Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Also known as: Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight, Sir Gawayn and þe Grene Knyght, SGGK
A mysterious Green Knight challenges King Arthur’s court to a beheading game. Sir Gawain accepts, journeys to keep his bargain a year later, endures temptations and tests, and returns chastened yet honored, marked by a green girdle as a token of human fallibility.
Description
This Middle English alliterative romance recounts how Sir Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, answers a New Year’s challenge from a gigantic Green Knight who proposes a beheading game. Gawain strikes off the Knight’s head, only to see him lift it and demand their meeting in a year at the Green Chapel. The poem follows Gawain’s winter journey, his hospitality at Hautdesert under Lord Bertilak, and a triad of parallel episodes: three hunts, three bedroom temptations by Bertilak’s lady, and an exchange-of-winnings pact. At the Green Chapel, the Green Knight reveals himself as Bertilak, transformed by Morgan le Fay’s magic to test Camelot. Gawain’s concealment of the life-saving green girdle earns a nick on the neck and a lesson in humility. He returns to court wearing the girdle as a sign of acknowledged imperfection, while Arthur’s companions adopt it in fellowship.
Historiography
Surviving solely in the British Library’s Cotton Nero A.x (c. 1400), the poem appears with Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness, attributed collectively to the anonymous Pearl Poet. Its Northwest Midlands dialect and alliterative long lines with a bob-and-wheel stanza close place it in the Alliterative Revival. Modern scholarship emphasizes folkloric motifs (beheading game, exchange of winnings), courtly ethics, and symbolic structures (pentangle vs. green girdle). Translations and editions by Tolkien & Gordon, Andrew & Waldron, and others have shaped reception.
Date Notes
Composed in Middle English during the Alliterative Revival; preserved uniquely in the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript; likely Northwest Midlands dialect.
Archetypes
Major Characters
- Sir Gawain
- The Green Knight (Bertilak)
- Lady Bertilak
- King Arthur
- Queen Guinevere
- Morgan le Fay
Myths
- The Beheading Game
- The Temptation at Hautdesert
- The Green Girdle and the Returned Blow
Facts
- Survives uniquely in British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x alongside Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness.
- Written in alliterative long lines ending with a bob-and-wheel stanza closure.
- Dialectal features indicate a Northwest Midlands origin.
- The Green Knight is revealed as Bertilak, transformed through Morgan le Fay’s magic.
- The pentangle on Gawain’s shield symbolizes five interlinked sets of virtues.
- Three hunts (deer, boar, fox) parallel three bedroom temptations.
- The exchange-of-winnings motif tests courtesy and truthfulness rather than battlefield valor.
- Gawain’s green girdle becomes a communal token of humility at Camelot.
- The poem participates in the late medieval Alliterative Revival.
- Concludes with the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense, echoing the Order of the Garter.