Study Guide to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Other Works

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781645424017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Studienhilfen
• Subtopic: Studienführer

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by an unknown poet, whose identity has been highly debated since the Middle Ages. Titles in this study guide include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Purity, Pearl, and Patience.As a collection of Medieval English literature, the alliterative poems each represented a high level of poetic achievement and are ranked alongside the works of Chaucer. Moreover, they contained many examples of symbolism and poetic technique and explored themes like the virtue of patience. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of the poet's classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons they have stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&AsThe Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

INTRODUCTION TO GAWAIN

The works of the Gawain-Poet (as we shall refer to him in this study) rank along with those of Chaucer as the very best literature of Medieval England. The poems are all of interest today and continue to generate critical discussion, and sometimes even confusing controversy. The four alliterative poems in this group each represent in their own way a high level of poetic achievement - “Pearl” is a lovely moving elegiac dream-vision; “Purity” and “Patience” are carefully wrought verse homilies; and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is certainly the best alliterative verse romance. In a way it is not an easy task to come to terms with the poems, particularly the first and last, because of their inherent complexity; there also are a variety of ways to read medieval literature and a multitude of nuances and implications in the description of objects and actions. “Sir Gawain” is especially challenging. As Laura Hibbard Loomis has written: “With the exception of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, no other Middle English romance approaches its artistic and spiritual maturity, its brilliant realism, its dramatic vigor, its poetic sensitivity to nuances of mood and word, its humor, its nobility of spirit.” Yet the poem is readable, indeed, exciting, and its complexities can at least be adequately fathomed through a careful reading with a modicum of background information.

PATRISTIC EXEGESIS

For a student just beginning his study of medieval literature, a brief outline of critical methodology seems in order. In a broad sense, there are two major approaches to interpreting the literature of the period. (1) Patristic exegesis implies a reading of all literature, religious and secular, in terms of the accepted meaning or understanding of the Bible by authorities of the Church, namely the Church Fathers (hence the term “patristic”). The basic method used by these scholars and philosophers in interpreting the Bible was based on four levels of exegesis: Every event or passage from the Bible had, first of all, a literal meaning - Jerusalem, for example, is a city in Palestine. The second meaning is allegorical, in which one thing is represented in the guise of another - Jerusalem was considered to represent the Church. The third is the tropological level, or the moral lesson or implication inherent in an object or event-Jerusalem, in this sense, is the believing soul. Finally, the highest level is the anagogical, the mystical or spiritual quality and thus that closest to God-therefore Jerusalem, as in “Pearl,” is seen as the heavenly city of God. The Bible, it must be remembered, was the central written document of the Middle Ages and was considered the source of God's revelation of His Will to man. Its influence in life and literature was pervasive and thus it seems logical that by attempting to understand the medieval attitude toward a particular part of scripture, we might well be able to deal better with its use in a work of literature.

Proponents of patristic exegesis, most prominent of whom are Robert Kaske and D.W. Robertson, argue that medieval literature of all kinds can best be understood if we know the context in which each major element was understood at the time, in terms of its Biblical parallels. It deals with “the role of the entire exegetical tradition,” as Kaske has written, “as a sort of massive index to the traditional meanings and associations of most medieval Christian imagery” (see “Patristic Exegesis: The Defense” in Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature, ed. Dorothy Bethurum, New York: Columbia University Press, 1960, 27-60). Taken in this sense, such an approach is extremely useful and often necessary in appreciating the full sententia or deeper meaning in a work of art. Controversy arises, however, in the extent to which this method is validly used. Students of medieval literature will probably always recall Robertson's pronouncement that “Medieval Christian poetry..., even that usually called 'secular,' is always allegorical when the message of charity or some corollary of it is not evident on the surface” (in “Historical Criticism,” English Institute Essays, ed. A. S Downer, New York: Columbia University Press, 1951, 3-31). Such an extreme approach may prove to be unreliable, because it is doubtful that medieval literature was as homogeneous as Robertson implies. Indeed, kaske has even said that “Not every exegetical image or allusion is most faithfully interpreted by direct recourse to caritas and cupiditas...”(Ibid., 29).

OPPOSITION TO PATRISTIC APPROACH

The (2) opposition to this approach, the second major critical position, is led by E. Talbot Donaldson, who denies that all serious poetry of the age “promotes the doctrine of charity” and feels instead that “the patristic influence on Middle English poetry seems ... to consist in providing occasional symbols which by their rich tradition enhance the poetic contexts they appear in, but which are called into use naturally by those contexts and are given fresh meaning by them” (see “Patristic Exegesis: The Opposition,” Bethurum, 1-26). Most critics today seem to feel that patristic exegesis can be of great value in dealing with this literature, and it certainly has applicability to the works of the Gawain-Poet, but that its most extreme assertions can well be misleading.

MYTHOLOGICAL EXEGESIS

Two other important critical approaches to medieval literature are those of (3) folklore, myth and ritual, and (4) iconography. The mythological critic looks at such poems as “Sir Gawain” and various redactions of the legend of the Holy Grail as having unconsciously, as part of the fabric of an often highly sophisticated literary work, their deepest roots in ancient archetypes of the hero and in primitive myths and ritual. For example, it has been proposed that the figure of Gawain is a combination of two common mythic creatures: the elf (stately and superior, in the medieval view, to man) and the wild man, who lives by brute force - thus combining, perhaps, the two basic natures of man. Or as another critic argues, the Gawain-Poet used the myth of the “hero's quest” and a symbolic “rite of passage” (in Gawain's journey and trials) to portray the “tragedy” of the Round Table and its demise. One must realize that although such interpretations are valuable, it cannot be assumed that the writer was aware of a certain mythic or ritualistic motif. As Northrop Frye has said, “To the literary critic, ritual is the content of dramatic action, not the source or origin of it.” At the basis of this approach is the realization that imbedded in the fabric of man's imagination are certain form - giving elements which seem to emerge at different times and for different purposes to be woven into an artistic creation.

