, son to the king of Troy and his descendants, as founding a series of western kingdoms to which each gives his name. This westward movement ends with the crossing of the British Channel by Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas and legendary founder of the kingdom of Britain. My reaction to the stanzas? Reading poetry slows my reading down considerably but once I do that I can appreciate it. That was true in this case. The foot note on Troy helped. I think I'll need interpretations and foot notes the rest of the way through this poem. Even though the story is actually simple the culture in which it takes place and the myths surrounding the events require concentration.

Barbara: that was absolutely fascinating, thank you so much for finding that, I loved it!! Can any of you tell WHICH part he's reading? It sounds like Scottish to me, if you're not looking at a text, I loved it.

Kathleen: that was superb, too!

And Ros, love the background information, am getting so much from everyone's posts.

Joan: I love your sites in the heading, clicked on the chest armor, tho and got Not Found. You have put a world of work in this already, this is SO fun!

Ginny

Between the explanations in Tolkien, Cliff Notes and Max notes as well as a number of comments from my fellow readers, I now grasp that here we have a millieu of chivalry, gallantry, magic and symbolism at a season of joy and good natured pranks.

A Knight arrives claiming no hostile intent and challenges the assemblage to an admittedly foolish bet. He has no takers so dares the king (sort of "You're chicken if you don't").

Gawain says, "Hey -- You're the king. I'm expendable anyhow. "Lemmie doit" If I kill him there's no risk. If its magic we'll see what happens. It turns out to be magic and everybody is delighted with the entertainment. The tenor was that of a "Fraternity Party" and the booze was probably flowing freely.

Best

Although obviously extremely powerful, the Green Knight is not drawn here as menacing but festive in some odd way - gay, all in green and not girded for battle, he seeks the Governor of the Gathering, the Captain of the Crowd, The Chief in Charge, The Head Honcho of the House (and so on). He carries a symbol of peace (holly-bundle). I wonder about his being "shoeless" - any significance?

He has chosen to come to Arthur's Court in particular because of its renown far and wide. To see if it's all it's cracked up to be?? His purpose is to ask for a "Game". I am puzzled as to why he feels it is his "right"?? Perhaps it is his "right" because he is performing this mission for a higher power (or he IS the higher power). It seems he means to test the genuineness of their reputation…and their "faith" (?) (he challenges them to test his). It is perhaps The Green Knight's belief that there is no one so pure at this gathering as has been indicated by his or her reputation. He has faith that he can withstand the first blow from any of them. It seems the first Test is the beheading. I believe he says that if, after his noggin is knocked, he does NOT tell Gawain the Who, the What and the Where, but instead wastes "not a word" - the Game is over. He'll be able to tell a divine blow from a human one?? He'll be able to tell from the blow if there is some flaw in Gawain's character?? Any thoughts??

But what I'm REALLY amazed by is what it takes for Arthur to work up an appetite. Apparently nothing like a head rolling across the floor after having been lopped off, blood gushing from the headless neck (red and green - so very festive). But of course, to top it off (excuse me!) holding your own talking head in your hand is quite a trick. Now THAT'S Entertainment! HoHoHo. Hey, I'm starved. And Gawain - hang up the axe will 'ya. You've done enough damage for one evening!!

Charlie

OH YES, Charlie and LJ, you have certainly picked up on the poet's humor...and inserted some of your own! Yes, I did get the impression that the Green Knight might indeed be a HIGHER POWER, as opposed to the ugly, evil-looking figure in the earlier tales. It will be interesting to watch him later in the story to see if this is the case...

Did you notice Arthur telling Gawain: "if you strike the knight well today, you will stand the strike after"??? What did you make of this? Is he assuming that if Gawain finds the courage to strike first, he has passed the important test?

gay, all in green and not girded for battle...

It is important to know that the Gawain poet added the green hues to the knight...and to the horse! THey weren't green in any earlier versions. Why green? Red blood, green head, festive colors indeed Charlie!

kathleen, so happy that you now have your book! I think everyone has a copy now...

Ginny, tried several available sources but so far no explanation for the name of the element -- bob-and-wheel. Boroff says that "Paragraphs of long alliterative lines of varying length are followed by a single line of two syllables, called the bob, and a group of three-stressed lines called the wheel." I found another essay in a different translation-- Neil D. Issacs, author. He notes that "Sometimes, chorus-like, the wheel may look beyond, and here too the bob is a vital signal for attention." Went back and revisited several passages and fond that sometimes they are bridging the present or past with likely or possible future events.

I think of a spinning-wheel, which I've never actually seen in operation, but my imagination ssuggest a rhythm that might correspond to the pattern of the lines. "Bob" ... Bobbin? Somnething to hold thread to be spun on a wheel?

The Green Knight oddly enough reminds me of Christmas and Christmas trees the way he is described; all green with gold shining everywhere. And he does not seem at all menacing. He fits right into the festivities that are going on.He wears no armor, and carry a holly bundle, an obvious symbol of peace; and yet he has that very large axe, which to me is a symbol of war. And he comes to Arthur's court to see if it is all it is said to be; to see if Arthur and his knights are as brave as they believe themselves to be.

"For many marvels had they seen, but to match this nothing;
wherefore a phantom and fay-magic folk there thought it,"
This seems to indicate that the people in Arthur's court; the ladies and knights don't see the Green Knight as being real. And that may also explain the lack of dismay at the Knight picking up he chopped off head and talking with it.

There is lots of alliteration in the Tolkien translation. Some examples: "such gladness and gayety as was glorious to hear," and "While New Year was yet young that yestereve had arrived," and "from his gorge to his girdle so great and so square," and finally: "And verily all this vesture was of verdure clear,"

I find the poet's humor shows in the exagerated courtesy of Gawain, who must first ask for permission to rise from Arthur before he can accept the Knight's challenge. I get the feeling that the poet did not think much of the chivalry of his own time. I must look into this, but it could have been that the idea of chivalry had become almost ritualized. (Sorry that thought just popped into my head) Does anyone know?

Nellie

Nellie, when you said the knight reminded you of Christmas...I remembered noting when I read it the feeling of Santa's departure in Night Before Christmas:

"With a roisterous rush he flings round the reins,
Hurtles out at the hall-door, his head in his hand,
That the flint-fire flew from the flashing hooves.
Which way he went, not one of them knew
Nor whence he was come in the wide world so fair."

Jo, I don't know where the term comes from...I like the weaving explanation...(where's Ros?!), but the critic, Larry Benson did have this to say about the Bob and Wheel:

"The long lines, varying in number and length, build to a narrrative climax, signalled by the short "bob", which is often meaningless in itself but which is always aurally significant in its abrupt shift in meter. Then follows the four-line "Wheel" with its insistent rimes and tight meter, The sudden change from the long line to the short lends the bobs and wheels an emphasis that the Gawain-poet exploits to build narrative units in which "the sting is in the tail."
When the Green Knight first appears, for example, the narrator does not mention the most amazing aspect of the intruder until the bob and wheel:
And formed with every feature in fair accord was he.
Great wonder grew in hall
At hue most strange to see,
For man and gear and all
Were green as green could be.

In the next stanza, which describes the Green Knight's equipment, the poet again waits until the bob and wheel to introduce the most amazing piece of equipment, the green horse."

So I conclude that whenever we see those little four line "wheels", we should look for some important piece of new information!

Joan: One of your questions is about Arthur's court being described as "all in their first age". In the Tolkien, I believe the same phrase is translated when a description is offered of Camelot and all its guests at Christmas-tide: "all that folk so fair did in their first estate abide". These are the cream of the crop, the elite. They're on top of the world without a care. Arthur is "amid merriment unmatched" and "mirth without care", their happiness is " at the highest", surrounded by "all the bliss of this world", the knights are the "most renowned", the ladies the lovliest (this is beginning to sound like Lake Woebegone!!). "Under heaven the first in fame"……… Although there are plenty of references to their youth - these "beardless children", "moods of a boy", etc. I take that the deeper meaning, beyond chronological age is that being in their "first estate" this is their Age of Innocence, their State of Grace. This is Eden before the Fall. Maybe.

One small question: In my copy (Tolkien), Gawain is at one point spelled Wawain. Is this just a typo??

Also, Joan: I had the same thought about The Night Before Christmas. Not only just the feel, but the alliteration AND the verse form (I imagine the sound of a basketball bouncing down a cellar stairs - I don't know why).

…..Charlie

The "wheels" are pithy, memorable. Good spot for an image or idea that poet wishes to emphasize, as you noted, Joan. The description of the beldame leading the wife of Gawain's host (in the castle where he celebrates Christmas) is funny, in more than one translation. She is supposed to be the protector, chaperone, of the beautiful young woman, but her husband (the host) seems careless about protecting her virtue when he plans to leave her alone with a stranger while he hunts, even if it is a knight from Arthur's castle. How impressed all of his people were with the opportunity to learn about the Round Table and chivalry from one of Arthur's own!

Jo and Joan: Thanks so much for the bob and wheel explanation. I find myself obsessed with this term. Don't you hate for people to USE terms and then you can't find out their origin?

I just saw an ad for a "truncated" OED on the Internet for $75.00, can this BE? Truncated is better than none, NO??

Will look into it.

My Gawain just came in the mail and I've got the Raffel? Doesn't somebody else have that, too? Will rejoin later today!

Ginny

Charlotte, a note from Raffel in his introduction which is longer than the poem, states that "Nor do I think that the occurrence in the original manuscript of Gawayn, Gawayne, Gawan, Gawen, Gauayn, Gauan, Wawan, Wawen, Wowen, and Wowayn imposes on my any obligation (for footnotes) whatever. Gawain is Gawain, here, thoughout."

So apparently it is spelled differently quite a bit.

Ginny

So, Ginny. What is the OED? (Excuse my ignorance). I see that "The Story..." is one of the Feb nominations.

Charles: It's this humongous dictionary, Oxfored English Dictionary costs about $1,000, which lists in great detail the origins and etymology of every word, as far as I know, in the English language. I just got a flyer for it. Have had occasion to look at it in the Library when in college, it's just, in the unabridged form, volume after volume, and really a sumptuous feast of word origins. Roslyn is the only one I know with one. Let me go see if I can find something about it on the Internet!

Ginny

Here we go: Oxford English Dictionary OED

Ginny

And this is kind of neat, they have a Word of the Day? And you can see one of their actual entries:

Word of the Day

Ginny

Ginny, I did hunt all the way through OED for hints about bob & wheel, but they were mostly circular references when it came to the metrical thing... Bob, see wheel; wheel, see bob. I might have a chance to check out another reference in a day or two. Otherwise, totally bogged down in domestic and family trivia, keeping Gawain/Wawain in the back of my mind for when I need to think of something more elevated than detergents, vacuum cleaner bags, and which vital ingredient has to be omitted from which recipes to accommodate which family member's allergies.

Ros

Wow! I researched my copies of Francis James Child's collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Included is a Ballad written someplace between the 11th and 13th century that refers to "Sir Gawaine the gay" and the "Greene Knight" (So this could not be a totally original storyline with the Pearl Poet) Gawaine so gay is called "Cuzen Gawaine...". the ballad has other characters. All accompany Arthur, who could not sleep for three nights, to Cornwall. No time to dig further must get on the road - Thanksgiving in Collage Station, back Sunday.

Arthu is king of Little Britain, that Bredbeddle and Marramiles are made the fellows of Gawain and Tristram. Bredbddle carrying off all the honors and Cornwall has an intrigue with Arthur's queen, lived with her 7 years and had a daughter by Arthur's wife and Arthur has none such..
Cornwall is a Magician and Arthur strikes off Cornwall's head. Before Cornwall arrives Sir Gawaine the Gay,

And these were the words said hee;
"Nay seeing you have made such a hearty vow,
Heere another vow make will I.

"Ile make mine avow to God,
And alsoe to the Trinity,
That I will haue yonder faire lady
To Litle Brittaine with mee.

Oh I just have to leave, bye all have a wonderful Thanksgiving
Ginny, thanks for the Oxford... this looks like a GREAT resource.

Cornwall?? Barbara!! How fascinating!!AND.....

Have a
Very
Happy Thanksgiving,
Knights and Ladies
of our
Roundtable!

---Ginny

Ros: Sounds like the OED was giving you the Bob and weave!!!(:}

OH, that's cute! I wish I'd thought of that one, Charles! I looked in the OED,too (wonderful resource!) -- no luck. Thanks for that Ginny -- I bookmarked it immediately. I have a copy of the Raffel version of Gawain too, but prefer the Borroff and the one by Brian Stone.

Here's an extremely interesting, very interactive, sight, which includes on-line texts of a number of Gawain stories, including The Greene Knight. This link is one of the clickables found if you go to "Several Gawain Sites" in the header, however, as they say in Maine: "You can't get theyah from heah." I couldn't get the particular link to work (The Camelot Project - but here is an active link). The introduction discusses the oral tradition of the tale and the included text is believed to be a slightly more recent version of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, probably taken down from a performance piece of the Elizabethan Era. This is a RETELLING and has subtle and substantial differences. I found it quite interesting as a counterpoint. Before the beheading scene, for instance, the Green Knight (who wasn't physically green) sat down to the feast with The Round Table Knights. The source of the magic and sorcery is made more explicit. It actually reads like an oral play. I can see the actor performing it for the court. Gawain: The Camelot Project

……….Charlie

Have been having trouble trying to post in the last few days, so I'll just say a hasty Happy Thanksgiving while it's possible to do so.

Thanks to Charles, LJ, and others who brought that festive scene to life by emphasizing the exuberant youth of the participants. And thanks to all for the interesting and informative comments. Alas, I have no additional information or ideas, just a few questions.

It's easy to visualize the the hall, the knights and ladies, but have I read too hastily? Did the Green Knight actually ride his horse into the hall?

More questions: -- Given the atmosphere of holiday and game, did Gawain make his blow in the expectation of such serious consequences? And here's a pledge made when wine is flowing freely and the party at its height -- would he really be expected to keep a pledge made in these circumstances? How would we regard a promise made under such circumstances in our time?

Carolyn

Carolyn, I think its a question of "How far into the hall did the Green Knight ride his horse"

The challenge was surely taken seriously, otherwise there would have been a prompt response from the other knights who were equally responsible for defending/serving the king. (As explained in one commentary, an essential, fundimental underpinning of the concept of "Chivalry")

Happy Thanksgiving to you and to all.

Best

Speaking of riding a horse into the midst of a gathering in the hall, isn't there a story in our American history about a congressman who rode his horse right into the National Capitol building? Was it a Randolf? from Virginia? Anyway, horse and rider were sweaty, coming from a morning of hunting, and as I recall he might have been late for rollcall.

Bereft his head, the browning bird lies midst green herbs so fine.

Wait! wry words willst he say:
"Good cheer to thee and thine
On this Thanksgiving Day,"
Next year your head is mine!!!

Had a brief time yesterday after the dinner during the football to read the Introduction to the Raffel, and was astounded and delighted to find Dr. Raffel in total disagreement with, and contempt of, the other translators? Tolkien and Marie Borroff included. He's a huffy academic and his put downs are hilarious. His texts are riddled with Op Cits instead of footnotes (apparently he dislikes footnotes) and scholarly discussions as to the ol bob and wheel, which he disdains to define save as to its purpose.

I love it. His is not the most poetic nor interesting translation, but one feels one is in the hands of somebody who has devoted eons of time to the subject, and you do feel you are getting the gist!

His rendering of the English Channel is:

"And the Lombards planted a land; and Brutus
Split the sea, sailed from France
To England and opened cities on slopes
"

Ginny

Ginny, tried to post about Raffel and I "disappeared" two days ago. I have the Raffel translation, do not care for it as much as Borroff and Brian Stone -- my favorite, pprobably because I read it first. I guess I like the more poetic versions.

Raffel:
And stunning to court
With the color of his race;
A fiery, snorting
Fellow, and his hands were green, and
his face.

Stone:
Men gaped at the hue of him
Ingrained in garb and mien,
A fellow fiercely grim,
And all a glittering green.

This is the same "wheel" as posted above -- Tolkein and Borroff.

Jo, isn't that interesting? Borroff and Raffel have him physically green. The Tolkien is very imaginative, you immediately fall under his spell, it's fun!

The Stone is wonderfully rhyming, isn't it, probably the translation I'd most prefer to read.

The Borroff is a strange combination of nursery jingle and scholarship! How interesting, really, I know she was also renowned for her scholarship way back when on this, yet the green as green could be kinda leaves me cold.

While the Raffel is prickley, just like he is, yet both of those do show green skin!

So what are we to think? Green or not?? Thanks so much for those, who is Stone? Personally, I find huffy academics invigorating. I'll go look for the Borroff and Stone in the B&N Bookstore, my commentary is very severly lacking.

By the way, Raffel says the best commentary out of the million he cites, is the Benson. Maybe because he and Benson agree.

Ginny

Brian Stone's version was first published in 1959; the last reprinting given in my tattered copy is 1977. This book has his wonderful essays about the story and other matters "Arthurian." A bit of bio to follow.

Brian Stone wrote his first book, Prisoner From Alamein...in 1944. After the war, during which he was decorated, he entered the teaching profession and taught English in boys' schools for eleven years. He then trained teachers for ten years at Loughborough and Brighton, and he is now(!) Reader in Literature at the Open University, where he specializes in Drama. Other translations:The Owl and the Nightengale, Cleanness, St Erkenwald, and Medieval English Verse.

