A Comparison Of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight And Lanval

The tales of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Lanval offer their readers insight into a common knightly quandary. Gawain and Lanval are both faced with challenges that threaten their ability to protect, uphold, and affirm their very knightliness. The two knights repeatedly see several knightly traits--- each invaluable to the essence of a knight--- brought into conflict. While the knights are glorified in their respective texts, they are faced with impossible dilemmas; in each story, both reader and knight are confronted with the reality that knightly perfection is unattainable: concessions must be made--- bits and pieces of their honor must be sacrificed. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight takes its protagonist, the noble Gawain, through

When Gawain spurns the lady 's advances, she questions the validity of his reputation: "So good a night as Gawain is rightly reputed / In whom courtesy is so completely embodied / Could not easily have spent so much time with a lady / Without begging a kiss, to comply with politeness / By some hint or suggestion at the end of a remark. " Here we see the first example of Gawain 's values being thrown into opposition: he cannot hope to hold his honor, fellowship, and chastity without calling his chivalry and courtesy into question. Gawain faces a fork in the road in the first bedroom scene, yet it quickly becomes clear that neither road ends with perfection. The perfect, archetypal knight, one who seamlessly, simultaneously embodies all of the qualities so harmoniously unified on Gawain 's shield, cannot exist, as the five points of Gawain 's pentangle cannot fully be kept

The most notable example arises from the second pact between Gawain and Bertilak. After Gawain relents slightly and kisses the lady, he kisses Bertilak, in keeping with the agreement to exchange winnings. As the lady, in each of the three bedroom scenes, is attempting to tempt Gawain into having sex with her, the reader is left to ponder whether Gawain would have to share that "prize" with his host as well. While the notion may seem a bit absurd on the surface, we are given subtle hints that this is not the case-- that the two knights did indeed leave that door unclosed when they made their pact. The descriptions of the three kisses Gawain gives to Bertilak--- the first given "as pleasantly as he could devise, " the second "graciously, " and the final one with "relish and gravity, "--- hint at the homosocial bond between the two. Another scene in which sexuality appears to be possibly ambiguous is Gawain 's first dinner in the hall, when the knights express their rabid excitement over being the recipients of Gawain 's "love talk. " It is left unexplained whether the knights expect to learn the art of seduction from Gawain, or to engage in such an intense verbal interaction with him that it, for them, becomes almost