for English 250 this is on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

I've entitled this context beginnings. it's hard to date exactly

the time of writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

your text will tell you somewhere around 1360

I think that's probably a fairly good date, it is part of a tradition

something called the alliterative revival

the alliterative revival,

old English literature was written

in half lines so that the controlling

consonant sound across the entire line of poetry will be the same

so if say for example a G that shows up in one word

the poet will try to use words that have G's throughout or

R's or S's or T's, something like that. That tradition

in writing it fell out of favor in certain parts of England

but in the part of England the southwest part of England

where Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written

it continued so we call that and poems

of its type using this particular verse form, works of the

alliterative revival. We haven't talked much about

manuscripts, Beowulf exists in a single manuscript for us today

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exists in a single manuscript

along with several other poems and the other poems

that are included in the main script probably tell something about

the reception of the poem, perhaps the writer of the poem

and how we might interpret it.

The first poem that I have listed here for you is a poem entitled Pearl.

Pearl is a poem up religious consolation in the Christian tradition

the speaker in the poem has a

young daughter whose name is Pearl who has died and he's coming to terms with

that death, that loss which you can understand

he sees her on the other side she reminds him

of important bits of scripture that interestingly enough often wind up as

part of

funeral services today as a kind of consolation

at the end of the poem he is convinced that she is

okay where she is, it's a poem of Christian consolation

or the death of an infant. Infant mortality was very high in the middle ages

Patience is a retelling of

the Jonah story from the work of and Jonah in the Hebrew Bible

or Old Testament. A very interesting and

colorful retelling the story fairly close to a biblical paraphrase there are a

couple unusual things

the writer's obviously interested in Noah's

no I'm sorry Johna's journey to

Nineveh, and there's a great deal of attention to

boat rigging's and that sort of thing they tell us that our poet was interested in

sailing and navigation. Purity

is a collection of biblical exampla particularly from the book of Daniel

The Feast of Belshazzar dealing with temple

ornaments and ritual practices

the notion that purity was something

which in order to be acceptable there was both an external and an internal

quality

associated with it. So what you hear with those three is

this is a poem a manuscript

with religious poems which leads us to an interesting question

how on earth is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the midst of these?

Because Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is

a romance. Romance

is not about love it is about the concept of adventure

keep that in mind, it's not about love

it's about adventure, it's the world nights

it's the world of ladies its the world court splendor

it's the world of quests and of course the quests are asscoiated with that adventure

in this segment of our course we will look at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

and we will also look at the Wife of Bath's tale both

of which are medieval romances

the tradition of course is French in origin

this particular romance puts a particular

virtue on trial

I want to look at that for a minute I've given you a definition

you want to remember this one "courtesy"

courtesy we think today about courtesy as essentially

holding the door for someone else, saying excuse me I didn't mean to

cut in front of you in line, that sort of thing for the Middle Ages courtesy

particularly among the knightly classes

meant something like this " it's a traditional speech in action

in which the person resigns his or her will

over to another person" think about that

so I will do something because you want me to do it

I might not want to do it myself but out a deferrance to you

I will do it now if you're thinking in terms of ethical

considerations you realize very quickly

that that can get us into a bit of hot water really fast

we're going to watch Sir Gawain in, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

tread lightly among

his various levels of being courteous to

the knight of the castle and the knight's wife.

and we will look at that in some detail

I want to think about Arthur's Court first of all

at the opening of the poem and this begins in your text on page 186

the poem is divided into something called fits

section 1 section 2 section 3 section 4

is certainly the way to think about that. Were at the Christmas season

so there's been feasting going on and by the way the feasting has been going

on for 15 days, a fortnight

is 2 weeks and one day would be 15 days.

so these people really do know how to live it up

the twelve days of Christmas got extended as it were

everybody it Arthur's Court

is spoken of in superlatives, there are

are the most chivalrous knights

the most wonderful ladies in the world this is indeed the world of splendor

but there something very unusual about this

we might expect Arthur

to be this sort of giant of a figure

but indeed in the poem he is represented in some ways being

rather boyish

are and in fact when our

green knight arrives he is going to insult

those sitting in the court and essentially say that they're just a

bunch of boys

one thing to remember about this initial feast that we have in this is on page 188

we will look in class at some very detailed descriptions in this poem, this

poem

is very rich in detail and

an introductory lecture simply can't cover the entire range of possibilities, but

more less to set out a way that you can think about it.