Don't all four imply (at least) he is green? Borroff and Raffel say right out that the skin is; all four say he glows green.
I like the rhythm and the description in the Stone version. I found it very readable for students as well as for me, and we used his essays extensively.

I'm glad we extended "Part the First" because of question number two.

Do you think a better word than "Peaceful" might be "Felicitous"?

Although we and our "Advisors" (the commentaries) will be and are aware of the literary symbolisms, one wonders whether any of the Characters were "Aware". Perhaps Gawain and Arthur, at least may have been (So it seems).

Best

LJ,yes, the prep and recuperation from the Thanksgiving banquet have distracted from consideration of some important questions, so I'd like to hold off on any discussion of Part II this week until we give them our attention. I do hope that all of you find much to be thankful for this year!

Yes, indeed, we must attempt to understand the felicitous purpose of the Green Knight's visit to Camelot. I think he was clearly more interested in striking the bargain with the lowly Gawain, rather than with Arthur, regardless of his words. Please look in your translations and contrast the Knight's mannerisms as he prepares for Arthur's blow and then for Gawain's.

Ginny, yes, GREEN!!! Let"s all agree the knight is Green - including his skin - all Green! Green! Green! and now pool our resources to discuss the significance of this greenness.

Carolyn, in Norway - did you celebrate Thanksgiving-with turkey, stuffing, cranberry and pumpkin pie? (Can you imagine pumpkin pie to which the chef has forgotten to add the sugar?)
You raise an interesting question regarding the pledge itself - and how we would regard such a promise made under similar circumstances today. Would we expect Gawain to go searching for a return blow a year later? I think not! Is this because the age of chivalry is dead? Or as LJ has been asking, is this really about chivalry or something else?

Arthur was clearly humiliated, so was his court, and felt he must answer the challenge! That Knight laughed loudly at him in the Borroff translation - how about yours? Arthur grieves, and then becomes enraged! The honor of the court is on the line here! Must that honor be upheld throughout the year? I think so! But how do you explain Arthur's cavalier behavior after the Knight has departed...?

I look forward to your knowledge, research, insight and most of all, your questions! You all !!!dazzle!!!

You know, this passage alone was worth the cost of the book, to me:

"And his horse's mane hung long, combed
And curled, braided strand for strand
With gold thread, a strand of green hair,
Another of gold; and his forelock, and his tail
Were braided to match, bound in place
With a green band, dotted with precious
Stones the length of that flowing tail
Then laced with an elaborate knot, and strung
With dozens of bright gold bells that rang
As he rode-- " (Lines 287ff)

What do the others do with that passage??

And when you add that to the embrodered butterflies in gold and green, and the enameled armor and bit on the prancing horse, it does make a picture, and one that's started ringing a bell somewhere in what's left of my brain. Isn't there an illustration from the Old Mother Goose with a fancily decked out horse? Ride a Cock Horse? to Banbury Cross? To see a fine lady upon a fine horse/ Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes/ but I'm thinking the horse, too, had bells on?? Could be, and often am, wrong. Didn't the Brothers Grimm have a green knight somewhere? I wonder how many things this has influenced. After that passage, I am quite and totally sure I never read this, and am so grateful that we are!!

Ginny

In the Tolkien, after calling the entire Court cowards with his body language,no one having accepted the challenge, "he laughed so loud that their lord was angered." Arthur feels great shame for his Court,and becomes really angry. The Green Knight, by standing his full height, emphasizes to the rest of the Court, the seriousness of his challenge. It is apparent that he wants someone other than Arthur to play The Game. When Gawain rises to the occasion, the Green Knight is extremely pleased, and prostrates himself on the floor to receive the blow.

Since I failed to submit a recipe for Tuscan Sun, here is a little something I'll call...

The Green Knight Salad Mixed greens 2 oranges, peeled and sliced 4 kiwis, peeled and sliced 1 seeded pomegranate No dressing really needed, but a Raspberry of Strawberry Vinaigrette works well. Makes an excellent First Course for Ye Olde Sozzled Duck.

Charlie

The Green man, also Jack-in-the-Green,is a creature from European folklore (The Hidden One - The Cylenchar) The Woodland spirit who, like the Wood-Wose or Wild Herdsman, guards the greenwood. It is a symbol of the rejuvenating power of spring or early summer and at those times he can be found encased in a wicker cage hanging in the trees. He is depicted as a bodiless head with foliage sprouting from his mouth. Also carved in stone or wood, his image can be found in churches throughout the English countryside. The Green Man is part of the traditional May procession in England. From the Encyclopedia Mythica

At summer's end, the Holly King fought and won a battle with the Oak King for the rulership of the year, and reigned supreme over the dark season. At the end of winter, another battle was fought, this time won by the Oak King, who ruled triumphantly over the summer months. This ancient drama is enacted in Sir Gawain...' the Green Knight enters Arthur's court bearing a great bush of holly as his insignia. Sir Gawain, whose name means the Hawk of May, engage in the beheading contest. Gawain, who as his name suggests, symbolizes the waxing year.

Half a giant on earth I hold him to be,
But believe him no less than the largest of men,

Cornish legends center on Giants and Piskies. The tales have evolved from the meeting of the tall Celts (the Giants) with the small Bronze Age peoples (the Piskies).

Then there wasJack the Giant Killer, a farmer's son from near Lands End at the time of King Arthur. Cormoran,the Giant of St Michael's Mount was terrorizing the surrounding area and was stealing cattle. Jack dug a pit, disguised the pit with sticks, and lured the giant to the pit by blowing his horn. The giant fell into the hole, Jack dispatched him with a blow from his pickax, then filled in the hole.

Two great passions of the Middle Ages are religious fervor and martial prowess. In the ceremony of conferring knighthood the Church shared, through the blessing of the sword, and by virtue of this blessing, chivalry. In chivalry, religion and the profession of arms were reconciled. This reconciliation dates from the Crusades, when Christian armies were for the first time devoted to a sacred purpose. Prior to the Crusades, this attitude is found in the custom called the "Truce of God".

The clergy seized upon these truces to exact from the rough warriors of feudal times a religious vow to use their weapons chiefly for the protection of the weak and defenseless, especially women and orphans, and of churches. Chivalry, rested on a vow; it was this vow which dignified the soldier, elevated him in his own esteem, and raised him almost to the level of the monk in medieval society. In return for this vow, the Church ordained a special blessing for the knight in the ceremony called in the Pontificale Romanum, "Benedictio novi militis."

Before the blessing of the sword on the altar, many preliminaries were required, such as confession, a vigil of prayer, fasting, a symbolical bath, and investiture with a white robe, for the purpose of impressing on the candidate the purity of soul with which he was to enter upon such a noble career. Kneeling, he pronounced the solemn vow of chivalry, at the same time often renewing the baptismal vow; the one chosen as godfather then struck him lightly on the neck with a sword (the dubbing) in the name of God and St. George, the patron of chivalry. A Code of Chivalry

I wonder, is the beheading and year later blows, symbolic of a godfather/godson relationship? The godfather traditionally promises to guide a godson in his spiritual journey. This could almost be the foretelling of a thousand years of chopping up this good green earth and now we are being nicked because we succumbed to ease and greed.

In England, Edward III, in memory of the legendary Knights of the Round Table, established in 1349 (some 25 to 50 years before the Pearl Poet wrote Sir Gawain) a brotherhood of twenty-five knights, exclusive of princes of the blood and foreign princes, with St. George as its patron and with its chapel in Windsor Castle for the holding of chapters. This, the Order of the Garter, takes its name from the characteristic badge, won on the left knee.

Fabulous, Barbara!!

Charles, no grapes?? hahahahha

GAGS

Charlie, Let's open a restaurant!

Barbara. That was a most revealing and clarifying post, Thanks.

Best

The dust clears! We have had another crash! The heading was new! The questions were new! The proof is in Barbara's fabulous response,
I don't know that I have the time or the energy, or the heart to redo those questions, but you are all doing a beautiful job without them!

Joan

LJ and Charles:

Loved your synopses on Sir Gawain.

I am so inundated by books that I feel like I continually wear the sweat shirt my daughter gave me. It says in big letters; SO MANY BOOKS. SO LITTLE TIME.

Just got Pinsky's translation of Dante. ( It was only $6.40). The greatest book buy ever. It's fabulous--hard to put down.

Charlotte

Barbara:

Your post on Sir Gawain is fabulous. Am printing it out to study later. I always wondered who that green man with all the verdure around him was.

Charlotte

Charlotte I always thought he was the

Jolly Green Giant! Ho! Ho! Ho!

I can't stand it...must take the time to change those questions for the week!

Charlotte, that makes me want the Pinksy now!

You know, I do hate to quibble hahahahah but only two of those translators said he was green of skin? If you were wearing electric green and gold, you would glow green, no??

Just thinking, or what passes for it, out loud.

gAGS

All this is just fascinating ! I hope I don’t bore you with my long posts filled with information but, I always do a ton of research no matter my new interest and find I see and hear more as I embark on my journey.

This is a wonderful, grand site for mucho information about the GREENMAN

FESTIVAL SCHEME, the CENTRAL OBSERVANCE-PATTERN of DRUIDERY

Take your life and its events. Place them in one line with birth at one end and death at the other end and you have an isolated line beginning in the void and terminating in the void. Other lines might run parallel to yours, collide or cross, but they will all end as they begun - with nothing. But, life isn't really like that. Death is followed by rebirth because we see it with the rebirth of life in the Spring.

So life is like the plate, Not the knife. You are born, you grow old, you die, back to the starting point. You are born, you are a child, a young man, an old man, you die. You are born, you die, and so on, several times.

What is it that guides the course of this cycle - this circling? What lies at the center of this wheel? What or who is responsible for its turning? The soul - the true identity that endures through every life!

Now let us forget the individual, and look at the world. The seasons are clearly cyclical - one following the other inexorably. So we can place them on a circle. That is the circle of the year. But the life of each day we can place on a circle too - it is born at dawn, reaches its peak at noon, and passes from dusk into night, before being reborn again the next day.

The circle of the year and the circle of the day have affinities.
Winter is like the dead of night, when all is still.
Spring is like the dawn of the day when the birds awaken and praise the sun.
Summer is like noon - a time of maximum heat and growth.
Autumn is like the evening, when the autumn colours seem like the colours of the sunset.

So there are the two cycles of the Earth harmoniously brought together. Who or what do you think it is that controls the turning of this wheel?

God? Yes, God is at the center and is the cause of everything. But what specifically causes the cycle of the day and the seasons on Earth is the Sun. The Sun causes the wheel to turn. And what do you think the connection is between your cycle and the cycle of the earth? Birth, death, rebirth.

The Winter Solstice, called in the Druid Tradition Alban Arthuan [the Light of Arthur]. This is the time of death and rebirth. The sun appears to be abandoning us completely as the longest night comes to us. Linking our own inner journey to the yearly cycle to the place of death-and-birth. Winter Solstice - the longest night.

Will the sun be reborn?

Yes! And here, opposite, at the Summer Solstice he is at his maximum strength, at the time of the longest day. Here you are born, incarnated as a spark of light, and there, the other side of the plate, you are in the prime of your life. On either side: Spring and Autumn. Here we see how the cycle of your life and the life of the Earth are entwined.
The Spring is the time of your childhood,
the Summer the time of your manhood,
the Autumn the time of your maturity in old age,
and Winter is the time of your death.
At the center of the turning wheel of your life is your Soul.
At the center of the turning wheel of the Earth is the Sun.
The Sun and your Soul!
Now perhaps you know why the Sun is revered so much in Druidry.

Some Aurther readings say, Sir Gawain is the illigitmate child of Aurther as was Mordred. Regardless, he is someone's son.
Will the sun (son) be reborn?

There have been very good posts here. Barbara, your research is interesting and impressive. Re: "the small Bronze Age peoples, the Piskies" is this the origin of "Pixies"? June

 
And the seasons  
they go round and round 
And the painted ponies  
go up and down 
We're captive on the carousel of time 
We can't return 
we can only look  
behind From where we came 
And go round and round and round In the Circle Game 

JONI MITCHELL 1966-69 Siquomb Publishing Co. BMI

When the Green Man first appeared, the Hall hushed, "dropped into a dream." When he rode out, Arthur and Gawain break the spell with their laughter and smiles. The episode was just part of the Christmas tradition. An attempt to put everyone at ease?? Inside, however, he was just as stunned as the rest of the gathering. This does create a dramatic tension at the end of Part I, ending with what seems to be a narrative voice admonishing Gawain to not give in to fear. He must complete the task he has taken upon himself.

Barbara:

Your long posts are absolutely wonderful. I am printing them out and saving them. What a wonderful, optimistic point of view from the Druids. I'd like to think we just don't die and that's the end of it. Do we live on in our children and in the work we've accomplished?

Charlotte

Thought I would pass along this bit from a former medievalist about "bob and wheel." "Bob" is used in the sense of cutting short, as in bobbed hair or bobtail, the sudden curtailment of line length to a mere two syllables. "Wheel" then means the lengthened line with rhymes, carrying the rhythm back to the next stanza. These descriptive terms didn't come into use until long after the poem was rediscovered.

Ros

Thanks for that, Ros, it's been driving me nuts!

Ginny

Ros, that helps! "The"Wheel then means the lengthened line with rhymes, carrying the rhythm back to the next stanza"...

And then there'sCharlie's Joni Mitchell's words:

"We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return
we can only look
behind From where we came
And go round and round and round In the Circle Game"

And Barbara's

"So life is like the plate, Not the knife. You are born, you grow old, you die, back to the starting point. You are born, you are a child, a young man, an old man, you die. You are born, you die, and so on, several times.

What is it that guides the course of this cycle - this circling? What lies at the center of this wheel?"

The wheel of life turning from birth in the spring to the death of winter (Solstice - December 22) - and then back to life again. Turn! Turn! Turn! I loved the Druidery you brought to our attention, Barbara! I found it...reassuring! Is the Sun, God I hear my inner child asking?

Let's draw some parallels to our story. Gawain is now in his spring-summer, Arthur is in mid- summer? Gawain must prepare for his Winter Solstice, but without fear because of the promise of spring?
The Green Knight, a symbol of the "rejuvenating power of spring, wants to work on Gawain's soul, rather than Arthur's because.....because Arthur's virtue has already developed and is proven, while Gawain is still in the formative stage - like a teenager torn between hanging with the gang or preparing for his future? The Knight with his challenge is preparing Gawain for a year of spiritual growth which will lead to a "life after death"? Charlotte, the poet seems to be answering your question, doesn't he?

The knight clearly wants Gawain in the "game", rather than Arthur. Borroff's translation:

Now has Arthur his ax, and the haft grips,
And sternly stirs it about, on striking bent.
The stranger before him stood there erect,
Higher than any in the house by a head and more;
With stern look as he stood, he stroked his beard,
And with undaunted countenance drew down his coat.

But when Gawain offers to take the ax from Arthur and take the challenge himself, the knight gets him to repeat the solemn pledge and then::

The other nods assent...
"Sir Gawain," said the Green Knight, "By Gog, I rejoice
That your fist shall fetch this favor I seek, ......
upon ground girds him with care:
Bows a bit with his head, and bares his flesh...

Charlie, when the Green Man first appeared, "the hall hushed, dropped into a dream"...and when he leaves, everyone is all smiles and laughter. Yes, it appears to have been an expected "marvel", they marvelled and resumed the feasting.
Let's look closely at the poet's words describing Gawain's reaction after the "marvel". Did he dive into the bloody roast with gusto, as did Arthur? Do we get any words of description other than the narrative voice admonishing Gawain not to fear? (Does this imply that Gawain appears fearful?)
Barbara I cannot thank you enough for all the information you have brought to us! My hope is that you are copying and pasting, and not typing! In any case, we all really appreciate it!!!

ps June - piskies/pixies - I like that!!!

Ros, that helps! "The"Wheel then means the lengthened line with rhymes, carrying the rhythm back to the next stanza"...

And then there'sCharlie's Joni Mitchell's words:

"We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return
we can only look
behind From where we came
And go round and round and round In the Circle Game"

And Barbara's

"So life is like the plate, Not the knife. You are born, you grow old, you die, back to the starting point. You are born, you are a child, a young man, an old man, you die. You are born, you die, and so on, several times.

What is it that guides the course of this cycle - this circling? What lies at the center of this wheel?"

The knight clearly wants Gawain in the "game", rather than Arthur. Borroff's translation:

Now has Arthur his ax, and the haft grips,
And sternly stirs it about, on striking bent.
The stranger before him stood there erect,
Higher than any in the house by a head and more;
With stern look as he stood, he stroked his beard,
And with undaunted countenance drew down his coat.

But when Gawain offers to take the ax from Arthur and take the challenge himself, the knight gets him to repeat the solemn pledge and then::

The other nods assent...
"Sir Gawain," said the Green Knight, "By Gog, I rejoice
That your fist shall fetch this favor I seek, ......
upon ground girds him with care:
Bows a bit with his head, and bares his flesh...

Barbara I cannot thank you enough for all the information you have brought to us! My hope is that you are copying and pasting, and not typing! In any case, we all really appreciate it!!!

ps June - piskies/pixies - I like that!!!

Joan how teriffic of you to tye us all together and to further our discussion with your synopsis. Great, and what a wonderful group to be sharing with - I love it y'all!
Ginny I would love to take that imagery of the green knight on his horse with bells etc. and be talented enough to paint it into my Christmas card. Wouldn't he be just grand.
Charles On Sunday, I ate my salad with rasberries rather then the oranges.(Allergies) L o v e r l y !

