There are few legends as famous and far-reaching as that of King Arthur. The \u201cOnce and Future King\u201d is said to have ruled Britain sometime between the 5<\/span>th<\/span> and 6<\/span>th<\/span> centuries, and the first stories about him appeared around the same time (<\/span>Cambridge Companion<\/span><\/i> xv). Stories about King Arthur, written in English, French, and Latin, exploded in popularity in the Middle Ages. Works such as Geoffrey of Monmouth\u2019s <\/span>History of the Kings of Britain <\/span><\/i>(1135) and <\/span>The Life of Merlin <\/span><\/i>(1150), Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes\u2019 Arthurian romances (1169-1181), and Sir Thomas Malory\u2019s <\/span>Le Morte D\u2019Arthur <\/span><\/i>(1469-70) set in place many of the hallmarks of Arthurian legend that we recognize today (xv-xvii).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One such work is <\/span>Gawain and the Green Knight, <\/span><\/i>written in 1390 by an unknown English author called the Pearl Poet for his other most famous work, <\/span>Pearl<\/span><\/i> (<\/span>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight<\/span><\/i>). While the original romantic poem is in Middle English, the version we have chosen to use is a modern English translation by A.S. Kline (2007). It maintains the alliterative style characteristic of Middle English poetry, and while the majority of the verses are unrhymed, the end of each poem features a ABAB rhyming quatrain called a bob-and-wheel.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Gawain and the Green Knight <\/span><\/i>is one of the many solo narratives that run parallel to the main events of the King Arthur canon. It describes the adventures of Sir Gawain, one of the most virtuous knights in King Arthur\u2019s court, known for his chastity, piety, silver tongue, and gentle manners. <\/span>Gawain and the Green Knight<\/span><\/i> borrows from earlier Arthurian romances, particularly French courtly romances like those by Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes (<\/span>Cambridge Companion <\/span><\/i>79). His influence appears in the poem\u2019s casual acceptance of the supernatural as well as its inclusion of Morgana le Fay at the very end of the poem (79). The poem also includes other, far older tropes, such as the Irish \u201cChristmas game\u201d involving a trade of blows and a beheading and the \u201cExchange of Winnings\u201d that takes place in Bertilak de Hautdesert\u2019s castle (79-80). However, <\/span>Gawain<\/span><\/i> is unusual amongst Arthurian romances in that it confronts its hero\u2019s fear of death and his failures, neither of which the poem fully resolves despite his acceptance at the Round Table (81-82). The result is that Sir Gawain himself is a very complicated character. In English tradition, Gawain is Arthur\u2019s right-hand man and one of the most beloved knights of the court. However, <\/span>Le Morte D\u2019Arthur <\/span><\/i>paints a very different picture of Gawain. <\/span>Le Morte <\/span><\/i>was written nearly a hundred years after <\/span>Gawain, <\/span><\/i>and is meant to be an English \u201cArthuriad,\u201d or a sequential compendium of all Arthurian legend (84). In writing <\/span>Le Morte, <\/span><\/i>Sir Thomas Mallory drew much of his information from French sources, in addition to English. The result is that Gawain seems like a different character altogether. The Gawain of <\/span>Le Morte<\/span><\/i> frequently acts against the code of chivalry, killing a woman and sleeping with another knight\u2019s lover. So, who is Gawain really?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Research and Visualizations<\/a><\/p>\n Poem Synopsis<\/a><\/p>\n Annotated Excerpt<\/a><\/p>\n Analysis<\/a><\/p>\n Works Cited and Acknowledgements<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Introduction: There are few legends as famous and far-reaching as that of King Arthur. The \u201cOnce and Future King\u201d is said to have ruled Britain sometime between the 5th and 6th centuries, and the first stories about him appeared around the same time (Cambridge Companion xv). Stories about King Arthur, written in English, French, and … Continue reading Gawain and the Green Knight<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5332,"featured_media":528,"parent":16,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-497","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5332"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/497\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}