Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Contemporary, again, with both Langland and Chaucer, the anonymous poet behind Gawain similarly offers a snapshot of England at a crucial period in its history. The poem is a mockery of the Arthurian Romance genre, simultaneously taking aim at the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of 14th-century life. It is an alliterative poem, with the elaborate feature of a ‘bob and wheel’ at the end of each verse, a self-conscious artifice that parodies the pomp and extravagance of the Arthurian court and the contemporary knightly class. The poem is also homoerotic in places, with additional emphasis on the power of female sexuality.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight begins one Christmas at Camelot. King Arthur’s feast is rudely interrupted by a churlish knight who rides into the hall on horseback. Along with the horse and his garments, the knight is entirely green. He demands a game: Arthur must strike him a blow with an axe, and receive the same blow himself from the Green Knight a year later. All of Camelot freezes in fear, but eventually the Green Knight goads Arthur into accepting the axe. Ashamed of his peers, young Sir Gawain insists that he take the blow, and beheads the knight.
This does not end the game: the Green Knight’s head rolls around the floor, and is picked up by his body. The headless knight makes arrangements with a terrified Gawain, who will lose his head as agreed on New Year’s Day the following year. After a long journey north to fulfil the obligation, Gawain arrives at the castle of Bertilak de Hautdesert, who promises to take Gawain to the Green Chapel, where the Green Knight awaits. Gawain agrees to another game: he will exchange anything he gains each day at the castle with Bertilak when the latter returns from hunting.
Gawain is visited in bed each day by Bertilak’s beautiful and flirtatious wife. For the first two days, Gawain must kiss Bertilak as his wife had kissed him, and receives dead animals in exchange. On the third day, Lady Bertilak gives Gawain a girdle which will save his life. He conceals this from Bertilak, and takes it with him to the Green Chapel. As he approaches, Gawain hears the sound of an axe being sharpened. Kneeling to receive the blow, Gawain first shrinks from the strike. The second does not connect, as the Green Knight tests his nerve.
The third merely nicks his neck, and the Green Knight reveals himself to be Bertilak in disguise. He only cut him because Gawain failed to give him the girdle as per their exchange game. The whole plan of the Green Knight, and the poem itself, is to test and interrogate the chivalric code by which Gawain and many in real life lived. In so doing, the poem takes deadly aim at the oft-contradictory virtues of bravery, honesty, romantic love, and chastity that chivalry preposterously demanded. Gawain is ashamed of his cowardice, and wears the girdle forever out of shame.