Let me add my voice of thanks to Barbara for her terrific posts. And Joan (#125). Joan, you asked about Gawain's reactiom after the "marvel". So I read the end of Part I again, looking for Gawain's reaction, and found that (in the Tolkien) Arthur and Gawain partied together - "with delight". And you know I must have read that last stanza a good 20 times already, but for the first time it struck me as sounding very ominous. I've read it over and over as 'they partied all day and into the night together'. OK. But this time it was "with delight that day they led, till to the land CAME THE NIGHT AGAIN. It sent a chill. And then the portent of things to come: Take heed, Gawain. I get no sense that Gawain is fearful, but we, perhaps, fear for him. This is actually a great cliffhanger ending. Charlie

And now for Something Completely Different... I thought it was time that we looked at this from the GREEN perspective.

It's not that easy being green;  
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.  
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold-  
or something much more colorful like that.  
It's not easy being green.  
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things.  
And people tend to pass you over 
'cause you're not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water 
or stars in the sky.  
But green's the color of Spring.  
And green can be cool and friendly-like.  
And green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain, or tall like a tree.  
When green is all there is to be  
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why?  
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful!  
And I think it's what I want to be.  
(From Sesame Street) 

And now...Back to our show!

June your right as rain. In Cornish Folklore there are Faeries, Knockers, The Small People and Piskies.

The story I like best is: they were once the gods of pre-Christian Cornwall, giant-like in stature, but who, in the face of the new religion were scattered with holy water - shrank in size which was an unfortunate fate since they were to continue to shrink untill they vanished from the earth. They work alone, are mischievous, help the aged and infirm in their house.

Here is the site with pages of delightful information: Piskies/Cornish Folklore

So many good posts! I tried to post a lengthy piece a couple of days back; I had it all written out, clicked "post my message" and got a "the WebX server is not available" message. Hopefully this post will get through.

I'm thinking about the purpose or point of the game. The point seems to be to test the bravery of whomever will accept the challenge. "If any so hardy in this house here holds that he is,
if so bold be his blood or his brain be so wild,
that he stoutly dare strike one stroke for another,..." And it is certainly a test of one's courage to face death a year later.

But then I ask myself: why does the Green Knight particularly want Gawain to be the one who accepts the challenge?

Nellie

Nellie, as a science fiction expert, you will not be surprised to learn that there is order underlying this apparently random event. What is most S-F, after all, but yet another retelling of the conflict between some kind of good and some kind of evil? The Green Knight has his reasons, as you will quickly find out if you read to the end of the story or the synopsis. I'll give you a wee hint. There is a powerful Force of Evil at work here - not Satan, of course; and not the Green Knight himself; he's just the instrument of a dastardly plotter. And it had to be Gawain who met his challenge.

.This is a fairly quick read if you just go straight through to get the story, as you would be encouraged to do in a seminar; then go back to square one and start examining for motivations, significance, ways in which the Pearl Poet transformed pagan myth into Christian myth, etc.

Ros

Charles, , I didn't reread the same passage as many times as you did, but after your post, I reread Borroff"s and then Tolkeinn's and Kenneth Hare's translations of the scene that followed the Knight's exit from the hall. I was struck by Arthur's behavior, and the lack of any description of Gawain's reaction, except to follow Arthur in all he told him to do - hang the awful, wondrous ax on the tapestry for all to see, eat, drink and party all night long. But Arthur was impressed, "in his heart marvelled, but let no sign of it be seen." Why not? Because he realizes what he has gotten Gawain into?

Each translation made a point to emphasize Arthur's quick glance at Gawain - perhaps he too is looking for some indication of Gawain's realization of the dangerous situation he finds himself...just as we are.

You know, Arthur really exhibited weakness by giving in to the Knight's foolish request, simply because his bravery is questioned and his pride is hurt. LJ, you are right...this isn't chivalry at all. His motive for accepting the challenge to participate in the "game" was pride!!! Gawain, on the other hand, had a more chivalrous motive...loyalty to his leader...even to death! He realized the danger Arthur was in, and rushed to protect him, as he would have in any mortal combat.

I can see where the Knight might consider Gawain a more interesting challenge, rather than the foolish Arthur.

We have an ambiguous challenge here from an ambiguous challenger. Just as we coming to feel that this Green Knight is some sort of benevolent godfather figure intending to develop Gawain's character, his virtue, Ros tantalizes us with hints of evil at work here! All Barbara's research on green, the color of spring, rejuvenation, rebirth...

I turned to Larry Benson's chapters on the color green and found more on this color.

According to Benson, green implies both good and evil. It is the color of Spring, of rebirth. The beheading scene is linked to the redemption of the wasteland of winter. But, green is also the color of ghosts and death.
The medieval audience was not startled by strangely clothed and equipped knights. There were other green clad knights, White Knights, Red Knights...
The audience also expected such knights to have a strange complexion - customarily black. Green was not common...the audience would find green puzzling. This suggests that the poet intended novelty, mystery. "The poet seems to be purposely keeping us guessing whether the green implies good or evil."
I am enjoying the mystery! ...a struggle between good and evil? Please don't go ahead Nellie! I love your musings as the poet slowly unveils his plot and purpose!

Actually I had read the whole story the moment I got the book from the library so I do know there will be things revealed at the end that bear on the story. And Part 2 will reveal why Gawain had to be the one to accept the challenge.

And green is also the color of envy or jealousy. Perhaps in some way all the aspects of the color green come into play in the story as we may discover.

Ros: it is not so much SF as Fantasy, and Horror that have the struggle between good and evil. But then isn't every story told essentially about that struggle?

One of the impressions of the Green Knight that I have, is that he exudes Life; in fact he is larger than life in a way. When he enters the hall it is like he draws the life and color out of everything. At least that is the impression I get. He is not just a dull green, no he shines with green jewels; and through it all are embroideries and trims of gold. He is lush and rich.

Nellie

Excellent observation, Nellie (GK draws the life and color out of everything...)

Yes, and I have been wondering if there is any significance to the amount of discription about the banquet? Was the colorful but 'dead' food just a discription of the importance of the evening or does it balance somehow the luscious discription of the 'living' Green Knight? I don't know, just thinking aloud here, somehow making the things of 'other world' more important and as Nellie so perfectly says, draws the life and color from the room??

Great posts! I'm tantalized by the "piskies," wondering if a few of them are attending my mother, who refuses to leave her house at the ripe age of 96! Someone surely is looking after her when I'm not there! Barbara, great stuff on Druid beliefs and other matters. I'll take the liberty of referring to a bit of your research:
The Spring is the time of your childhood,
the Summer the time of your manhood,
the Autumn the time of your maturity in old age,
and Winter is the time of your death.
At the center of the turning wheel of your life is your Soul.
At the center of the turning wheel of the Earth is the Sun.
The Sun and your Soul!
In Tennyson's Idylls of the King Gawain encounters four knights on his quest to rescue a maiden from a castle where she is held prisoner: Morning Star, Noon Sun, Evening Star and Night. The way the events and the images are spun suggest the life cycle your research discusses, paralleling the parts of the day and the seasons with life experiences, growing old, and dying, to encounter at the end of all a strong suggestion of resurrection and a new beginning. Gawain cleaves open the death-head helmet of the last knight, and a "blooming youth" is revealed.
Ros, thanks for the bob-and-wheel explanation!

Well, I did it again! It's Gareth, Gawain's brother who did the quest referred to in the previous post, not Gawain. That particualar Idyll is called "Gareth and Lynette," as I rememberd before nodding off.

Wasn't there a folk song, "All in green went my love, riding..." or something like that? I seem to remember Joan Byez singing it.

Ginny

Well, From my notes I see that I simply have a list of questions that matches those (new ones) above. I DO have one suggested answer to the "Ugliness" of the one lady. From "History of Western Philosophy" we learn that in the middle ages in question Ugliness was idealized.

The whole thing sounds like a "Con Job" at the end of this section. What COULD Gawain expect to gain left at home all day with the beautiful wife? ----- Realy!!! And if the host isn't seducing Gawain for his wife he'd have to be doing so for himself (assuming the beheading to be, in essence, a "Seduction") Indeed, since the host KNOWS the score and "He knew how to play a game, the old governor of the hall" this mus all be viewed in the light of the upcoming beheading.

Best

LJ, I find the whole pledge thing intriguing! What did Gawain think he was promising...what did he think he'd have to swap at the end of the day? All he was planning was to sleep in and laze about the castle till it was time to go for his beheading! And what do you think the lord of the manor wants in return? Certainly not his "damaged" lady? Could it be that he wants a major favor from Gawain?

I was impressed at the contrast of purpose provided by the poet...presenting Gawain as a deeply religious man, dedicating his life to the Virgin Mary...and then the dark plot which begins to develop as soon as he enters the castle!

You know I didn't expect all this to be taking place in Part II. I expected to spend more time watching Gawain put his affairs in order as he faced impending death. Perhaps he did and we only see the results of it here? He certainly developed from the lowly knight to a respected man of valor! Do you suppose he actually did anything (besides stand up for Arthur) to reach this stature? I thought it was very interesting to learn that his peers at home regarded Gawain's needless sacrifice as the result of Arthur's "empty pride", which is how Borroff puts it. Would be interested to know how your translator handles that. It occurs in the goodbye scene, with all the sobbing and farewells... I wonder how Arthur feels after having a year to think about it. Didn't notice his reaction in this part.

Nellie, I'm still not sure I understand why the Knight wanted Gawain to accept the challenge, rather than Arthur. Is it because of all the qualities we see displayed in Part II that we didn't know about when the challenge was proposed? I suppose the real question is whether Gawain possessed these sterling qualities from the start, or whether they developed during his year of preparation...

ps. I like your research on "Ugliness!!! I know that old age was revered, but ugliness??? I had the impression that the beautiful lady kept herself surrounded by ugliness in order to appear even more attractive to the onlookers.

On page 292 of "History of Western Philosophy", Russell says "There is in the mysticism of Plotinus nothing morose or hostile to beauty. But he is the last religious teacher, for many centuries, of whom this can be said. Beauty, and all the pleasures associated with it, came to be thought to be of the devil, pagans as well as Christians came to glorify ugliness and dirt."

My My, as Gulliver would say.

Best

Could it be (since we know the outcome) that the wager is a means to either determine the severity of the blow with the axe? or even an opportunity to expiate the need to submit to it altogether? I'd doubt any perversion on the Host's (Author's) part, but that would be the first thought of ANY street-wise person in this day and age.

Best

Last week was my birthday,and I've been wined and dined since last Wednesday! I've only had time to for the festivities, but fortunately I had read Part Two and underlined just about every sentence in the Max Notes. I'm glad to see the Part Two discussion was extended.

I enjoyed reading this part. The Pearl Poet (or maybe Borroff's translation) just glided through it in such a relaxed manner,I wandered through it,too. The description of his journey was so vivid I felt I was with him, even to the disgusting feeling of staying in that elaborate outfit he put on before he left the Court. Can you imagine living in that for months? Fortunately, the poet doesn' go into details about Gawain's battles with "dragons, wolves, wild men, bulls, bears,boars and ogres."

Now that pentangle adorning his shield which is painted in red gold on the outside and a picture of the Virgin Mary on the inside. The narrator describes the pentangle as being conceived by Solomon, called by the English "the endless knot" since it is drawn with a single line, and it has five points, a mystic number. I wish one of the books I have included a picture of it. The poet certainly took pains describing its symbolic meaning. According to the Max Notes it is the only time in the poem that the narrator speaks in philosophical terms.

It is interesting to note that 'old' forests were very rare. There were no synthetic materials, and nearly everything that was not cloth, stone or metal had to be made out of wood. Large quantities of wood were needed, for furniture, staves, ships and, heating during winter. A large castle therefore would not actually be surrounded by many ancient trees as Hautdesert Castle is in the poem. The untouched trees are a sign that the castle could only appear through magic.

So, knowing then that the Castle and therefore its occupants are mystical I read in Gawain's stopover there the poets use of the visit as a story within a story. Who or what actually is his host, wife, the old woman symbolizing? Are they there just to tempt Gawain? Are they a part of the Green Knight's plan? Do they have a profound religious meaning? I did not find an answer in Part Two but I sure enjoyed reading about the luxurious life style lived there and could feel the pleasure of Gawain taking off all that armour, etc. and relaxing before a fire.

I am beginning to appreciate this poem's many levels. It is fascinating.

I checked back in part one and I can't find anything that says that Gawain was going to have the Green Knight give his blow with the axe in question. The axe remained hanging on the wall as a reminder of what had happened.

Gawain seems almost overdressed for what turns out to be a rather strenous journey. Everything is so gilded with gold and so shiny, that he is almost blinding (I'm sure in sunlight he would be). And there must be a special meaning for the color "red", such as in the "red silk carpet" on which the pieces of his armor are placed; his steed Gringolet is also draped in red; and his shield is red and gold.

Strange that it is not told how Gawain gains his reputation of being perfect in all aspects of Knightly life. Perhaps the Poet assumed that everyone would know that such was the case, and hence felt he did not need embelish on that fact. Gawain is the archetypical Knight in that he is perfect in everything a knight should be: he is courageous, pious, chaste, chivalrous, friendly, and generous in equal portions; no one aspect takes precedence.

I have some thoughts on why Gawain had to be the one to accept the challenge but will keep everyone in suspense until the end of the story. There is more to this tale than appears on the surface.

Nellie

Happy Happy Belated Birthday, Kathleen!! Loved your explication of the woods near the castle, hence mystical.

All your posts here, Everyone, are something else, the entire discussion glitters like gold! (or green).

Ginny

And here we are with info on Dear St. Julian:English mystic of the fourteenth century, author or recipient of the vision contained in the book known as the "Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love". The original form of her name appears to have been Julian. She was probably a Benedictine nun, living as a recluse in an anchorage of which traces still remain in the east part of the churchyard of St. Julian in Norwich, which belonged to Carrow Priory. According to her book, this revelation was "shewed" to her on 8 or 14 May (the readings differ), 1373, when she was thirty years and a half old.http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/08557a.htm">Juliana of Norwich
REVELATIONS of DIVINE LOVE Recorded by JULIAN, Anchoress at NORWICH Anno Domini 1371
A version from the MS. in the BRITISH MUSEUM edited by GRACE WARRACK REVELATIONS of DIVINE LOVE
Hit the clickable and download the title page - it is lovely.

St. Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Jesus Of the Third Order of St. Francis, b. at Naples, 25 March, 1715; d. there, 6 October, 1791. Her family belonged to the middle class. Her father, Francesco Gallo, was a severe, avaricious man with a passionate temper, and from him the saint had much to suffer. He subjected her to much ill-treatment and hard, incessant labour which often brought her to the verge of the grave. Barbara Basinsin, her mother, however, was gentle, pious, and patient in bearing with the brutal conduct of her husband. Before her birth St. John Joseph of the Cross, O.F.M., and St. Francis de Geronimo, S.J., are said to have predicted Mary's future sanctity. At the age of seven she was admitted to Holy Communion, which she was subsequently in the habit of receiving daily. When Mary Frances was sixteen years old, her father sought to force her into a marriage with a rich young man, but the saint firmly refused, and instead asked leave to enter the Third Order of St. Francis. This request was at length granted her through the influence of Father Theophilus, a Friar Minor. At her reception among the Tertiaries of St. Peter of Alcantara, 8 September, 1731, she took the name of "Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Jesus" out of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, St. Francis, and the Sacred Passion. Her body is said to have been signed with the stigmata, which, at her prayer, took no outward, visible appearance, and on Fridays, especially the Fridays of Lent, she felt in her body the very pains of the Passion. During her whole life the saint had much to suffer from bodily ills, and to her physical suffering was added mental pain from the persecution of her father, sisters, and other persons. Even her confessors, to test her sanctity, made her suffer by the severity of their direction. But over and above these mental and physical sufferings she imposed upon herself voluntary penances, strict fasts, hair-shirts, and disciplines.

The Ave was felt to be a true form of salutation, and in the 12 C. came into universal use. There is wide popularity of the Salve Regina, which also came into existence in the 11C. The vogue was due to the immense collections of Mary-stories (Marien-legenden) which multiplied during the 12 to 14 century. These collections of stories popularised a number of other practices of devotion in addition to the repetitions of the Ave and the use of the Salve Regina.
The repetition of five salutations beginning "Gaude Maria Virgo,
the recitation of five psalms,
the initials of which make up the word Maria,
the dedication of the Saturday by special practices to the Blessed Virgin,
the use of assigned prayers, such as the sequence "Missus Gabriel," the "O Intemerata," the hymn "Ave Maris Stella," etc.,
the celebration of particular feasts, such as the Conception of the Blessed Virgin and her Nativity.
The five Gaudes originally commemorated Our Lady's "five joys"
to match those joys spiritual writers commemorated five corresponding sorrows. It was not until late in the fourteenth century that seven sorrows or "dolours" began to be spoken of.

All this came from the monasteries, where the Mary-stories were composed and copied. It was in the monasteries that the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin began to be recited as a devotional to the Divine Office, and the Salve Regina and other anthems of Our Lady were added to Compline and other hours.

Shrines multiplied and famous places of pilgrimage arose.
The most renowned English shrines of Our Lady, Walsingham in Norfolk professed to preserve, not only the Holy House itself, but a model of its construction with measurements brought from Nazareth in the eleventh century.

The homage paid to Our Lady during the later Middle Ages was universal. A writer says: "It seems to me impossible that we should obtain the reward of Heaven without the help of Mary. There is no sex or age, no rank or position, of anyone in the whole human race, which has no need to call for the help of the Holy Virgin."

