Three reasons to read—and love—Sir Gawain & the Green Knight

Folio 95r of manuscript Cotton Nero A.x., featuring the opening lines of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight

Our first wonderful year of the Civitas Book Club is drawing to a close. We will convene one last time on Saturday, April 12 to discuss one of the gems of English literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

So why should you read an old medieval poem from the fourteenth century? Here are just three reasons...

1. Enchantment and mystery

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’s story unfolds in the very heart of “Logres,” the old and enchanted Britain of Arthurian romance. The world of the story is infused with the strange and the marvelous, from the dragons and ettins and “wood-woses” that peek out from the edges of the story to the desolate rocky barrow of the Green Knight, with its jagged rocks “so sharp they seemed to scrape the sky.”

The titular Green Knight is himself a mystery—alternately described as a “phantom,” a “giant,” and an “elvish man”—and mystery pervades the story’s plot: why does the Green Knight want to challenge Arthur’s court? Who is Bertilak, lord of an unknown and isolated castle in the wasteland, and why do both he and his wife seem to be trying to entrap Gawain in their various machinations?

This atmosphere of wonder and intrigue is one of the chief appeals (and delights) of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

2. Language, poetry, and style

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is justly famed as a poetic tour de force. One of its most outstanding pleasures derives from the charm of its poetic structure, a structure once common in medieval English poetry but totally novel to modern English readers: the “the bob and wheel.” Every stanza consists of a series of long lines—typically 12 syllables apiece—which abruptly resolves into a short line of just three syllables (that’s the “bob”), followed by a sort of mini stanza of four lines (the “wheel”).

This sudden turn from long lines to a terse and concise series of shorter lines produces a striking effect: it may describe some sudden and unexpected development, or it may offer a chance for reflective contemplation; sometimes it is wryly observant, other times ominous and foreboding. The bob and wheel often cleverly summarizes the stanza that preceded it or points forward to the next stanza.

Two of the most melodic pleasures of poetry are rhyme and alliteration. Both are pleasing to the ear, part of the euphonic “musicality” of poetry; and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has both of them. In every stanza, the main block of 12-syllables feature alliteration in every line; but when the bob and wheel arrives at the end of the stanza, the poem switches over to rhyme. A good example of the overall affect can be seen here:

“There was much secret sorrow suffered that day

That one so good as Gawain must go in such wise

To bear a bitter blow, and his bright sword

                                    lay by.

                  He said “Why should I tarry?”

                  And smiled with tranquil eye;

                  “In destinies sad or merry,

                  True men can but try.”

As if purposeful use of structure and employment of euphonic, melodically-pleasing sounds weren’t enough, the poem also offers a steady stream of brilliant poetic lines, with vivid imagery and stirring phrases: the description of the towers of Bertilak’s castle looking “as if pared purely out of paper”; “Guinevere gloriously framed” with silk curtains around her seat; the winter-time image of “birds on bare branches / that peeped piteously for pain of the cold”; or this description of the coming of autumn: “wroth winds from the sky wrestle with the sun, / The leaves leap from the linden-tree and light upon the ground… / Thus passes the year in yesterdays many.”

3. Christian theme and message

The story of Sir Gawain isn’t just the story of a knight on an adventure; it’s the story of a specifically Christian knight, striving to uphold both the knightly code of conduct and the practices of the Christian faith—and finding that it may not be possible to do both.

Gawain is the classic “knight errant,” the quest-bound knight wandering the lands and undergoing various challenges. But whereas most knights in chivalric stories go riding out in search of adventure, or to effect some heroic outcome (such as delivering an oppressed kingdom or rescuing a damsel in distress), Gawain rides out to seeking an encounter with the Green Knight that is all but guaranteed—as Gawain knows full-well—to bring about Gawain’s own death. And whereas other questing knights experience various adventures that test their prowess and physical strength, Gawain’s main adventure turns out to be something that tries and tempts his Christian faith.

There is no doubting the seriousness of Gawain’s Christian devotion, just as there is no doubting how seriously he takes his commitment to the chivalric ideals of knighthood. For Gawain, the supreme virtue is trawthe (the source of Modern English truth). The Middle English term trawthe meant “truth,” but also “fidelity,” “integrity,” “loyalty,” “truthfulness to one’s plighted word.” This is the virtue Gawain lives by, both as a Christian and as a knight.

But what happens when fidelity to knightly virtue and fidelity to the Christian faith come into conflict with one another? What if one cannot be true to the chivalric code and to Christianity—what if maintaining trawthe in one case means breaking it in another? 

This is one among several fundamentally Christian themes explored in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; but if I were to say any more at this point, I would be giving away the ending! So I hope you’ll pick it up and read it for yourself, and join the discussion on Saturday, April 12! (And if you don’t get a chance to read it yourself, but would like to hear more about it, then I hope you’ll come as well!)