A Thoroughly Modern Knight

Or how a medieval poem by an unknown poet continues to inspire writers today

One evening shortly after beginning to study for my BA in ‘pure’ English I enthusiastically recounted the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to my father.

Medieval outlook at Carcassonne

  “It sounds like a children’s story,” he responded with barely suppressed dismay. Was this really why he was paying my college fees? Hard to blame the poor man’s scepticism, especially as it had taken three shots for me to pursue the only course I had ever wanted to do. After trying unsuccessfully to steer me towards a more career-oriented course he had finally acceded to my request rather than have me wander aimlessly through my late teens and early twenties, getting into who knew what kind of trouble.

   I attempted to convey the excitement of the poem’s language which sparkled like a clear running stream, its alliterating assonance conjuring the drama of the story and its woodland setting into brilliant life.

The very appearance of its archaic lettering and words excited my imagination:

Sumwhyle wyth wormez he werrez, and with wolues als,

Sumwhyle wyth wodwos, þat woned in þe knarrez,

Both wyth bullez and berez, and borez oþerquyle,

And etaynez, þat him anelede of þe heȝe felle;

The late American poet, W.S. Merwin, renders these lines as follows:

Sometimes he fights with dragons, and with wolves at other times,

Sometimes with trolls holed up in the crags,

And at other times with bulls and bears and wild boars

And ogres panting after him out of the wild cliff faces.

The poem is thought to have been written down circa 1400. Its author is unknown but its origins lie further back in the traditions of the troubadours and the legends surrounding King Arthur and his knights.

Merwin’s translation was published in 2002-03. In the introduction to his version he speaks of a long fascination with the several influences that contributed to the flourishing of poetry and music in a time of terrible brutality, the Hundred Years War which had followed the Crusades, the suppression of the Cathar Albigensians and the Inquisition.

The Cathar stronghold at Carcassonne

The back and forth of battle on British and French soil was not just an exchange of blows and arrows - stories, songs and new poetic forms were traded too. You might recall that in the passage from Dante’s ‘Inferno’ included in the latest ‘Three for Friday’ post Paolo and Francesca’s undoing was to read a tale of Guinevere and Lancelot. Merwin attributes the story mentioned by Dante to a French troubadour, Arnaut Daniel, showing how Celtic myth surfaced in the French courts in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Conversely, it is likely that the story of Sir Gawain has its origins in a French tale.

  As he worked on the poem Merwin heard in its diction echoes of the accents of Welsh miners who peopled his childhood in Pennsylvania. Thus the poem came full circle to his lived twentieth century experience. For his version he drew on the annotated edition published in 1923 by J. R. R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon. (Tolkien’s translation of the poem came fifty years later.)

  In the century since that first modern edition many writers and film makers have adapted the story of Gawain and the Green Knight. And I’m not just talking about Tolkien. Not being a Tolkhead I won’t venture to discuss his elaboration of the middle earth that features in the poem, or his variation on the Arthurian romances, hobbits, orcs and all. Instead, I’m curious to know what drew writers as diverse as Ted Hughes, Iris Murdoch and Kazuo Ishiguro, and the director David Lowery, to the tale.

I hope you’ll agree that there’s enough material here for at least two editions of What’s the Story?. Indeed, some of you may know of other references, versions or variations that I have missed. If so, please share.

To return to the original, the story I so eagerly told my father, the poem opens with a fifteen day Christmas celebration at Camelot where Arthur circulates among his guests, postponing his own meal until a story has been told or a game played. Enter, unannounced, a very large green man on a horse.

For wonder of his hwe men hade,

Set in his semblaunt sene;

He ferde as freke were fade,

And oueral enker-grene.

But more than anything

His color amazed them:

A bold knight riding,

The whole of him bright green.

The intruder invites someone in the crowd to strike him with his own heavy axe on condition that the one who takes up the challenge must seek him out in a year’s time for retribution.  Arthur steps forward although he thinks the request pointless. Then, the king’s nephew, Gawain, intervenes asking to be allowed to strike because he is the weakest man there and does not care for life. Arthur yields up the axe, Gawain strikes and the knight is decapitated. Beheaded but unbowed, the knight retrieves his head from the floor where the guests are kicking it around, holds it up to address the crowd then rides away. Arthur conceals his horror and pacifies Guinevere by saying ‘Things of this kind can occur at Christmastime’. (Don’t try this at home!)

 A year later Gawain sets out through the frosty woods to find the Green Knight. After cold and wearying travels he arrives, in time for Christmas, at a castle where he is welcomed and feted. For three days the lord of the castle goes out hunting, scenes described with gory relish and forensic detail, while Gawain idles in his bed resisting the blandishments of a beautiful woman.

So pretty her ways are,

And so lovely her face,

Yet the knight’s words are pure

Whatever she says.

Exuberant stone carving in the castle at Carcassonne

Each evening, by agreement, the lord and Gawain offer one another something they have received that day. The lord offers a slaughtered animal, deer, boar or fox. Gawain reciprocates with chaste kisses until, on the third evening, he conceals a green and gold belt the lady had pressed on him and only kisses the lord three times.

 Next day he goes to meet the Green Knight who dwells in a grassy chapel. The knight it transpires was his host, chides him for his lie and punishes him with a tiny nick in the neck. Gawain rides home to Camelot bearing that light wound and the green belt, weighty symbol of his shame,

For no one can hide the wrong he does, nor be free of it,

For if ever it takes hold, nothing can cut it away.

He confesses all to Arthur but he and the knights of the Round Table take it in good part and ever afterwards each wears ‘A bright green sash at a slant around him’. Neither this nor the absolution offered by the Green Knight who tells him he is a perfect knight ‘As a pearl is more precious than white peas around it’ can alleviate Gawain’s discomfiture. Of himself he says ‘ . . . cowardice taught me/ To come to terms with coveting forsaking my own nature’.   

Here is the crux of the poem, Gawain’s psycho-spiritual failure, which he sees as a betrayal of himself and of his knightly comrades. This, I think, is the source of its interest for modern writers and readers. While its energetic diction and original form may appeal to poets and students of the history of the English language its moral crisis and resolution are intriguing and lend themselves to a wider contemporary application.  

In the following books, which illustrate the persistence of this story, Hughes’ Wodwo (1967), Murdoch’s The Green Knight (1992) and Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (2015), three elements are braided with varying emphasis: the shadow of war, amnesia and moral disorientation.

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Thank you for reading What’s the Story? today. Come back in a fortnight to find out how these three writers have given new life to a 700 year old tale.

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