The intense feeling from the 12 to the 16 century over the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is an additional tribute. The Franciscans at the general chapter at Pisa in 1263 adopted the Feast of the Conception of Mary for the entire order. Controversy arose between Nicholas of St. Albans, an English monk who defended the festival as established in England, and the celebrated Bishop of Chartres. Nicholas remarks that the soul of Mary was pierced twice by the sword, i. e. at the foot of the cross and when St. Bernard wrote his letter against her feast. The point continued to be debated throughout the 13 and 14 centuries.

Also, the prevalence of wearing beads of all possible lengths, some fifteen decades, some ten, some six, five, three, or one, as an article of ornament in every attire; the repetition of Hail Marys to be counted by the aid of Pater Nosters, or beads, was common in the 12 C. as well as, maintaining burning lights continually before a statue or shrine.

I found it!

The Five Sacred Wounds Devotion

The revival of religious life and the zealous activity of St. Bernard and St. Francis in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, together with the enthusiasm of the Crusaders returning from the Holy Land, gave a devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ and particularly to practices in honour of the Wounds in His Sacred Hands, Feet, and Side.

Many beautiful medieval prayers honoured the Sacred Wounds. St. Mechtilde and St. Gertrude of Helfta were devoted to the Holy Wounds, and recited daily a prayer in honour of the 5466 wounds, which, according to a medieval tradition, were inflicted on Jesus during His Passion. In the fourteenth century it was customary in southern Germany to recite fifteen Pater Nosters each day (which thus amounted to 5475 in the course of a year) in memory of the Sacred Wounds.

In the medieval Missals a special Mass in honour of Christ's Wounds, believed to have been composed by St. John the Evangelist and revealed to Boniface II (532) was known as the Golden Mass, and was indulgenced by Innocent Vi (1362) or John XXII (1334); during its celebration five candles were always lighted. It was popularly held that if anyone should say or hear it on five consecutive days he should never suffer the pains of hell fire.

The Dominican Rosary also helped to promote devotion to the Sacred Wounds, while the fifty small beads refer to Mary, the five large beads and the corresponding Pater Nosters are intended to honour the Five Wounds of Christ.

Nellie, I too reread Part I concerning that ax and will agree there was NO understanding that Gawain would bring the same ax for the Knight to use on him. He is to find the Knight and bring"whatever weapon thou wilt.". The ax was simply a gift!

I assumed he'd want to bring it...it worked such magic on the Knight! What else would he do with such a "gift"? And what does he plan to bring to the Knight to use on him. We have a detailed description of everything he's bringing. Can you spot the weapon of choice?

Your comment last week about the Knight drawing all of the attention of the revelers, their gaiety, their very life...like death itself does, right? Is Green the symbol of death here?

But the reds and greens of Christmas - green the symbol of life and hope and joy...red, a reminder of the blood sacrifice to come... the Knight in Green, Gawain in red. Is the Knight's Green symbolic of life and hope? Is the Knight a good guy or a bad guy?

Barbara's research (remarkable really!) continues this theme of the joys of life and the necessary sacrifice involved.

The mysteries of the rosary are that old? Interesting!!! As your information tells us, the entire rosary scheme consists of 15 decades, but each set of beads consist of 1 set of five mysteries dealing with the life of Mary. The three sets of five:

Joyful
Sorrowful
Glorious

Our poet has Gawain concentrating on the five Joys of Mary, probably because they include the Nativity:

1. Annunciation
2. Visitation
3. Nativity
4. Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple
5. Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple

This emphasis on five further explains the pentangle on his shield with the Virgin Mary on the reverse. I'll find a graphic, kathleen, but is simply a star of fiveangles.

It is customary (the repetition of the aves - Ave Maria- "Hail Mary's" - is somewhat comforting) to repeat the rosary when faced with a difficult situation. The poet is showing us how deeply religious is our hero as he enters the shady plot awaiting him at the castle.

Back later...Off to work and then more packing for NY. Look forward to your comments and more discussion of Part II next week!

Joan: I checked and Gawain takes his sword and a lance with him on his journey to the Green Knight's abode. So perhaps he will have the Knight use the sword when the time comes; we shall have to see.

And I did not see the Green Knight as death, but more as being larger than life. He makes me think of an experience I had a couple of years back while on a holiday; we went for a walk through a piece of Pacific rainforest in BC, and there was so much "LIfe" there that it felt like mine was somehow diminshed; and that was the feeling I got when I read the Knight's description.

I enjoy all the information on beliefs in the middle ages. That was certainly a time of deep piety on the part of many people. Not something you find much of nowadays.

The young woman does contrast a lot with the very ugly old woman; but the old woman seems to be held in high esteem by the people of the castle. That makes me wonder who she is? The owner's mother?

Nellie

This research comes from Oxford University Library Service

The pentagram has ment many things to many different people/groups thoughout history, including the Catholic church. During the middle ages it was seen as a symbol of truth.

The pentacle, or pentagram, is important in the history of magic and witchcraft, with many mystic interpretations. It is used in ancient times by the Pythagoreans and others as the pentalpha, an emblem of perfection. This sign was also regarded as a protective fetish, and was frequently worn as an amulet."

Another Interpretation is the five stages of humanity (or the five stages of life, if you prefer) are represented. Speaking purely in terms of age, there are: Babyhood, Adolescence, Adulthood, Middle Age, and Old Age. In terms of life occurrences, there are: Birth, Initiation, Love, Repose, and Death. this sounds vaguley familiar doesn't it.

the earliest recorded use of the pentagram as a mystical symbol was by the Gnostics, who called it the Blazing Star. It was also considered by Christians during the middle ages to be a symbol of the Five Wounds of Christ, and used as a protective glyph, generally as a variation on the Seal of Solomon (a Star of David within a circle).

Joseph of Aramathia came to the Isle of angels after the crusifiction of Christ. There are those who believe that Jesus himself came to Britain and was taught by the Druids during his early adulthood.

Regardless, the people of Britian saw remarkable religious simililarities between their own beliefs and those of the EARLY christians. There is proof that the British practiced both religions side by side.

Later when the Roman church was in ascendancy they started to subvert other religious practices. For some reason, whether to show displeasure of Rome, or whether the Church itself initiated the practice, those who where against the church inverted their crosses and since the Pentagram was worn with it it also was inverted. It is known in traditional mythology as St. Peter's cross. Peter did not believe he was worthy enough to die in the same way that Jesus had, so he begged to crucified upside-down.

Here I am again - I keep finding this stuff
Early on as we read part one this bit came up:
...and proudly reigned
Over well-nigh all the wealth of the West Isles.

A.D. 418. This year the Romans collected all the hoards of gold that were in Britain; and some they hid in the earth, so that no man afterwards might find them, and some they carried away with them into Gaul.

Well this was in today's London Times - just imagine living where buried is the proof of long ago written poems. I'm in awe.

DREAMS led a treasure hunter to a hoard of almost 4,000 Roman coins buried in a Welsh field, a treasure-trove inquest was told yesterday.

Colin Roberts, 46, ... dreamt twice of a big find, ... Yesterday his find was declared treasure trove, but he said he was more interested in seeing it in a museum than in receiving a reward, ...He called in experts from the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff... said: "It is the best haul of Roman coins I have ever seen. There were 3,778 in total." The location of the field near Magor, Monmouthshire, is being kept secret. ... Mr Roberts, ... said: "All I want is to see the coins go on display. If they put a little card naming me as the finder, I would be happy."

The find includes 700 coins from the three-year reign of the "Usurping" Emperor Allectus at the end of the 3rd century. Unlike most coinage during the Roman occupation, they were minted in Britain.

When Gawain changes after arriving at the Green Castle, he appears as a "vision of Spring" to each man who saw him…

The Lady of the Castle's companion has to be some sort of sorceress - "ancient", "yellow" skin, all tressed up in some black get up with a veil leaving only her bleary eyes and her hideous naked lips. And yet, "a worthy dame" as Frankie might say. Don't mess with her!

Charlie

Hello all! Back from NYC with all sorts of stories and no time to tell them! It was ...surreal! First, I must thank all of those involved as often and in as many sites as I can for making the whole experience memorable. Then I must "do Christmas", which I have put off until now. I have been reading and musing over your Green Knight comments and research...and added a few more questions up in the heading. Hopefully I will find some time to chat with you soon!
Carry on, Knights!
Later!!!
Joan

Must comment on your wonderful Host in this folder. We all met Joan at our Bash in NYC and she was always smiling! Just a great gal and I know she worked very hard to make it all a success, getting all the reservations on time, monies where they were supposed to be, somehow or other (we don't know the full story of this yet) she persuaded Mr. Hoving, former curator of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, to be our speaker and conduct a tour of the Cloisters, and also she was in charge of Fun and Games - and they were - FUN!! Doesn't it sound as though she was a whole committee!!! But it was all just lovely Joan!

Thanks Joan, you're just great. Love your smile!

I was always smiling because of Ella and the "Cross gang" as "Tom" refers to us! I am going to post his letter in the New York site tonight! Wait til you read it!

Listen up Knights!, I know how busy we all are this time of year, and don't want any of us to miss a single post! So I propose that we shut down til Monday, Dec. 29 where we will finish up with Part II and move on to Part III. I know, I know, we'll miss the Winter Solstice on the 22nd. We will have to remember one another on that day...a moment of silence or something. And we'll be back to share the coming of the New Year together.

Happy Christmas!!!
Happy Hanukkah Love you all!

The chanting in Chapel achieved and ended.
Clerics and all the court acclaimed the glad season,
Cried Noel anew, good news to men;

This poem - our posts - and a truly wonderful and perspicacious host
May all of your hearts be full this Holy Day season
Looking forward to

High mirth in the New Year.

Many years ago, a British lit professor coordinated a medieval banquet after completing Sir Gawain in her class. She would assign students to prepare the dishes--gourd soup, pork pie, cabbage and almond soup, boiled garlic, pears in confection, parsley bread, spiced wine, and nuts. She would have us dress in costume and perform an entertainment act at the banquet: tell a tale, demonstrate a dance, perform a short play, play a musical instrument of the times.

Even though we had to write essays on the project or on Sir Gawain, we learned much and enjoyed the banquet on the medieval period.

Billy, so glad to have you back...shall we post some menus for our Christmas banquet right here? We plan to come in and get together for the winter solstice on the 22nd...it is the 22nd, isn't it?
See you then!
Joan

Gourd Soup sounds both easy and delicious. Besides Pumpkin and Winter Squash one wonders whether green fig (Banana) Dasheen and Breadfruit mught be included in it. I would assumer Thyme to be the main seasoning, but Please tell me more.

Best

I think Billy Frank's message is a good one for us all to stop and realize how much some of our unheralded teachers meant to us and how much they may have influenced us.

Now that he mentions that, since we are on hiatus here, I remember doing Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities with the same sort of projects (but no menus), but we were to choose what thing we'd create, and I chose to illustrate each characer and to do an album and description of each. I hated it, the work was hard, I'm not an artist, but you know, I do remember it, I did get a lot out of it, I do remember the book vividly and I do remember how good the teacher was.

The menu thing is something we used to do long ago in the teaching of Latin, maybe you remember students in togas putting on plays or dinners.

Education seems to be coming full circle, isn't it? Those old Latin teachers really knew what they were doing. I had a friend just last week enthusiastically describe to me the "cheerleading" chants in her room for word learning, and it sure took me back to a book published on the Teaching of Latin in 1930 which advocated the same.

I think we remember what WE put into a course and how much the instructor encouraged US. Likewise the poorest teachers we remember are those who did little or nothing in the way of recognition of our efforts. That seems awfully simplistic, but I think it's true.

Ginny

Watching PBS series on the archeologist,historical and Biblical information as a result of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the life of Jesus Christ as well as, the early church; I've about desided Christmas is more about Winter Soltice then the birth of Jesus.

The season of His birth, the fact Jesus could not have been poor and may not have been born in Bethleham reminds me of the old story of the traditional family ham always being cut off at the end till a series of generations are questioned. It turned out that Great Grandma's pan was too small so she cut the end off for the soup pot and everyone followed thinking it was tradition.

The Pearl Poet does much to depict how this Holy Day season is celebrated and does use the popular names rather then the church names for the special days within the season. Between the discription of the Green Knight riding into the hall in green and gold and the feast, what a Department store window Sir Gawain and the Green Knight would make.

With lights ablaze on so many homes now, it reminds me of the medieval practice of putting the hut and fire out at the gate with food for the passing poor or the candle in the window. I wonder if the cut tree was a change to the practice of burning the Yule Log? I did find, and now lost, a web site with some medievil recipies. One simple recipie was pears cooked in wine.

JUST IMAGINE!!!!

PEARS cooked in Scuppernong grape wine.

Fantastic

Best

There was an article in last week's local paper about research being done on King Arthur and that the Arthur of legend might be a combination of two people with that name. Apparently they have found two graves of persons called Arthur from the right time period. Does anyone know more about this?

Good teachers are gems IMO. I had a marvelous physics professor when I was in university who did great demonstrations. He did scare the whole class the day he walked in with two rifles to show us how ballistics worked. I had my best marks in that class. And the man never once cracked a smile; he was always so very serious.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
To One and All!

Nellie

I have so many memories of teachers. I will never forget the psych professor who staged an impromptu break in to his room, two people burst in, got in a fight, threatened, etc. and ran from the room. The object was to test out our powers of observation. We all saw something different, and tho I had one of their descriptions right, I was way off on the other one. And the sequence of events. We perceive according to our own personas.

That same professor, (this was an 8am class and I am ashamed to say I could NOT wake up for it and don't know much about psychology anyway, it was a requirement) one day brought in a color wheel. It was little pieices about 5" square of plastic, on an electronically turned wheel and when you turned it on, it spun, and I don't know what was supposed to happen, but it exploded~! Pieces of plastic everywhere, in the ceiling acoustical tiles, at everybody, it was quite an experience!

Guess WHO woke up? hahahahahahha

I've been thinking over the people bursting in the room thing and TODAY I expect they'd be shot by a gun toting student?

Nellie, I have been vaguely reading about the Arthur thing. When you are AT Tintagel, they are very careful to say it's a legend, but I wonder. SOME early peoples were definitely there. Camelot may be another Troy, just waiting for somebody to discover it.

Ginny

VCR altert!!!

TODAY!!

Fans of Thomas Hoving, King of the Confessors, the Bury St. Edmund's Cross, the Cloisters, etc., etc., tune in tonight on PBS as Prince Edward profiles Bury St. Edmunds, in his 30 minute series Crown & Country: Bury St. Edmunds: The Crown and Religion.

It's on PBS, on Satellite at the following locations: T4: 18, December 27th, 10:30pm, on December 28th at 5:30 am, on December 30th at 11:30pm and on New Year's Eve, December 31st at 3am on the 31st. Check local times for your stations. We'll get up a tape if it's any good, so we can all check it out.

Ginny

Joan, I enjoyed your post on Winter Solstice. I'll have to remember it next year. I didn't realize there were rituals connected with it. thanks for the info.

Ginny, I couldn't find any listing for "Crown and Country" on PBS this week at all, so if you do a tape please let me know. They must also be for sale through PBS, too.

I read Part 11 again to hellp put me back on track. I also read Joan's background topics which ar e very helpful. From that reading and the analyses in my book, this story takes on a surreal effect for me. The Castle and its occupants are not as real as Gawain. The two women in particular are strange. According to notes, the old lady is a powerful, and ambivalent sorceress, who often lays temptations for the knights of King Arthur.Scholars belileve she was originally a goddess of the sea.

The poet gives us several clues to expect a sexual relationship between Lady Bertilak (does that name have a meaning?)and Gawain. And the deal Lord Bertilak makes with Gawain smacks like a setup. How could Gawain be so naive? or stupid?

I hope I can figure out what message the poet is trying to bring to us in this poem. So far there's only bits and pieces of different possible meanings. One example is the symbolism of Bertilak's beard being the color of a beaver's pelt, the beaver being an animal who, by chewing through a tree causes it to fall=Green Knight felling Gawain. So what?...only a piece of something.

On to Part 111.

Bertilak reminds me of the dramatizations I've seen of Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Present: jovial, sanguine, red-faced, solidly built -- earthy. In his person he suggests temporal delights and pleasures. The exchange he suggests seems to be delibierate temptation, an attempt to tantalize Gawain with the opportunity for "courtly love" to be provided by Bertilak's absence. Perhaps the real exchange at the end of the day's hunting would be for Gawain's soul?? The dalliance certainly woul distract him from his mission, which is more than a quest of physical courage.

In part three, we have clearly come upon a "Morality Play", but before commenting, does anyone have a definition of the word "LEMMAN"?. My presumption would be that it means something like "Castrati" or "Antiman"

Best

So glad to be back, although I feel as if I am drifting in here at half mast... You have no idea how anxious I am to get my "groove back"!

First I want to wish you all a very

Happy New Year!!! High Mirth!
as Barbara so well puts it! I love that! Let's go for it...pull out all the stops!!! Nothing but high mirth here!!!!

And certainly let us regain our momentum before we reach Green Chapel

You have carried on admirably, while my hall is under siege! For that I thank you!