ICONOGRAPHICAL EXEGESIS

The fourth and final approach, the iconographical, explores the relationship between literature and the visual arts. What degree of inspiration, for example, did cathedral windows and mural depicting various religious scenes have on the Gawain-Poet or on Chaucer? Were there any specific visual sources for the detailed pentangle on Gawain's shield? A study of medieval literature, even of only one medieval poet, demonstrates that certain types of figures (the hero for example), certain historical and mythological characters, and certain scenes are depicted in consistent ways in both verbal and visual art forms. It is certain that there was interchange and synthesis; but what is not known, however, is the exact nature and extent of the correspondences. A related aspect of iconographical study is the virtually unexplored influence of the common little emblems, pictorial representations in manuscripts and later in printed volumes, featuring certain set scenes that Francis Quarles in the seventeenth century called a “silent parable.” (For further information about this fascinating and fertile area of study, consult Louisa Twining, Symbols and Emblems of Early and Medieval Christian Art, Frederick Pickering, Literature and Art in the Middle Ages, and D. W. Robertson's Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspective; see Bibliography for complete entries.)

MANUSCRIPT OF WORKS OF GAWAIN-POET

A more direct link between these methods of approaching the literature and their actual relevance emerges when we confront the works of the Gawain-Poet. What follows here is a discussion of a number of important background topics, which will serve as a prelude to an in depth analysis. The four poems, first of all, exist in a single manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x, art. 3, which luckily escaped the fire in the Cotton Library in 1731, and now is in the British Museum collection. The earliest known owner of the manuscript is Henry Saville (1568-1617), a gentleman from Yorkshire. The “small, sharp, irregular” script is probably that of a scribe and almost certainly not that of the anonymous poet. By relative standards the Ms. is a rather poor one. Its twelve illustrations in no way approach the brilliance of some of the extant illuminated manuscripts, such as the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales. The exact date of the poems has never been ascertained, but on the basis of the language and the various costumes, armor and architecture described in “Sir Gawain,” it is usually set around 1400. The poems were almost unknown until Sir Frederick Madden published the first edition of “Sir Gawain” in 1839.

Thus it was a rich and fortunate period for English literature - Chaucer (born ca. 1340) wrote his great romance Troilus and Criseyde around 1385 and The Canterbury Tales during a period from 1385 to 1400. In addition to the alliterative poems of the Gawain-Poet, other alliterative works around this time are William Langland's Piers Plowman (first version or A-text in 1362, final version or C-text ca. 1395) and the Alliterative Morte Arthure, ca. 1370.

UNITY OF AUTHORSHIP

The evidence linking the four poems in MS Cotton Nero A.x to the same author has often been summarized. Briefly, all four are written in the dialect of the Northwest Midland counties of England, perhaps specifically in Yorkshire (suggesting the connection with Saville's possession of the Ms.) or in East Lancashire. There are distinctive similarities in vocabulary, phrasing, imagery (the use of the pearl, for example, in “Pearl”, “Sir Gawain” and “Purity”), style and metrics. Then, too, the poems are interrelated in terms of the moral virtues and the trials of life they concern themselves with. “Patience” and “Pearl” deal with the virtue of patience or its opposite, while “Purity” and “Sir Gawain”, in broad terms, concern themselves with the ways a man becomes unclean in the sight of God. (A useful survey of the similarities and some differences in the poems is in A. C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study, Cambridge: The University Press, 1970, 32-40.)

But while the case for common authorship is relatively convincing, the identity of the poet remains unknown. His dialect indicates he was not a Londoner as Chaucer was, and unlike both Chaucer and William Langland, he did not speak the East Midland dialect of Middle English. He was, However, certainly a learned and sophisticated man, familiar with French and Latin literature, as well as with court speech, manners and sport. A knowledge of the courtly past-time of the hunt is particularly evident in the vivid detail and technical perfection of the hunting scenes.

THEORIES OF AUTHORSHIP

Perhaps the most famous attribution theory hypothesizes that our poet was a prominent lawyer, Ralph Strode, whom Chaucer refers to as “philosopher Strode” in Troilus and Criseyde. Another theory suggests the poet was a clerk in the household of Enguerrand de Coucy, Early of Bedford. The poet's obvious awareness of complex theological issues (especially in “Pearl”) makes it possible that he was a clerk or some other professional who in later life became a monk. The question of the poet's identity remains unanswered, perhaps because we do not have the original copy of the poems. And although we cannot connect him with the court of a specific nobleman, such as John of Gaunt, the “Knight in Black” of Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, as some have attempted, his poems tell us that he was a man of breeding and taste.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POEMS

In combining the ancient Anglo-Saxon strongly accentual alliterative verse with the French concern for strong stanzaic organization, and in adopting the matter of the numerous Arthurian romances with their elegance, fantasy and psychological portrayal, the poems demonstrate a consciousness of craftsmanship and a delighted-in awareness of the wide alternatives at the poet's command. While “Pearl,” “Purity” and “Patience” have a great deal of didactic material as part of their theme and structure, “Sir Gawain,” essentially a romance, is clearly an aristocratic poem. Its feasts and games, its descriptions of armor and clothing, its language and romantic subject-matter, are those which bespeak and would most interest a courtly circle. More central to the poem, however, is the poet's conceptualization of what it means ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1) Introduction to Gawain
• 2) Textual Analysis
• 3) Pearl
• 4) Patience
• 5) Purity
• 6) Survey of Criticism
• 7) Essay Questions and Answers
• 8) Bibliography