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

By Intelligent Education

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Release date: Jul 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645424017

Intelligent Education

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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