LJ, will you please supply the "lemman" context? I did read Part III, but somehow overlooked the term. My American Heritage dictionary yields :

leman. n. Archaic. 1. A sweetheart; a lover. 2. A mistress, [ [ME. leofman, lemman:leof, dear (IE keif) + man, man]

A morality play? Hmm. If that's all it is, I think our hero would have had an easier time choosing between right and wrong, wouldn't he? He's on the brink of death, and would not have risked his soul. Lots more complications. Let's discuss them! Is he attracted to this lovely temptress? Is she attracted to him? Or simply following her husband's orders? If she is, she is morally reprehensible, as is her husband. If a morality play, she and her husband will be roundly punished, no?

I think I have stumbled over the reason we are having trouble with the two Arthurs and the two Gawains we are trying to deal with. Will supply more on this later, but will squeeze in here the idea that our Pearl poet has taken the Arthur and the Gawain we are more familiar with from the Celtic and French legends, and enhanced them, "humanized" them - and turned them into real people we do not anticipate. Perhaps this makes them easier to understand, but certainly interferes with our preconceptions. I was shocked to see Arthur acting in such a reckless, careless manner. This is not the wise king we had known before. Gawain was portrayed as a young, untested knight in the beheading scene, and in one year, had achieved the legendary status previously associated with him. In the seduction scene, we find him struggling to live up to that reputation, which so impresses the lady. He remains here an inexperienced young knight...although I think he handled himself admirably when confronted with the bare back and bosom of his temptress!
What gave him strength to withstand such seduction? Moralality? Chivalry? Loyalty to the pledge he made to his host?

Oh NO, His choice was ultimately NOT easy, He was mousetrapped into a "Damned if you do and damned if you don't situation" by the lady who turned out to be more clever than he was "Moral".

"Lemman" verse 72 "Unless you have a lemman, more beloved, whom you like better". Well, at least she didn't impugn his masculinity. Short of that, I'd say she used every trick in the book.

Best

So LJ, if we keep score on question #4, you would say that the lady is the winner in the seduction plot, "more clever than Gawain is moral"?
What was the one temptation she offered that he was unable to resist?

Of course, the belt which might be useful in protecting him, but which he was required to conceal for two reasons, first to honour his promise to do so and second in order that he'd not have to give it up as his part of the bargain (and thus lose its "Protection")

Best

The sequential descriptions of the hunts and seductions gives the reader no choice but to compare the two. Bertilak (AKA Green Knight and Lady Bertilak (AKA Morgan le Fay, younger version) both are determined to catch the prey. He succeeds, she doesn't. What is the poet trying to tell us here? Is he saying the physical hunt between man and animal is to be admired, but seduction chivalrously ignored? I was unable to read the hunt scenes although the notes say these are the best descriptions in the poem...too violent and cruel for my taste. The seduction descriptions were fascinating. Gawain's responses to Lady Bertilak's verbal references to her non-verbal behavior were cleverer than hers. He demonstrates here why he is considered the best knight of his time. But what are the Bertilaks trying to prove here? If we see Bertilak as a satanic figure, and Gawain as godly than it is a classic struggle between good and evil. If we accept them as figures of their time than it is a game of upmanship and Gawain is winning, but he lost some ground by not telling Bertilak about the silk belt. He took that the same way I buy too many lottery tickets...a chance to be beat the odds.

Too bad we don't know more about the poet...his knowledge of seduction is sophistocated. Was it the chivalric code that enabled him to write the seduction scenes so knowingly?

Once again I'm left with the question of what is the message behind this story? The Notes give various interpretations and points out that readers see different meanings. What I'm struggling with is what meaning do I see? If the original poem was as brilliantly written as the one I'm reading the poet was a genius. If the ease and clarity of the writing is due to Boroff's translation than she is a superb translator of medieval English.

HAPPY, HEALTHY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL!!!!

Hi, I have just been lurking AND reading this exceptional story. Like Kathleen indicates, the two pursuits are curious. The lord goes hunting, telling Gawain to rest from his travels, and "whatever I win in the wood at once shall be yours, and whatever gain you may get you shall give in exchange" -- now doesn't that unlikely exchange sound like a set-up? Three days of hunting -- for deer, boar, and fox -- the beasts really never had a chance, and came to bad ends which are told in gory detail. Somehow it makes you wonder on the other pursuit what would have happened had Sir Gawain given in to the lady.

LJ, I must admit I had overlooked the fact that Gawain would have had to turn over the silk belt to Bercilak, had he revealed his prize to him! Of course he doesn't want to do that! The belt doesn't symbolize the lady's love to Gawain, but a chance for life in the face of death! You know, this reminds me of the ORIGINAL temptation story! The temptress promises supernatural power, eternal life, if the man accepts the forbidden fruit. And didn't they try to hide the deed from "their host"?!

And did Gawain conceal his sin in his bad confession? Or did he confess it? We are told only that he goes to the chapel and confesses "from largest sin to the least, he asks God's mercy, so that his soul is cleansed as if Judgement Day should dawn on the morrow."

Is he aware of the seriousness of his act of omission?

kathleen, it seems you are following Larry Benson's suggestion stored above in the heading...""Sir Gawain...so complex a poem that it lends itself to many interpretations, and ultimately each reader must decide what particular meaning Gawain has for him.", and asking the most important question of all, "What is the message behind the story? What meaning do I see?" I'll put your questions in the heading as well. There are still many unanswered questions. Perhaps we will have to wait until we have finished Part IV and have all the pieces of the puzzle before we can decipher the message...

Since Benson's name comes up here, I'll include another snippet from hisArt and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that pertains to these hunt/temptation scenes:

"Taken alone, Bercilak's hunt is just an exciting account of chase...and the temptation a sophisticated bedroom comedy. Together they are a set of variations that blend to point up the nature of Gawain's trial and the extent of Bercilak's involvement in it."

Now kathleen, while understanding your squeamishness regarding the hunt of the deer, the boar and the fox, the three chases were different in their detail and need to be compared with each of the seduction scenes in order to comprehend the message. I must say, I only understood the comparison between the fox chase and the final seduction scene for that message. And that one made me shiver for Gawain....Can anyone explain the relationship between the first two sets of hunt/temptation scenes?

Oh, let me add here that I think the Boroff translation is far superior to most of the others in clarifying the medieval language...

Loma! we Love our Lurkers! And love to hear what you are thinking! In this case, you are questioning the pledge and the hunt scenes, just as kathleen in the post before...
I too wonder at the pledge, and whether Gawain understood the terms. Did he understand what Bercilak was proposing - that he was daring him to pursue his own wife and reveal it at the end of the day? What else would Gawain think he meant? Were there other eligible young ladies in the castle? Help me with this, knights. I really don't know what Gawain understood by the pledge to hand over his winnings of the day for Bercilak's!!!

Had Gawain given in to the lady, would the pursuit of the fox have ended differently? Hmmm. I think this fox hunt directly related to the lady's pursuit of her prey, Gawain. He thought he had skillfully avoided her all-out attempt to seduce him, as did the desperate, though sly fox, who thought he had outsmarted the hunters, only to run upon Bercilak's waiting sword!!! Ah , Gawain, what is your fate??? How does Bercilak figure in the plot?...

First, I'll bet we have no clearer comprehension at the end than we do now.

Second, It seems to me that it boils down to a "Morality Play"

Third, I think there is an unstated thread in the story, related to what was both common knowledge and folk tradition at the time, regarding the morals and especially the sexual activity of the "Knights".

I recall a line from a "Medievil" ballad : If you will not when you may sir, then you shall not when you will sir"

Best

This "Pearl" really knew his audience, I think - like Shakespeare! The loving details of the deer evisceration were astounding. I can imagine this in the hands of a modern director. Fast cuts between the attempted seduction of Gawain and the flinging of the deer bowels to the winds as filmed by Scorcese in slow motion!

The Three chases (started off by "bugles three blasts full long")-The Three Seduction scenes: First of all the three chases were each more difficult than the last. The deer is best surprised by sneaking up on it (I'm not a hunter). Stealth and surprise - although here, they're herded by beagles and beaters to the slaughter amid baying and shouting. But the lone hunter, Lady Bertilak, hunts in the classic manner: she comes "stealthily", opens the door "secretly". Isn't Gawain's initial reaction much like a surprised deer - he pretends to be asleep, much like a deer might "freeze" in an effort to disappear. She steps "silently" to the bed. The hunter lifts one foot after the other, ever so slowly in his approach. She sits down on the bed. "He lay there lurking a long while" - he's a deer frozen in the headlights. He gives himself the sign of the cross and he's already survived the first hunt. Next the boar hunt. Nothing but direct confrontation will claim the prize. A non-stop onslaught. Superior firepower. Probe after probe after probe. Wear the beast down. And Lady Bertilak: "early she on him set, his will to wear away". She suggests first that he doesn't understand the customs, the rules of the game. She suggests that he's missing an important component of knighthood: "the science of lovers". She "tested" and "tried" him and "tempted" him. But his defense was just too strong. Sir Bertilak moves in for the kill in the rushing rapids, it's him or the beast. He wins.

Joan has very nicely addressed the third hunt - the fox. A hunt which Gawain clearly loses by trickery.

I've read elsewhere that in Middle English, lace seems to have had as a primary meaning "net" or "snare." In the Tolkien, I don't see that the word lace is used in the translation - instead silk, embroidered and braided girdle - certainly could bring to mind visions of an animal (fox) trap.

Charlie

Oh Charlie, this is high mirth indeed! You've turned the gruesome scenes which kathleen cannot bring herself to read, into high comedy!!! The contrast of 'the deer caught in the headlights' and our fearless knight hiding under the covers playing possum...hilarious!

You know, it is time to start thinking about our next GB adventure...and since we are operating under Barbara's directive, "High Mirth in the New Year"...shall we consider devoting the year to classic comedy...Aristophanes, Moliere...you name it! Wouldn't that be fun? After a year of Othello, Jude the Obscure, Hard Times???
The GB nominations graphic has reappeared under our discussion questions and is clickable. I'd be interested to hear your suggestions at that site!

LJ, you raise interesting questions concerning the knights' ethic standards...I am having some difficulty understanding where adultery might fit in to this highly religious society...Larry Benson had something to say about the poet's sources for this tale which might help -

Later!

The one temptation Gawain cannot resist is that of cheating death. Thus he takes the girdle which will protect him and keeps it hidden. The "perfect" knight is certainly showing some imperfection here. A bit of cowardice and he is breaking his original promise made to the Green Knight to take the counterblow bravely without flinching. By taking the magic girdle to protect himself from the still future blow, he is already flinching from it.

Does Gawain realize the seriousness of concealing the gift of the girdle? First, he did promise the Lady Bertilak that he would not tell; and second I don't think he takes the whole "game" very seriously. Perhaps he even sees the "game" as only the trade of kisses for the meat brought home by Bertilak; and that the girdle is not part of that.

Nellie

The pledge to the host may play some part in Gawain's resistance, but in the first temptation scene he is "less love-laden because of the loss he must /Now face -/his destruction by the stroke,/For come it must was the case." The coming confrontation is uppermost in his mind, even though "she was the winsomest woman the warrior had known...." No reference to the pledge. Toward the end of this first episode, Gawain does remind the lady of her lord: when she says, "No lord that is living could be allowed to excel you," he replies, "Indeed, dear lady, you did better."
If he had not been on his way to the Green Knight, would he have given in? The lady tries repeatedly to convince him that he is being unchivalrous in rejecting her!

Tolkein's lines, in 70 and 71, on the 3rd night, before he later gave in and took the green girdle:

They spoke then speeches good,
much pleasure was in that play;
great peril between them stood,
unless Mary for her knight should pray.
For she, queenly and peerless, pressed him so closely,
led him so near the line, that at last he must needs
either refuse her with offence or her favors there take.
He cared for his courtesy, lest a caitiff [boor] he proved,
yet more for his sad case, if he sin should commit
and to the owner of the house, to his host, be a traitor.

So he had several good strong reasons to not give in.

The story gives several definite dates. Christmas eve, Christmas day, St. John's Day which is December 27th, Childermas which is December 28th, and New Years. It seems to be the 28th when his host asks his mission, Gawain asks about the Green Chapel, and the host says it is but two hours away. It is AFTER this that the host goes hunting and the lady visits his room.

Ahaha. A generation or two ago, it was the man who was the agressor but never got the blame. Here is the woman the agressor, but still queenly and without peer.

A little note about the third "temptation": When the lady suggests that Gawain may have a lover already, he says "By St. John...I owe my oath to none, Nor wish to yet a while." The translator notes that St. John was thought to be "supremely devoted to celibacy."

Oh. Did I miss Jude the Obscure? Where have I been all my life? Katherine A. Powers just wrote a column in The Boston Globe calling Jude the "greatest novel written in English." I had parked that in the back of my mind as a possible nomination. Too late to the banquet, huh??

Charles: I came on with Hard Times. Missed Jude too, much to my regret. Read it some time ago. It was so great that I had to follow it with all the rest of Hardy's novels. But of all of them, I think Jude was the best. Shocking then and still shocking today. Hardy's wife went to see the publisher and begged him not to let it see the light of day, because of its attacks on marriage and religion Their relationship was so poor that ha built a staircase outside of the house so he could go to his study to work without seeing her.

Hi Knights: I am still trying to recover from the holidays. We had seven people staying with us for the week (four adults and 3 grandkids.) Have to get back to Gawain. I am impressed with all the gloriously detailed description. The Pearl Poet had to describe all the lush details that we now get in movies.

I have also been looking at Queen Lucia. No radio, TV or movies, the people in the small towns had to provide their own entertainment. They pressed all the locals==the buticher, the grocer, the baker, etc. to take part in their theatrical presentations. Everyone participated and there were no couch potatoes. Were they better off?

Charlotte

Charlie, we have read The Odyssey, Othello, Jude the Obscure and Hard Times since we started. Keep this in mind as you ponder your wish-list...and keep high mirth in mind too, okay? Although I'll bet YOU could have had us laughing through Jude

Charlotte! It is so good to have you back! Seven people for a week! I thought I had it tough with three boys home for weeks with two visiting dogs(one a puppy!). Have I mentioned the laundry here? Tomorrow morning, the youngest leaves and I can begin the massive clean-up! It's fun to have them visit, though, isn't it? Just feels good to return to 'normal'!

I have been sifting through accumulating notes...in an attempt to understand the Pearl poet's contribution to the traditional tale (aside from the wonderful use of language, the poetry). I think I'll empty a bucket of information in the next two posts...hopefully not too much to drown the discussion...perhaps in huge quotation marks. And then we can get right back to yesterday's posts! Consider yourselves forewarned!

(Larry Benson :

"The temptation scenes and the related activities at Bercilak's castle are clearly the Gawain-poet's most important additions to the beheading tale. In the earlier French Caradoc the year's interval between the two blows is dismissed in a single sentence: 'The tale tells us that he did so many chivalric deeds that no chevalier on earth had done so much in so little time, and his fame was so great that everyone believed his accomplishments to have been done by divine rather than physical means.' "
"In place of this bare report, Sir Gawain has the brilliant festivities at B's castle, the hunting scenes, and the temptation itself, in which Gawain, assisted by Mary, succeeds by divine as well as physical means.
However, Gawain's deeds are not as 'chivallereux' as Caradoc's must have been, for at B's castle the hero finds himself in a situation completely different from that in the beheading episode...his opponent is anything but terrible, only too vulnerable, and disconcertingly natural. ...His duty is by no means so clear, and the Gawain of heroic resolution we see at Camelot becomes a Gawain of ridiculous bewilderment, peeping furtively from under the blankets, and coyly submitting to the kisses of this woman so unlike the usual ladies- the enchanted maidens. idealized queens and fairy mistresses-known to the knights of Arthurian romance.
The exact source of this episode has long been a moot question in Gawain studies...a great variety of ultimate originals have been suggested, but only the Anglo-Norman romance Yder provides any significant parallels.")

( I know, I know, I'm using up all my bytes for today...but this source is quite humorous and I also think it is important to see what our Pearl-Gawain poet contributed to the original sources, his very creative remake of the traditional tale:

"Yder sets out to find someone who will grant him arms (like Caradoc, he is on his first adventure). He comes upon King Ivenant in the forest. The king agrees to knight Yder on one condition: Yder must first go to Ivenant's castle, where he must resist the advances of the queen, who will attempt to seduce him. Yder goes ahead of the king and reaches the castle alone. He is well received and shown to a bed, where he soon falls asleep. He is awakened by the queen, who is richly but lightly dressed and who offers him her love. He refuses, but she becomes more insistent, and he finally puts an end to the temptation by kicking her in the belly. Everyone in the castle thinks this is very funny. When the king returns, he compliments Yder on his success, and then he knocks the queen to the floor. Then Yder bids farewell to the queen, but he will speak to her only through a door. The king laughs, grants Yder arms, and the hero rides away."

Now, Benson hastens to add that the Yder-story is not the direct source of the Gawain episode, providing no more than the general situation and the beginning of the temptation in Sir Gawain. On that framework, "the poet builds a far more complex temptation than appears in any other medieval work. In Sir Gawain the hero is a proven champion, the model of knighthood and the exemplar of courtesy, unlike the untried young knight engaged in his first adventure. Gawain's antagonist is not the simple hot-blooded queen of Yder but a more complex character, a combination of idealized and uncourtly, even churlish characteristics".

LJ, I think this situation unlike any that we remember from Camelot! We seem to be witnessing a confrontation between idealized knightly virtue and physical temptation unknown in all earlier versions of this tale. I think we have to know more about where this poem fits in with other literature of the time...Chaucer for example. What did the poet's readership make of it?)