Notice the seating description

beginning on page 188 and this begins at

line 109 "Good sir Gawain is seated by

Guinevere and at Arthur's other side

sits Agravain a la dure main on the other side sits, both the king’s sister-sons and full sure knights;

Bishop Baldwin above, he begins the table, and Ywain, Urien’s son, ate alongside him.

notice everybody has a certain spot

and you've got to notice in this one Bishop Baldwin

has the most important seat so our representative of the church

at the feast has the most important seat, even more than that of Arthur

by the way Arthur has not taken his seat yet because he is waiting

to hear an adventure little does he know that he's going to see one

what do you make in this green knight?

green his horse is green,

and of course there's this gold embroidered thread

that runs around the garments that he wears

he laughs a lot, in fact laughter is very important in the poem.

Laughter is an interesting emotion once you began to think about it

but let's think about this green knight

what would green represent? all colors have traditional associations with them

green for a medieval world

we are of course in the middle of winter so green showing up at that particular point

indicates the possibility of

maybe an early spring or the renewal of life

in fact in in the Eastern Church

the celebration of what is traditionally called old Christmas

maybe as late as January the 7th with the idea that

if you look under logs you already see life

bursting forth from the ground, so those notions

even during the holiday season of the renewal of nature,

so in some ways he's associated with renewal of

nature. Green is also associated with another thing however

for the medieval world its also associated with evil and the demonic.

no wonder no one wants to take on

his challenge but there's also another important association with the color

green

that is the concept of contemplation reading a lot of the

medieval mystical texts or text that

tell you how you can become a mystic

Walter Hilton's scale of perfection, other works

the victirnes. you find that green is associated with contemplation

the notion that in contemplating the very color itself

you were able to think about even the very depths of your own soul

and your own situation that's going to become very important

for Sir Gawain in the last part of our poem

no one wants to take the challenge, the challenge

come forward chop off my head and a year hence

you come to my place and

I'll chop off your head, well that doesn't quite sound like a game

it sounds like indeed once it happens it's over

well indeed he continues to taunt

around line 280 was that reference that I meant with regard to

he is insulting the manhood of those at Arthur's Court

something is unusual here though Gawain steps forward

amidst all the laughter that would that would have grieved for Arthur himself.

he says that he is the weakest and feeblest of the Warriors at line 354

and then you're asking yourself is this simply

a humility toe post a kind of thing

or you may have friends who say you know I'm not very good at playing the guitar

you hand them your guitar and you know you get a world-class performance

it could be that kind of humility to oppose, whatever it is

Gawain is going to become the representative of Arthur's Court

will he stand the challenge? can he stand the challenge?

and how will he stand challenge?

sure enough he chops off the Knights head

but there's an interesting detail that the poem notes

that the knight picks up the head and turns the head

so that will be facing Guinevere

mmm keep that in mind and of course he reminds

Gawain that he is to meet him on

New Years Day a year hence

part 2 of the poem Arthur is wondering what's going on here

but he doesn't say anything, line 467

he doesn't say anything.

in fit 2 the year passes very quickly and

Gawain is leaving on a religious holiday

November the 1st typically refers to as All Saints Day

for the beginning of his activity he travels around through the area of Wales

Christmas Eve comes and being a good

medieval Christian he knows that he needs

to receive the Eucharist

the mass for Christmas

and he prays that he will find a

castle that will provide him with a place to stay

and he's going to stay here for several days, something is going to happen

a series is going to fall in place whereby

he is going to

accecpt a challenge from the knight

of the castle, that they will exchange winnings

whenever the knight wins in his quests

he will exchange with Gawain in the evening and Gawain will exchange

whatever he wins at the castle

doesn't seem like it would be very much in exchange does it?

stay tuned we will find out.