Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Jesse L. Weston.

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This work is contained in the first number of Arthurian romances unrepresented in Mallory's Mort d'Arthur.

Its full title is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a Middle English Arthurian romance retold in modern prose with introduction and notes.

The reader is Thomas Copeland.

I can't say, yes, short did this.

But the first story that came to my head in terms of the color green and headlessness is, of course, Gawain and the Green Knight from the Arthurian legends.

So in this story, a physically green knight appears at King Arthur's court and challenges somebody to cut off his head.

And so Gawain... steps forward and says yes I will do that he cuts off his head and then he goes on this huge chivalric quest in order to you know fulfill what the green knight has put before him as part of that quest he meets a woman in a castle who keeps trying to like come on to him and he doesn't want to do that because this is somebody else's home and somebody else's wife and she kisses him a few times and he sort of reluctantly returns the kiss that he received but he doesn't kiss her himself uh she gives him a green girdle um that he then hides like it turns out that the green knight is actually her husband um and he you know asks going did you kiss my wife and he says i did not because she kissed him and then um but he keeps the green girdle secret

um

So he resisted her sort of sexual temptations, but his fear of death caused him to lie and break his agreement with his host.

So the green knight like swings at his head three times, but doesn't decapitate him on the third blow.

The first two blows do nothing to him because he honestly did not kiss the wife.

But so, you know, here again, it's this supernatural woman appears and she... she is somehow tied to the character of the man and when his character is ugly she is ugly and when his character is beautiful you know transformed by the knowledge of the gospels whatever it may be or at least seeing his own very significant flaws then then he and acknowledging that then she transforms into something that reflects his character which is this beautiful woman So it sounds kind of curious.

I mean, it might be said as well that this tale in Canterbury Tales was written around the same time, as far as we know, of the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and that it's actually an inversion of it all.

Or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an inversion of that tale in Canterbury Tales.

But even in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, although the knight there is not a degenerate, he's actually a very noble figure.

Again, travels for a year and he's in search of the Green Knight who will chop his head off, he thinks.

Behind the Green Knight, who's this giant and mysterious figure, he finds out at the end is the... is the fairy morgan lefay or the sorceress morgan lefay but even she even there she's sort of behind this this male initiating and potentially uh you know devastating male figure so it's

quite

intriguing

First, I conjure thee, hero, how thou art called, that thou tell me it truly, so I may believe it." "In good faith," quoth the knight, "Gawain I am called, who give you this buffet.

Whatever befalls after and at this time twelvemonth, I am to take from thee another with whatever weapon thou wilt, and from no wight else alive." The other answers again, "Sir Gawain, so thrive I as I am heartily glad that thou shalt give this blow." "By Gog," quoth the green knight, "Sir Gawain, it delights me that I am to get at thine fist what I have requested here, and thou hast readily and truly rehearsed the whole of the covenant that I asked of the king, save that thou shalt assure me, sir, by thy troth, that thou wilt seek me thyself wheresoever thou thinkest I may be found upon the earth, and fetch for thyself such wages as thou dealest me today before this rich company." "Where should I seek thee?" quoth Gawain.

"Where is thy place? I know never where thou livest, by him that wroth me.

Nor do I know thee, knight, thy court, nor thy name.

And if I speak no speech, then thou speedest the better, for thou mayest linger at ease in thy land and seek no further.

Now take thy grim tool to thee, and let us see how thou knockest." "Gladly, sir, for sooth," quoth Gawain, as he strokes his ax.

The green knight on the ground prepared himself properly.

With the head a little bowed, he disclosed the flesh.

The five-pointed figure becomes Christian not through one decree, but through the convergence of philosophy, scripture, education, embodied devotion, and poetry.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, perfect geometry becomes the measure of a frightened human being attempting to preserve an integrity whose parts cannot be separated without consequence.

Christianity emerged within a world already shaped by Greek philosophy, Roman institutions, Jewish scriptural traditions, Hellenistic science, and centuries of cultural exchange across the Eastern Mediterranean.

Its earliest communities did not encounter mathematics, philosophy, or symbolic interpretation as foreign territories waiting to be discovered.

The pentagram entered Christian culture within the overlapping field of devotion, memory, material practice, and protection, and its meaning reached its most elaborate surviving literary expression not in a theological treatise or magical manual, but in a poem about a knight confronting death, temptation, shame, and the limits of his own integrity.

Upon his shield appeared a golden five-pointed figure that the poet called the Pentangle, an apparently endless line whose meaning unfolded through five groups of five and whose bearer was Sir Gawain.

Sometime during the late 14th century, an anonymous English poet composed one of the most intricate works of medieval literature, a poem now known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Its author remains unidentified, although linguistic evidence places him somewhere in the northwest midlands of England, and the surviving manuscript preserves the work alongside three other religious poems generally attributed to the same writer, Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness.

but also because it is very significant.

I'm very interested to see how it reflects on Irish legends and mythology because there are so many that are similar stories or inspired each other on Ireland features in a lot of these, most notably the very famous story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is an Arthurian legend that has a direct parallel in Irish mythology of a story with Cú Chulainn, which we have done on the podcast as well.

And Sir Gawain and the Green Knight had a film adaptation a couple of years ago on Amazon, which if we do do on the podcast could be another good idea for a bonus episode on Head Stuff Plus.

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And the interesting thing with the Glastonbury tree itself is that it did, yeah, it did legitimately like stand for that long and that is genuine the place where the first church was founded there and supposedly how Christianity came to be but St. Patrick is recorded as having been there and having kind of first sanctified it so to speak so we know there is some historical evidence to that but naturally these stories came about far far later and Similar, there is no more historical evidence to this than to Brutus or Skota, you know, Skota being from ancient Egypt or Brutus being from Troy.

he says the tristram thing is the most important thing of all in white tristram is mentioned a few times and that's it we only know what's happened to him because other characters mention you know tristram is in love with labelli zood and then oh did you hear tristram was killed by king mark and the various characters weigh in briefly well i think he was a cad oh i think he was gallant and that's it that's all we get of tristram we

get the same kind of um thing with with gow and um or refers to the Green Knight episode, but doesn't ever narrate it.

I mean, Whites is meant to be a story that you read after you have read all of the sort of standard texts of Arthuriana.

What do we make of then that Tristram and Gowan in the Green Knight specifically are the other Arthurian stories that deal with marital infidelity? And marital infidelity is kind of the centerpiece of the tragedy here.

Yeah, it's as if this one has taken over the other two in importance in White's version.

Well, Mordred has changed now.

What do we think of him writing in the sort of high-minded language of honor when he speaks like Sean Connery normally in dialogue?

Well, he does love the language of honor.

Chaucer told none of the Arthurian stories, though he placed the scene of his Wife of Bath's tale at King Arthur's court.

An unknown English poet wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight somewhere between 1350 and 1375.

It is not until we come to the Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Mallory, finished in 1469 or 1470, that we reach the next great step in the history of the legends since the time of Chrétien de Troyes.

But in Mallory's story, Arthur steps forth resplendent, the kingly figure that we have today.

Mallory showed considerable originality in carrying out his plan.

He made Arthur the central figure, taking the story of Merlin as an introduction to the birth of Arthur, instead of as a separate legend, and ending his account soon after the death of the king.

He omitted a number of the older legends that had little to do with Arthur, many of them good stories, such as that of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

He made the England of his Arthur something like the England he knew, and his people became real and living instead of fanciful figures out of a far distant past.