LJ, do you think we will at least learn Bercilak's motivation in Part IV? Is he the Green Knight? Is he an enemy of the Green Knight? Loma, are you saying that as soon as Bercilak learns of Gawain's mission, he sets up the hunting/seduction plot in order to somehow undermine Gawain's chances of survival when he faces the Green Knight? If so, do you think he has accomplished this, as Nellie does, by exposing his cowardice and causing him to break his initial promise with the Green Knight?

Nellie, that's an interesting relationship you mention between the seduction and the beheading scene. Does anyone else see any evidence between Bercilak's plot in Part III with the beheading to come in Part IV?
Jo, what a fascinating point...Gawain may be celibate, not at all experienced in resisting such agressive seduction! It could not have been easy for him! Nothing was going as he planned, so he kept right on "chatting" and "kissing". Since it was only "kissing" and the lady was offering so much more, I can understand why he might feel he was virtuous, that he had overcome temptation. Nothing to confess. Except the minor matter of the silk belt, and its possible magical power to assure life after the blow. Maybe he feels this is not worth mentioning to Bercilak because it is such a small matter? WHat do you think?

Joan, I think the poet intends for us to see this as a moment's weakness-- the accepting of the silk belt, that is. But in reference to question 6 in the heading, how do we know Gawain didn't confess it? Is the text that explicit? I thought it said he confessed ...and that's all, not what he confessed. Will go back and reread.

There is irony implicit in question 5: Gawain is more "fox" than hunter! What he accepted from the lady was something he really didn't want; he experienced physical desire, but his will was set against the dalliance. What his host presents to him is the trophy of his persistence and hunting skill, even if it is only a smelly old pelt. He definitly wanted to catch the fox. Gawain is the fox who really wanted to escape, as he does, in a sense. In that sense, are the kisses victory trophies? Both are victorious, for opposite reasons.

JOAN.

Two questions you've raised are both of supreme import, and it would take a major analysis to answer them. (The answers may be in those $100+ books listed in the bibliography).

First, my presumption is that at the time it was written this poem could probably be read only by the "Literati" which means essentially, the Clergy.

Second, I perceive the "Green Knight" in either of his roles as something much more than a mere character. Possibly, even a part of the "Godhead"

Best

No time since I had such the weather induced delay arriving home followed by exhaustion/illnesss/sleep and now my work has piled up. I've been reading these wonderful posts and itching to get back into the conversation with little time to share.

This for now: the 3 animals are all symbols that seem to stair step the sin or fall of Gawain.

Deer are the supernatural animals of the fairy world and are fairy cattle and divine messengers.
Boar lust, glottony - a sacred animal; the supernatural; prophecy; magic; warfare; protection of warriors; hospitality. It is associated with gods and magic powers and the tree, wheel, ravens and the human head, and was sacrificed to Derga. The sacrificial fire was the Boar of the Woods. The Christian symbol : Brutality; ferocious anger;evil; the sin of the flesh ,cruel prince and rulers.
fox Slyness, cujnnin, hypocrisy, guile Christian The Devil, the deceiver; cunning;guile; fraud. Feigning death to trap its prey it is the treachery and stratagems of Satan.

Oh Barbara! You have had a rather inauspicious start for the New Year! You must rest to "get your groove back! We have really missed your thoughtful, informative posts!

Thank you so much for the gem of a post you left here yesterday regarding the "stair steps to the fall of Gawain"! I was having some trouble contrasting the deer and the boar hunts with the first two temptations...With your help, this is what I have come up with:

I. Deer - "supernatural animals, divine messengers"
In the first temptation scene, the lady gets the message that Gawain is not going to be easy prey. He is more concerned with the state of his soul, loyalty to his host...and chivalry. The deer reveals his weakness, panics and falls. Gawain reveals his weakness - his concern for the rules of chivalry, which the lady will use to her advantage.
II. Boar - representing lust, sins of the flesh...loses his head. While the lady challenges Gawain's lack of chivalry by titillating Gawain's awareness of her charms, he lets her know that he has lost his head over her. He seems primed for the great fall on the third day.
III. Fox - slyness, cunning, the Devil, fraud, treachery. When the lady appears irresistibly, scantily clad, Gawain accepts nothing from her but the magic belt through sly, quick thinking...but the fox was fooled by his own conceit and gets Bercilak's sword through his heart. Bercilak returns that evening with nothing for Gawain, but the fox pelt. Gawain, smug that he has outwitted the lady, had better watch out!

I was interested that Barbara uses the words "stair steps the sin or fall of Gawain. What is his great sin which may lead to his fall - the concealment?

I keep thinking of kathleen's question about what this story means to her, and though I haven't answered that question fully for myself yet, I must confess that the concealment is saying something to me. I seem to get in the biggest trouble in dealings with people about things that seems unimportant at the time they occur...often not worth mentioning. Later, these seemingly insignificant occurrences take on a life of their own, become major issues and I am at a loss explaining why I didn't mention them, "concealed" them in the first place. I find myself empathizing with Gawain on this one.

JO do you think Gawain considered the belt worth mentioning? Did Bercilak think the smelly fox pelt a worthy gift to Gawain? Why didn't he just leave it and come back and say it wasn't a great day on the hunt - nothing worth mentioning...but he didn't! The belt was the obvious fair exchange for the pelt!

If the acceptance of the belt was a "moment of weakness", then the concealment is a second moment of weakness, isn't it? As soon as he saw the fox, he should have handed over the belt, if it meant nothing to him. Why didn't he? Was it because he really believed the belt could protect him from a mortal blow? That would be strong motivation for concealment. And will he now also conceal the belt from the Green Knight? His pledge was to return alone with nothing but a weapon of his choice.

JO, all the poem says is that Gawain makes a full confession...from the greatest to the least sin. Do you suppose he does not believe this concealment to be a sin against God, worthy of confession...such as adultery would have been?

LJ, if you suspect that the Green Knight may be the "Godhead", what do you suspect is Bercilak's role? Don't answer this if you have already read Part IV!!!

If Gawain conceals the belt from the Green Knight, from "the Godhead", would this be a great sin?

Based on the Introduction in the Boroff's book, this poem was written at the time chivalry was fading out and Christian conversions were increasing. Could our poet have been combining the two cultures in Gawain's handling of the seduction? Accepting the advances of Lady Bertilak... not unusual in the age of chivalry since love in marriage was not common; refusing her advances would be a part of reverence for Mary.

Joan could you post the piece about the Pearl Poet you had included in the biblio? I cannot find it. Maybe that will shed some light for me on the message in this poem.

Joan, I think Gawain probably confessed keeping the belt (to his confessor -- a priest), but feared returning it to Bertilak because he really hoped it would protect him from the Green Knight. I think Bertilak presented the fox fur because 1)he wanted Gawain to be pushed to keep his pledge, and 2) because as a hunter he took more pride in the skill and endurance needed in the hunt than he did in the hunted object. Gawain will continue to conceal the belt when he encounters the Green Knight. IF he concealed it in confession, he probably would have felt guilty, and he doesn't, as far as I can tell. At any rate, such a concealment would never be considered as serious as adultry.
Many of the questions are better addressed after Part IV!

And when did we reach the point in our history where concealment of the truth is considered to be more of an aberration than adultery?

HaHaHa Joan I do not think we have unless you are in politics and trying to make the written word called law 'king of the mountain' rather then the intent of law called balanced justice and justice with compassion for those involved.

Joan, thank you for your kind words and yes I have a great piece I need to gather together tomarrow and post. It has bugged me the why, were, how, reason etc. for the Pearl Poet writting this piece. LJ alluded to the possible readers and I am anxious to share the historical and social context that the Pearl Poet was writting from.

Just think the Pearl Poet was writting about a time in history that took place as many years before as there are between our times and the times of the Pearl Poet! A period of 600 to 700 year spread.

And again Joan you sure do wonders with stretching and forming so much depth to all our 'sharings'. The use of the animal was magical as to the interpretation you brought to our reading.

Some thoughts on Chapter 3 before Milt wants the computer:

The descriptions are so good that I can just hear the clinking of armor, the clashing of swords, the hunt horns, the barking of the dogsl

Interesting idea: Are the four-line rhyming verses to be sung by a narrator or chorus?

How come the male deer were forbidden game? Weren't they worried about breeders for future hunts? Later the poet says they were after barren hinds and does. How could they be sure they were barren?

Perhaps the details of skinning and preparing the deer were ment to explain the process to future hunters.

After Gawain is absolved by the priest and "made as spotless as if doomsday was due on the morrow," he set forth with a clean slate to start all over again.

Charlotte

JOAN,

I haven't read part IV, but the potential symbolism is still too deep for my primitive allegorical thinking.

The one thing that keeps cropping up mentally, is the "Nature" symbolism of the "Green" knight and "Rebirth"

Best

One thing I keep thinking of was that the deer and the boar were beheaded, and what would have been the outcome of Sir Gawain with the Green Knight, if he had not acted as he did those two days?

Loma, I was mulling that over last night and decided that he would indeed have lost his head if he had given in to the host's wife. I have read the conclusion, but this is not explicitly stated. Also, Joan, in regard to deceit vs. adultry, the whole situation begins to feel like yesterday's news, literally. I agree, Charlotte, that the language brings the scenes to life, especially athe scenes where Gawain is being accoutered for his quest, the temptation scenes, and the hunt. Individual characters are brought to life visually. This is a gifted writer for any century or by any name.

Charlotte! Yes, the descriptions bring us right into the action, and the rhyming verses seem to lend themselves to song or chant, they do! There is so much going on that we must pause and marvel at the author! As JO puts it..."This is a gifted writer for any century or by any name."

I look forward to Barbara's sources which should help put the poem in historic and social context. Am fascinated by LJ'ssuggestion that the readership at the time may have been limited to the Clergy. They must have loved it!

Larry Benson's criticism gives some clues as to how the poem might have impressed those who heard it for the first time. I will give you some snippets of what I found.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is both a traditional romance and an alliterative poem
Old English poetry was composed for the harp and performed to its accompaniment, BUT Middle English verse was evidently composed for readers as well as hearers and seems to have been delivered without musical accompaniment.
The Middle English custom of alliterating unstressed syllables as in Sir Gawain shows that this verse was designed to appeal to the eye as well as the ear.
The Pearl poet considers alliterative verse a written form of poetry, but his insistence on oral transmission "with tongue" seems to reflect a transitional stage.
The transitional poets were not interested in imitating the oral poets, though they were deeply indebted to it.
To a sophisticated 14th century audience (?), the alliterative poem would have been astonishing.

Sooo, Charlotte's sensing that the rhymed quatrains would lend themselves to song may reflect the poet's acknowledgement of the traditional presentation of a romance poem.
Benson also has much to say about the poet's extraordinary use of synonyms to create a verbal image...that this is his own and distinguishes him from his contemporary, Chaucer. Charlotte comments on the descriptions which bring the action alive, and Benson adds to this:

"His accounts of hunts and banquets sparkle with as much sheer joy in the play of words as in the actions represented."

We seem to be looking at a poem very much like those of the oral romance tradition, but one intended to appeal to the reader with its play on words and alliteration. Now we want to know more about those readers!
But first, let's get back to the story! The poet has succeeded in involving his readers (us) in Gawain's confusion and concern regarding his fate at Green Chapel. He goes off with confidence that he has been absolved, made spotless, and sets forth with a clean slate, confident that he goes forth with no fatal imperfection or weakness. He apparently does not share our concern over the concealed girdle or Bercilak's involvement in the plot. Do we make too much of that which has just taken place?

LJ, sometimes I wonder if we are making a bit too much of the symbolism...perhaps your "primitive allegorical thinking" is right on the mark with the Green Knight simply a symbol of "rebirth", rather than an exacting, vindictive "Godhead"!

On to Part IV, for some answers...or perhaps just more questions!

Later!

Well, the Benson quote at the top says that "perfection is beyond our grasp." Perhaps we should view Gawain's lack of awareness of the concealment as "fault" as evidence of his own flawed humanity. He is certainly preoccupied with survival throughout the temptaitons and on his way to the Green Chapel. Has he experienced his final temptation, or does the question refer to the moment when he jerks away from the ax as it descends toward his neck?

Oh my, we have had another crash! Your lovely posts from this afternoon are gone forever! The new questions in the heading...gone too. I just downloaded a new Clipboard on which I plan to to back up all new headings and posts so we'll never have to start from scratch again!
Will try to rework the heading tonight and spend more time on the posting when I get home from work tomorrow!
So sorry about the lost work everyone!

Who was Gawain's guide? Wasn't he quite the tempter? Told Gawain to avoid certain death, that the evil, heartless beast had slain "chaplains, monks and priests" (better men than Gawain in the eyes of God) and would surely "strike him dead" without a thought. "Take another route in God's name!" Assured him that he would tell no one that Gawain had fled in fear. His name would be intact!

What was your reaction when Gawain forged on?..."God's will be done, amen."

I cheered aloud for him (though I knew he'd go)>

Would I go? Or would I tell myself that this was senseless and not worth certain death over such an issue... I am not sure. What does that say about my character? What does it say about Gawain's? What does it say about his readiness to meet death? Is he behaving like someone hiding a serious sin?

I think I posted something like this yesterday: the guide, the host and the Green Knight are all the same. Essays I've read interpreting the function and symbolism of the Green Knight suggest this. The identities are tangled in pre-Christian mythology and Gawain's need as a Christian knight to be virtuous, to complete his quest, to prove himself. More later? Or would my translator-critic's insights be helpful now?

(Questions 6, 7) As Bertilak/Green Knight explains, the feinted ax strokes recall the two occasions when Gawain kissed the wife of his host: The first day of temptation, he allows the single kiss when she accuses him of unchivalrous behavior in denying it. When the Green Knight raises his ax over Gawain's head, he feints once, and no more. No stroke is given, because Gawain is innocent of any wrong-doing on the occasion of the first temptation. The single kiss exchanged with his host's wife was given to his host when he returned from the hunt, as promised. The second day of temptation results in two kisses, one at greeting and one at parting. The Green Knight raises the ax a second time and feints two times. Because Gawain gave the kisses to the host as promised, he is innocent, so again he receives no cut from the ax. The day of the third temptation ends with Gawain accepting the girdle his hostess promises him will protect him from harm at the Green Chapel. When the Green Knight raises the ax the third time, he brings it down and slightly wounds Gawain's neck, because Gawain neglected to tell his host about the girdle the hostess gave him.
When Gawain sees his own blood on the snow, he is overjoyed, because the bargain is concluded: he suffered a single stroke from the Green Knight's weapon, but is nearly whole and totally able to defend himself.

The Green Knight tells about Morgan, (the witchy sister of Arthur), who put him up to this trial and test for Gawain. Gawain responds by noting that Adam, Samson and David were all "troubled by tricks" of women. He notes that it is no wonder he, an ordinary mortal, succumbed to a woman's suggestion. Are women the cause of man's downfall or the root of evil in the medieval mind?

Yes, and not only in the medieval mind. If you look at church, history, tradition and cause of sin the 'Loreli" or "Eve" in woman is blamed, as it is in Law. Remember how recently woman were 'the cause' of rape because of how we dressed, acted, or where we were and when (if during the night).

As I learned from the Carmilites in High School this attitude all started with Monica and Augustine. Following is some reasearch from my old High School Text by Herbert A. Deane.

St. Monica born of Christian parents in 333; died 387.Three children were born of an unhappy marriage, Augustine was the eldest.

Monica had been unable to secure baptism for her children, Augustine fell ill; in her distress she besought her husband to allow him to be baptized; he agreed, but on the boy's recovery withdrew his consent. Monica centers all her anxiety in Augustine; He is sent to Carthage to study, and here he "fell into grievous sin."

The sin - Augustine has a lover for 17 years and Monica insisted he not marry the girl who is not a christian. When he returns home he spoke heretical ideas. Now a widow, she drove him away from her table, but she has a vision and recalls him. Then, she went to a holy bishop, who consoled her with the now famous words, "the child of those tears shall never perish." She then pursues her long journey following him first, to Rome and then to Milan to convert him to the church. " Here she found St. Ambrose and through him she ultimately sees Augustine yield, after seventeen years of resistance."

It is well documented that "Saint" Augustine's attitude toward sex is negative, and at times he is morbidly preoccupied with the subject. "His sexual career before his conversion had been extended and turbulent; when he speaks of the violence of sexual emotions and of the misery that fills the life of the man whose sexual appetite is an overpowering force, his thoughts are based upon his memories of his own lust therefore all sexual activity becomes completely sinful."

In his treatises on marriage and concupiscence he makes it plain that "virginity is the highest service to God and bearing children is only good, provided the concupiscence is restrained and sex is only engaged in for the purpose of generating offsprings. That sexual intercourse between husband and wife, even if strictly limited to the purpose of procreation, is permissable but, is a sin. Sex degrades a man, constitutes original sin by the lure of Adam by Eve and all children, with the exception of Christ who was immaculately conceived, are conceived in lust and are therefore born in sin."

On and on, and so you have the beginning of the church treating woman as second class citizens. Prior to Augustine, woman in the church were important messangers, given status, respect. (Mary, His mother; Martha and Mary; Mary Magdeline who travels to France and starts centers for the church in the same way as Peter and Paul) When during the 5th century, after Augustine, the church desided which gospels were to be included all the woman's gospels were excluded.

Augustine visited and tought from Shrewsbury and therefore, had an influence on the church in England. As we know during medieval time the church was the center and only power, even above any king.

One wonders whether the "Guide" might not have been the "Snake in the grass" (Garden)?. The symbolism of Morgan (Biblical) may well have been the temptress Eve. (Chauvinistic, but agreeable with then current attitudes).

