Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Pentangle and courtly love)
Introduction
In the late 14th century, an anonymous contemporary of the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer composed four long poems in an obscure Midlands dialect of Medieval English. All four poems survive in a single manuscript, the Cotton Nero A x, which is housed in the British Library.
Three of the poems "Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness" treat explicitly religious themes that demonstrate the poet's familiarity with Medieval piety and suggest some knowledge of Medieval learning. The fourth poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, tells the story of one of King Arthur's knights, Sir Gawain, who sets out from the Arthurian court to seek not the Holy Grail but, rather, an almost certain ...
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at the royal court of a still-young King Arthur, the knights and ladies have just at down to tables heavily laden with food when a large, mysterious knight suddenly gallops on horseback into the large dining hall. Even more astonishing, the large knight's shirtless torso, the trousers stretching from his waist to his knees, the horse in its trappings proudly bearing up under him, and anenormous axe carried in his hands are all, aside from some gold trimming, entirely green. By literary convention, he is called "the Green Knight."This bold Green Knight announces a "game," but a very odd game it is. He offers to allow one of assembled knights to borrow his axe and chop off his head. If the Green Knight survives, then the other knight must seek out the Green Knight one year later at a certain Green Chapel and allow his own head to be chopped off by the Green Knight.
The young knight Sir Gawain volunteers, perhaps thinking, like King Arthur in lines 372-374, that no dire ...
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as I hear, the endless knot.
And well may he wear it on his worthy arms,
For ever faithful five-fold in five-fold fashion
Was Gawain in good works, as gold unalloyed,
Devoid of all villainy with virtues adorned
in sight.
On shield and coat in view
He bore that emblem bright,
As to his word most true
And in speech most courteous knight.
And first, he was faultless in his five senses,
Nor found ever to fail in his five fingers,
And all his fealty was fixed upon the five wounds
That Christ got on the cross, as the creed tells;
And wherever this man in melee took part,
His one thought was of this, past all things else,
That all his force was founded on the five ...
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"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Pentangle and courtly love)." Essayworld.com. June 7, 2011. Accessed November 20, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Sir-Gawain-Green-Knight-Pentangle-courtly/99601.
"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Pentangle and courtly love)." Essayworld.com. June 7, 2011. Accessed November 20, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Sir-Gawain-Green-Knight-Pentangle-courtly/99601.
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