Of course the whole thing might be interpreted as a survey of the idea of "Reciprocal Altruism" in the development of human society.

WOW

Best

Since, I'm heavy into reading Thomas Mann at the moment, I'm probably lugging some Mann perspective here: Gawain's duality is that his greatest virtue (his love of life) is also his greatest flaw (in the context of the Green Castle - Pride). At bottom he loves his own life more than "loyalty" to duty or the rules of the game wherein he comes up "short." Thus he has taken the life saving silk from Bertilak's wife. Although Gawain's first reaction is anger at the situation he finds himself in and shame and disgust with himself - The Green Knight does not blame him for this minor fault. The silk becomes a gift of remembrance and a reminder of his true nature. Gawain and the Knights are humans who strive for perfection but must fall short - for they are human after all. This places them a rung below perfection, below Gods. But the silk remains a symbol of their exalted nature. A symbol of their mandate to serve Man, and thereby serve God. And a not so subtle reminder of the foolish sin of Pride ("the taint of a fault"). For He that would assume to serve God only, does not serve man at all, and is the true selfish, prideful one (Eh, Elmer?) Gawain remembers Adam, Solomon, Samson, and David. Love man ("love them well and believe them not") but worship only God.

In the words of that great American Poet, Richard Zimmerman: "Don't follow leaders, watch for parkin' meters."

Amen.

Charlie

P.S. For another story where a 'flaw' is a prerequisite to spiritual growth see The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. For a moral tale on transcending the essential nature of man to a life dedicated to "humanism" see The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. For a another tale where a man discovers himself through an episode that can be described as one long 'dream' or 'other reality', see The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. For another parable of lust and temptation, see - you guessed it!! Can we assume that a lot about the actions of Gawain owe a great deal to his 'realm', his upbringing? You can assume, and you would not be wrong, the same things about the 'hero' of another book which you might want to read for February. Can you guess to which book I might be referring?? In fact, most of Gawains' actions, because of 'who he was', could not have been otherwise. And yes……. Were you fascinated by the number THREE in Gawain? Well, substitute the number SEVEN…. And life-death, bound up together, and the concept of being reborn…. Well, yet again… So come on over when the time comes (and don't forget to bring your "baldric's with ya')

Part Four...our hero reaches the end of his journey to face his destiny. Once again the poet walks us through brilliant descriptions of the landscape and the place where the Green Knight descends. The language is clear and compelling enough for me to see it in my mind's eye as well as seeing it on a movie screne. I'm not sure I will remember this story, but for sure scenes from it will return to me often.

Gawain, especially after the Guide tells him of the beliefs held regarding the Green Chapel, does feel danger,but not 'great' danger. After all this is what he has expected for a year.

The three blows can be related to the three hunts and seductions. It would be easy to identify the similiarities in the pairs. The poet is indeed clever. I puzzled over the emphasis he puts on Gawain seeing his blood on the ground, until I realized he reacts the same way as when he is tempted to take the green sash...surprise.

In the Max notes: "The major theme of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the hero's passage to maturity. He passes three major tests. First he shows courage and initiative when he volunteers to take the place of Arthur.... Second, he shows discipline,self-control and honor when he refuses the advances of Lady Bertilak. Third, he faces death when he keeps his appointment with the Green Knight." It is when he realizes his human weakness for taking the sash and not including it in the report to Bertilak, and then seeing his own blood on the ground that Gawain grows up. Until that point he was invincible and able to adhere to all rules without weakening...Ah! Youth...

In another analysis Morgan le Fay: "Her stated purpose suggests that she expected Arthur her half-brother to take up the challenge which would bring him to Hautdesert Castle. There is no way to tell."

What is the message for me? First I thought I'd take it at face value...a beautifully written, at times hilarious tale of youth. But I didn't have time to post it so it perked for a few days. Now I think it a satire on the stupidity of chivalry. The poet really pokes fun at the folly of offering one's own life for that of a leader, makes a farce of refusing a woman's advances, show the brutality of hunting animals, and then tells of the dangerous game between two men for no reason other than sport. Chivalry was on the wane at the time this poem was written. It would make sense that a poet would see the obvious reasons.

I do think though that with further study, a case could be made that this was meant to be an allegory of the Christian religion.

On to the follies of 700 years later.

Anyone heard of a trilogy by Gillian Bradshaw, The Life of Gwalchmai??

Hawk of May (1980) Kingdom of Summer (1981) In Winter's Shadow (1982)

Charlie

Morgan le Fay: I see her as the representative of paganism; she stands for those things that are in opposition to Christian beliefs. She is "well versed in the occult, cunning in magic". According to John Gardner she represents the perversion of 1.the metaphysical order,2.the natural order,3.the social order. She represents the demonic. I see her more as representative of those powerful forces in nature that we do not understand.

According to the poet, her actual plot was to kill Guinevere:
"She worked this charm on me to rob your wits
In the hope that Queen Quinevere might be shocked to her grave
At the sight of my game and the ghastly man who spoke
With his head held high in his hand before all the table."

Morgan is Arthur's half-sister and I'm trying to remember if she had some special hatred for him because I had the feeling when reading part one that Arthur was the real target; but not of the Green Knight/Bertilak because he knew he would end up killing Arthur which he doesn't want to do. You can almost visibly see his relief when Gawain comes forward. I think it is Bertilak/Green Knight who has his wife give the magic girdle; afterall he is not at all surprised that Gawain has it.

Why do I think Arthur was the one who was supposed to give and take the blow? Because of Morgan's plot to kill Guinevere. Only seeing her husband Arthur "kill" the Green Knight and then seeing the Knight still alive and knowing at that moment that her husband was doomed to die after a year, that would have been the death of Guinevere.

I don't think the poet allows us to judge Gawain as harshly as he judges himself. I see mitigating circumstances. yes he seemed to break his promise, but he only promised to take the single return blow; he did not promise to let it kill him. Gawain sees himself as a coward but I do not because in spite of his fear he did what he promised, and perhaps his only "sin" was in believing in the magic girdle.

The more one looks into this poem the more one discovers.

Nellie

Nellie, I agree with your last statement...and will only add, the more posts one reads here, the more one discovers and learns!

I just came in with my post in which I wondered about Morgan and you certainly came up with the answers! Thanks for the insights, Nellie!
Wow! that was my reaction too, LJ! I was not at all prepared for the outcome. Reciprocal altruism indeed!

That Pearl poet fellow was playing with us right to the end, as he painted Gawain's descent to Chapel Green...as kathleen describes with "clear, compelling description" - placing Gawain at the 'gates of Hell':

"Can this be the Chapel Green?"
Here might be the devil himself be seen
Saying matins at black midnight."

"Now I feel it is the Fiend, in my five wits
That has tempted me to this tryst, to take my life."

But no, wait! This is merely Gawain's imagination. The FIEND in GREEN, honing his ax blade, salutes him: "God love you, Gawain!"

Not a fiend, not "the Godhead", but Bercilak!!! Yes, JO, let's hear what your translator-critic has to say about the symbolism here.

Now, if we were surprised, just imagine the impact on the 14th century audience! We know this is a transition piece between tradition and romance, but what a departure from previous Arthurian tales of chivalry and morality! Bercilak laughs at him, despite the fact Gawain is wearing a love-token from his wife; the Round Table knights respond with "gay laughter" to his tale!

I'll agree with kathleen, this is a satire on chivalry, BUT, I think it is also a defense of the virtues of chivalry at the same time. A tricky piece of writing, no?

So, the ugly old lady was someone to be reckoned with after all! She set up the whole temptation to test...the rumored excess of virtuous pride in her brother, Arthur's court? Did she expect he would be the one to accept the Green Knight's challenge? We never did answer why the GK seemed to prefer Gawain's response over Arthur's!
WAIT! Nellie's previous post answers these questions for us!

And did Gawain, despite the minor lapse, prove himself...and Arthur's court worthy...and not guilty of the sin of pride? kathleen's Max notes tell us that he passes three tests: courage, honor, and admission of his fault. These three, especially the third should satisfy Morgan!
So, it was Morgan and Bercilak's wife who tempted Gawain, attempting to bring about his fall. Was it Jo who asked if women are the cause of man's downfall, the root of all evil? Barbara's background information tells us that this is the belief of the powerful, influential church at the time. Our poet refers to Eve, Delilah, etc and the chance at power over God and death...but then, he departs from this! He gives Gawain the power to resist that Adam and Samson never seemed to have! These ladies mainly test, but don't press. Do you detect a difference?

Barbara, I overlooked the contrast between Gawain's surprise when presented with the silk token and Gawain's surprise at seeing his blood in the snow. And how about the surprised fox, who thought he had avoided the hunters?

JO, those were great contrasts between the three temptations and the three ax blows. Would you say the lady's girdle provided protection from a mortal blow after all?

What is the message here? Minor human failings will be overlooked on Judgement Day, as long as the over-all record is good! Enjoy life, as Charlie says, don't take yourself too seriously as Gawain did! And yet, didn't the fact that he took honor seriously lead to his salvation?
Charlie, am I saying the same thing you did...Gawain's greatest virtue was also his greatest flaw.... I like that - "Love man, but worship only God." It's the love for man that gets us women in trouble...you are so adorable!

Your enticing advertisement for Magic Mountain is so tempting...I can see all of the Great Books becoming absorbed in that one! All the more reason to choose something light, or at least humorous for Great Books as an antidote!

Keep on the lookout for some good, humorous 20th century choices...please? And tell more about the books you just mentioned, Charlie!

This story seems to me to culminate in the green girdle -- or rather what it stands for: Don't have pride in perfection, because you're not perfect. Quoting from Tolkein's translation, these words seem to stand out. To the Green Knight, Sir Gawain says:

...as a token of my trespass I shall turn to it often
when I ride in renown, ruefully recalling
the failure and the frailty of the flesh so perverse,
so tender, so ready to take taints of defilement.

Back at King Arthur's Court:

It was torment to tell the truth ....
"This is the band ....
This is the grief and disgrace I have got for myself....
and needs must I wear it while in the world I remain;
for a man may cover his blemish, but unbind it he cannot"

And a rather unexpected response:

...this law made ... that whoso belonged to the Table,
every knight of the Brotherhood, a baldric should have,
a band of bright green obliquely about him,
and this for love of that knight as a livery should wear.
For that was reckoned the distinction of the Round Table
and honour was his that had it evermore after.

I'm so glad I kept coming back to the discussion! The flaw of pride in Gawain and the good-natured acceptance of humanity with its imperfection is demonstrated when Arthur's knights adopt the Green Baldric. It is that thought for me that makes the story nearly perfect (can't have perfection)! Yes, Joan, I agree that the satrire on chivalry is light-hearted because the celebration of its virtue is sincere. And the lady's green silk did its work because it betokened Gawain's humanity and kept him from the sin of pride! Wonderful! The contributions of everyone to this discussion are some of the best I've seen in the not-quite a year I've been involved with SeniorNet.

How about a bit more help from the pereceptive, well-read participants? Does anyone remember Morgan le Fey , Arthur's half-sister, as tempting him to sexual entanglement withher in an Arthurian work? Literally, that would mean she is jealous of Guinivere in the mundane sense of that passion,; I think the usual interpretation of her is that she is comissioned by evil forces to destroy the Round Table and Arthur's reign (same thing). I may have read about the two in a Mary Stewart novel!?! And what is the genesis of each half-sibling? Uther fathered Arthur with Ygraine, the Welsh queen whose husband he kills in battle. Who are the parents of the half-sister? Arthur and ...? Ygraine and...? I'll try to look this up, but maybe someone remembers! I'll try to get back with Brian Stone's information about Green Knight.

Jo, Tolkein's version is not much help about just who Morgan is, or rather, I do not understand it. The Green Knight tells Sir Gawain:

she is indeed thine own aunt, Arthur's half-sister,
daughter of the Duchess of Tintagel on whom doughty Sir Uther
after begat Arthur. ...

If the same father - Uther, and the same mother - Duchess of Tintagel, where does the half-sister part come in??

Yet after all Morgan has done, and it is explained why she has done it, the Green Knight says to Sir Gawain:

I urge thee in earnest, to thine aunt return!
In my hall make merry!

No wonder Sir Gawain responded "Thanks, but no, thanks" or words to that effect.

. . . because he still doesn't trust him, or the force he represents! Uther and Ygraine, variously referred to as "Duchess" or "Queen," depending who we are reading, are the parents (unwillingly, on her part) of Arthur. The forced conception takes place as part of Uther's raid upon the Welsh king's terrritory and castle. I think in one story (?)Morgan is also the daughter of Ygraine and her husband, the Welsh king Uther kills. This makes her Arthur's older half-sister. Other scholars (such as Brian Stone) connect her with Celtic godesses (Matrona, Marne) and Breton mermaids who lure fishermen to their watery deaths or to their own submarine palaces; they are called Morgans. She is also connected to Welsh lake fairies who ensnare and then desert human lovers.

In his analysis, Brian Stone calls the Green Knight the "common enemy of man," using Macbeth's reference to Satan. (Macbeth states that he has given his "eternal jewel," his soul, to the devil; Gawain holds on to his by his steadfast if imperfect grip on TRUTH, in this case good faith, which he keeps in two ways: rejecting the advances of his hostess and presenting himself for the reciprocal axe blow at the Green Chapel.) Satan means adversary, and the Green Knight certainly functions as Gawain's adversary, but he is a complex one in his origins and functions.
At first, he presents himself as the moral critic of Arthur's court when the knights do not respond to his challenge, one which chivalrous knights should take up at once.
Stone says he combines in his persona two medieval types, one an outcast and the other a rural deity. " The wild man of the woods, the 'wodwose', was often an outlaw who had taken to the woods and there developed sub-human habits and the fierce unpredictable behaviour of a wild beast. The green man, on the other hand, was a personification of spring, a mythological supernatural being who persists to this day in English folk dance and in the name of many pubs." The wildman is the traditional enemy of the feudal order, the opponent of the Romance knight. Green is "the colour of truth . . . in the first great English morality play, the Castle of Perseverance, . . . written within a few years of this poem."
"Truth-bringing is certainly the main achievement of the Green Knight, however diverse his activities and antecedents...."

Stone treats the story according to the two plot strands: the challenge to the beheading game and the Temptations, and says that "it is from the precise point of interaction between the two plots (the encounter at the Green Chapel) that the final significance of the Antagonist emerges; he is a judge possessing something like divine authority, who pronounces unerringly from a moral standpoint determined by the complementary ideals of chivalry and Christianity. . . . He pinpoints Gawain's fault, confesses him in his shame and guilt, defines his penance and declares that he is absolved. It is the highest and least enigmatic manifestation of this many-sided character."

Stone says that the single line dispatching the Green knight " to wherever he would elsewhere" expresses "a sense of the continuing and unpredictable operation of the Faerie," and preserves the Green Knight 's mystery as a natural force.
These are the bits of the essay which suggest the pagan and Christian elements the poet draws upon in designing this elusive character.

Jo great research - through the research at Christmas time we learned that the Winter Sotice traditions are truer to our traditional celabration of Christmas. Your research is also saying, the pagan and Christian are all mixed and overlapping in this story. Seems to me the Pearl Poet is continuing the work of the Church and making Catholicism palatable to the Druids and others practicing the ancient religions by appealing to their Anglo-Saxon pride in the story of England and Arthur as written by Geoffry of Monmouth.

Geoffry of Monmouth wrote the Camalot/Arthur story in 1136, invoking a sense of honor and glory to the British past. The bodies of King Arthur and Guinevere were reported to have been exhumed from a grave at Glastonbury Abbey in 1191. In 1351 the English remove some of the Pope's power and in 1376 an Oxford don, John Wyclif calls for Church reform. Later he is expelled from Oxford because of his opposition to certain Church doctrines.

This story does have so many layers and one could be that it expresses the thinking and beliefs of a trained Papast mind that either, by virtue of his training expresses Church thinking or is supporting the Church and encouraging support and conversions by those who read the poem.

Monks and nuns were the keepers of knowledge. Although theology and spirituality dominated a monastic's life, the books collected in the library included histories and biographies, epic poetry, science and mathematics.

Until the 12 Century almost all scholarship took place inside the monastery. Occasionally a high-born lord would learn letters from his mother. Not all young men were suited to the monastic life, at first most were forced into the mold, eventually some of the monasteries maintained a school outside their cloisters for young men not destined for the cloth. As time passed these secular schools grew larger and more common and evolved into universities. Though still supported by the Church, they were no longer part of the monastic world.

Univeristy Collage at Oxford was established 1249 followed by Balliol in 1263.
Cambridge University is founded in 1209

Thanks, Barbara! Your own contributions have been priceless. It helps so much to have soome of the historical changes reviewed and synthesized. It makes everything clearer. I was thinking about the "mix" again -- the Christianity and pre-Christian beliefs -- and began to relate it to the modern cultures in which people practice Catholicism and voodoo! The overlapping seems natural: when a group has believed something for centuries, how can they be expected to abandon those beliefs and practices totally? Bringing two sets of beliefs and practices together, seeking and finding a comfortable amalgam of the ideas, especially prayers, ceremonies which give comfort and support, seems very human to me. I think it is a primitive, emotional response based upon profound need to have supernatural support.

JO! Barbara! Thank you so much! Sensational contributions to our understanding of the meaning and the impact this poem must have had on the poet's audience at the time! Perhaps not as shocking as first suspected?

The Green Knight's role becomes clearer with each post. It appears the poet has carefully constructed his ambiguous character..."common enemy of man (satan)" and then, "the divine authority...who pinpoints Gawain's fault, confesses him, defines his penance and declares him absolved."

Wonderful contrast!
And the blending of the Christian and pre-Christian beliefs, the magic and Catholicism goes far in explaining the comfortable amalgam of ideas which we wonder at today...

I found it interesting to note that our Pearl poet changed the time of the Challenge and Beheading from the Easter and Pentecost Sunday as they appeared in the earlier French Caradoc version to the winter solstice, Christmas and New Year's. Perhaps this explains the theme of "rebirth and renewal of spring still present here.

Benson has some interesting things to say concerning Morgan La Fay.

"Morgan appears too late in the action, and Guenevere's role is too slight to justify the importance she suddenly assumes at the end of the adventure. In Caradoc she is far more important...However the poet's perfunctory handling of Morgan's motives shows only that he was less concerned with integrating her into the action of the poem...But Morgan becomes a convenient scapegoat for the potential evil in the scheme against Gawain and the court. Since she barely appears in the action of the poem, we do not become concerned with her ...since she is the evil plotter we can blame her for everything and accept without difficulty the good-natured conclusion, however contrary to custom it is.
This unconventional conclusion in the Gawain-poet's most important modification of the beheading tale and almost all his other additions serve to lend significance to the equality at which Gawain and the Green Knight finally arrive."

Somewhere else Benson pointed out that the discussion of Morgan's relationship to Arthur, and then Arthur to Gawain emphasized that Gawain had Morgan's evil in his blood, part of his nature, but by triumphing over that evil, good triumphed over evil and Morgan was defeated. This was an important element in a romance poem.

I enjoyed the symmetry of the final lines in which the honored knights of the Roundtable take their place in history with the bold Brutus who first came to England after the siege of Troy and all between ...

HONI SOYT QUI MAL PENCE

SirGawain and the Green Knight - Part IV

Part IV begins with an admonishment to an audience to be silent and listen to the story. There is much info. about his getting dressed in the finest raiment. Lovely detail about all his beautiful clothes, but he is too much into making an impressive appearance, me thinks. He wraps the lady’s girdle around his waist because the green color seems very gay against the royal red cloth.

A servant shows him the way through a moor that drips with mist where “Each hill had a hat, a mist-cloak right huge.” * * * “until it was time for the sun to be springing.” (nice poetic lines.) When they reached a snowy hill the servant tries to dissuade him from going on. Out of his love for his master, he describes the formidable foe Gawain faces. He may certainly be killed.

Take a different road, the servant says and go to another country where Christ may reward you. He will hurry home and not give away Gawain’s secret. But Gawain tells him that he fears being a coward who could not be pardoned. He will find the chapel and accept whatever his fate.

The servant then says that since “you wish to bring down your own doom, “ I cannot stay with you. He gives him further directions and gallops off.

Gawain proceeds on his way and finds the ill kempt chapel. It is “the cursedest chapel that I ever came to.” He hears the sound of the axe being sharpened. The green knight is dressed just as before. His head is miraculously back in place He approaches without effort, does not wade in the water, but hops over it and reminds Gawain of their agreement. Gawain says he will harbor no grudge and reminds the knight that he is allowed only one stroke.

As the ax descends, Gawain shrinks in fear.. The knight is shocked. You were never a coward before. Though my head fell at my feet, I never flinched. You are afraid before you even feel anything.

Gawain promises him he won’t flinch again. “Yet cannot I may head, If it fall down restore.” He seems to doubt the Christian belief in Resurrection.

The knight hints that Gawain’s neck may recover from the cut. Gawain becomes fiercely angry, which is not in the tradition of the knights. The knight then with a hateful expression on his face, gives Gawain only a slight cut on the neck. He then challenges the knight to fight, since he has not kept his word to use only one stroke. The knight then explains he has given the one stroke and will not strike again. He had prepared to strike twice, in payment for the kisses Gawain enjoyed with the knight’s wife, but he had held back. He then tells him that the girdle he is wearing belongs to him and that he and his wife had planned her advances. It was a test they had devised for Gawain who seemed as precious as a “pearl compared to white peas.”

The knight goes on to say that compared to the other knights you show some insufficiency and lack of loyalty. Gawain is sunk in disgrace. He curses himself for his cowardice and for coveting the woman. He flings the girdle, confesses his sin and admits that his coveting lead to cowardice. The knight then laughs and says you are now purged of all offense as if you have never sinned in your life. I welcome you back to my court. But Gawain declines graciously and blames it all on “women’s wiles,” as had been women’s fate throughout history. Yet he will keep the girdle to remind of his sin.

He then asks the knight who he is. The knight reveals that he is Bercilak. The test which was conceived by the enchantress Morgan le Fay who is King Arthur’s half sister. It was to find out if the round table was as great as the people said it was. It was also to daunt the Queen enough to cause her to die of fear at seeing the Green Knight holding his head in hand. (She must be the old lady with dewlaps who appeared at the beginning of the tale.) Isn’t this evil intent, or is it just a joke?

The ancient lady still lives at home there, he says and invites him to come back to the castle, rejoin the company and make merry with them.

Gawain hastens back to Arthur, given his life by God’s grace. He goes on to have many adventures. The cut on his neck heals and he wears the girdle to show that has the stain of sin. He is welcomed by everyone, tells his story and shows his wound, admitting that it been given him for his deceit. And he bears his shame.for cowardice and coveting, for no one can hide his faults. He must forever wear the green sash to remind him of his sins. The knights all comfort him and decide they will all wear bands of green in honor of the hero..

The story concludes with the Latin phrase. “Hony Soyt Qui Mal Pence,” which means “Shame be to the man who has evil in his mind.” This is the motto of the Order of the Garter, founded ca. 1350: apparently a copyist of the poem associated this order with the one founded to honor Gawain.. (This note from the Norton Anth. of Eng. Lit. Volume I, 1962)

Hope you are not bored by all this. I had great fun doing it.

Charlotte

Just a thought: I find that at the end of the story Gawain is more human than at the beginning. At the start of the poem Gawain is almost inhumanly "perfect", but the revelation of his fault, or maybe even faults, makes him much more human. It is also interesting to note that the Green Knight too is more human at the end; he goes from being a creature of magic to a kind man.

And doesn't the discovery Gawain makes about himself parallel in a way the discoveries we make about ourselves as we reach adulthood? I think we all have a time in our lives when we consider ourselves as pretty well perfect; but things that happen in our lives soon dissuade us of that notion.

I enjoyed this discusion and much liked all the interesting input by all of you...Nellie

About Morgan le Fay:

My Norton Anthology says she was Arthur's half sister, an enchantress who sometimes abetted him, sometimes made trouble for him. Bercilak says she lives with him. He further says she can bring down anyone who suffers from the sin of pride. She is also Gawain's aunt and Tintagel's duchess's "whom Uther made later the mother of Lord Arthur. Certainly a complicated relationship.

"I beg thee sir," says Bercilak," therefore, come back to thine aunt"

Charlotte

Charlotte! Bored? Not at all! Your views are a breath of fresh air...and so happy that you enjoyed doing it!

You saw Gawain's escort as a loving servant, concerned for his master's survival at Chapel Green, rather than another form of Bercilak/Morgan's temptation plot. Perhaps this is how the Pearl poet saw him too. I prefer your view to mine...I saw him an evil tempter, offering Gawain an easy way out and was relieved when Gawain turned down his offer of another route and promise not to tell...

I was interested in your description of the "cursedest chapel"... What did you make of this evil place? Was it supposed to be hell, or hell's gates? You mentioned the water the Knight jumped over...do you remember the water was described as "boiling"? I took that as another clue to the fires of hell. I would have thought that Gawain's test would take place on a neutral field, as opposed to this hellish spot! Does it mean that Gawain was very close to damnation? I am still having a hard time figuring out the meaning of this scene, especially after learning of the way Bercilak/Green Knight/God viewed his 'sin'. Is he saying that Gawain's real sin is pride, false pride...and that is what his trial is all about? If he hadn't confessed and atoned, he would have not survived the blow? Had he not admitted his human weakness, the Knight would have delivered the fatal blow?
My Benson notes indicate that the traditional French Morgan exhibits evil intent toward Guinevere and Arthur, but our Pearl poet seems to refer to Morgan's history simply to explain Bercilak/Green Knight's role and she emerges here as a "friend", just interested in testing the character of Arthur's Court. Indeed, Gawain is invited to come back to the castle and party with her. But he is still cringing with guilt, and interested only in going home and facing the music, Arthur's dismay, the knights' disdain....
That is so interesting..."Hony Soit Qui Mal Pence", the motto of the Order of the Garter! Will research this further when I get on-line.

Nellie I really think the ideal knight at the start was right out of the traditional version of the tale, and the flawed human Gawain is the Pearl poet's contribution...that and the element of humor, unheard of before this! I enjoyed your role in this discussion. Of course the element of mysticism drew you in, but I really hope you will join us in our next venture-your vantage point is not only interesting, but important!

But what is our next venture?

Joan, I'm all for joinin the On-line group to do "Magic Mountain." In fact I think we should take 6-8 weeks to do it justice. Kathleen

Joan: Is he saying that Gawain's real sin is pride, false pride...and that is what his trial is all about? If he hadn't confessed and atoned, he would have not survived the blow? Had he not admitted his human weakness, the Knight would have delivered the fatal blow?
He doesn't confess ...not to the Green Knight. The Green Knight/Bertilak explains to Gawain that because he was straightforward about the excahange of winnings after the first two nights of temptation, he received no injury or destruction from the ax. The nick was given for the deception after the third night, re the green silk or girdle, as my translation calls it. The Green Knight/Bertilak told his wife to tempt Gawain, and, of couse, he also knows about the silk. Because Gawain kept it a secret, he's nicked in the neck. I also wonder if the real sin is the pride rather than the deception. The theme of necessary imperfection in human nature is evident in the conclusion.
I think the gloomy, foggy, craggy setting is straight out of fairyland. Love that line,Charlotte ..."Each hill had a hat...." I can always imagine the setting crowned with fog when I read it.

My encyclopedia of symbols says; Water is the source of all potentialities in existence; the source and grave of all things in the universe;the first form of matter. All waters are symbolic of the Great Mother and associated with birth, the feminine principle, the universal womb...are equated with the continual flux of the manifest world; water always dissolve, abolish, purify, wash away and regenerate; water is associated with the moisture and circulatory movement of blood and the sap of life as opposed to the dryness and static condition of death

Running water is ’water of life’ or ‘living water’.

Crossing water is to change from one ontological state (state of being), or plane, to another.

Water and fire are the two conflicting elements which will ultimately penetrate each other and unite; they represent all contraries in the elemental world. In a state of conflict they are the heat and moisture necessary for life, but ‘burning water’ is the union of opposites. Fire and water are also associated with the two great principles, the Sky Father and the Earth Mother...

As I recall my catechism, Baptism can be by water, blood, or fire. With wide eyes we heard of the Saints that were baptized by their martyrdom - blood - and with classroom chatter of awe mixed in fantasy we dwelt on the concept of people in a burning building actually being baptized.

Since the water was boiling I would venture to say Gawain was crossing into a realm where both God in Heaven and Morgan Le Fay, representing the religion of temptation, the Earth, will fight for Gawain’s soul.

Morgan Le Fay Recently purchased ‘the Arthurian Companion’ by Phyllis Ann Karr. Phyllis Ann Karr says; Morgan is the elder half-sister of Arthur. Problem - most of the bad blood between Guenever and Morgan is written by Malory. At the time of the writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory had not written his accounts of the Arthur legend. Ms Karr only refers to Morgan appearing as an old woman and, her explination; if she could give Bertilak the appearance of the Green Knight, so she could giver herself the appearance of age.

There is another story of Sir GAwain meeting his future wife as an old hag that turns into a beautiful damsel at night. He is given the choice when he would like his wife to be fat, old and ugly vs. beautiful. The story ends happily ever after with the perfecto choice of beauty at night that is shared only between the two of them.

In one of my many readings, since embarking on Sir Gawain said; woman often preferred to be old hags or disguised themselves as old hags so they could learn the true understanding of the love extended, since a woman was property, bartered and sold between men during the middle ages.

Barbara:

Congratulations!. Congratulations! at having won top honors as being the leading Real Estate Agent in your state. You also deserve top honors for contributing so much to Books and Literature.. How do you find time to do it all?

Charlotte

Charlotte - thank You for your kindness and congrats. But, Charlotte, as great,exciting and fun that this has all been it is top in my office of over 30 agents not top in the State. This reminds me of the telephone game we played as kids and then, we learned how easy it is to share what we think we hear. It was fun and games then and still makes me laugh when it happens to us as adults. Thanks again Charlotte, I have been basking in everyone's good words.

Barbara wrote: "Morgan is the elder half-sister of Arthur. Problem - most of the bad blood between Guenever and Morgan is written by Malory. At the time of the writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory had not written his accounts..." Interesting.

I do not see the Green Knight as the Green Man. The Green Man is depicted variously, with hair that turns into leaves, or twigs and leaves growing out of his tongue or ears or whatever.

The Green Knight was described at Camelot as a head taller than the tallest. That in itself could be intimidating, but some of the time he presented a genial aspect.

Sir Gawain was certainly a staunch character to ignore the words of his guide and to face the dismal aspect of the Green Chapel, the sounds, and the appearance of the Green Knight with the axe with the razor-sharp edge. Was the blade of the axe four feet long?? Was all this a bit of further testing, as was the invitation to come back to his castle? At least to me the invitation seems a bit suspect - to know the aunt who wished Camelot ill and to be again around his wife who was fairer than Gwenevere, since Gawain, though following the knightly code, liked the ladies.

Hello again Knights:

Joan and Jo have the same idea about Gawain’s false pride. Their posts on this were almost identical and right on target. I agree with you both that Gawain is a victim of pride. It is evident in the careful attention he pays to his gorgeous clothes. Also of course, he does not want to appear to be a coward He seems to be concerned about the good opinion of his peers.

With regard to the servant : I think it is unusual for him to step out of his role and dare to advise his lord. But he does it out of love, swears to God’s holiness and would not take a chance on committing a sin by lying. Gawain tells him that if he, Gawain, proved to be a coward he could not receive a pardon. We know that pride is one of the seven deadly sins. And if I am not wrong, it is probably the deadliest one of all. .

The water is boiling, (or perhaps only gives a hint of boiling as a warning of what could follow), but the mound seems to me to be like a dead place, rather than hell -fire. The deadness and ugliness may be a warning to our knight who has fallen victim to pride. He is used to elegance and beauty in his surroundings and cannot see virtue in a chapel, which though dedicated to God has none of decorative appurtenances he is used to. He is too concerned about how he appears to other people and has put too much emphasis on material things.

The Green Knight seems to float above the earth and the water and the ax “on the stone set and stalked on” beside him. Perhaps Morgan le Fay is responsible for creating this illusion.

When the Green Knight tells Gawain “I never flinched, but you are afraid,” perhaps he is implying that Gawain does not believe in the hereafter which is promised to true believers in Christianity.

After the knight withholds striking a second time, Gawain erupts in fury. He reminds the knight that he is allowed only one blow and takes his shield from his back, puts it in front and prepares to fight. He tells the knight that he is the.one who is afraid, that’s why he continues to threaten Gawain.

The knight explains why he has twice held back from striking the blow. You fulfilled our agreement by coming to meet me, so I held off the first time. I feinted the second time for the morning you kissed my wife and took kisses due only to me. You flinched the third time so that’s when I struck the blow. It was the single blow he was allowed.

Gawain confesses his human weakness to the knight and admits that he is shamed and sunk in despair for his coveting and cowardice. A knight should be generous and loyal he says, but he has been faulty and afraid. The knight behaves like a priest and absolves him. “You are purged of offense as though you have never sinned in your life,” he says.

There is so much in this that the more I study, the more I find. The message I get from the Pearl poet is that other people may have good intentions to us. Though they may sometimes appear manipulative, they are human. If we reveal our own human weaknesses to them, they can understand and may try to help. The servant tries, the Green Knight tries. The King and Queen kiss him and “many knights drew near to greet him.” Gawain tells his story and admits that he, himself, is entirely to blame. He shows the nick on his neck and the sash he wears as a baldric to show the stain of his sin. He admits to deceit, cowardice and coveting. “To the knight then the King gave comfort and the court too.” They welcome him back into their midst and they all make merry. Continued rereading really makes it come alive.

Love to you all, Charlotte

Joan:

Maybe we should do Moliere's THE MISANTHROPE.

Charlotte

Have the days gotten shorter? My husband assures me that the opposite it true, but I just don't have time for half the things I want to do! Could it be that I am slowing down?

I have a few more thoughts on that Green guy, the elf and the giant, Loma, but am on my way to work. 7 hrs. of it!!!!!
Your Moliere suggestion is a good one for humor, Charlotte! Will you post it in the nominations site? ...right after this one in the Books & Lit menu. Three things have stalled the choice of the next GB. Someone in the present company is responsible for the next BC choice, Magic Mountain! I have fallen into it and am afraid it has taken all my attention and energy from GB for the time being. Many of us are going to spend February with this one.

And I am afraid my wish to find humor in the Great Books AND to spend the next year reading 20th century authors, has created a very short list . So, we will go back to the drawing board with that plan. Will bring it up tonight. I think we are going to have to go with one OR the other with each choice. Moliere would certainly satisfy the humor.
Will look at the situation in the Great Books Upcoming ce soir!

Au resevoir!