Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Virtues Analysis

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David N. Beauregard sets out to explain two of the most famous allegorical symbols in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight while taking into account the medieval point of view in his “Moral Theology in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Pentangle, the Green Knight, and the Perfection of Virtue.” Beauregard uses medieval theologians and authors to put the romance into context and then proceeds to assess the pentangle and Green Knight in terms of medieval moral theology. He pulls from the medieval definition of perfection to state that the two symbols help “define perfection in terms of the virtues” (146). One of the symbols is highlight the connectedness of the virtues and the other highlights the perfect act of virtue. To kick things off, Beauregard cites St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, where Aquinas analyzes the differences between imperfect and perfect virtue and then connects the two. Beauregard highlights the importance of prudence as the most vital virtue to have in order to obtain true moral virtue. He emphasizes that it is possible to analyze virtues on their own, but by doing this they will be imperfect and go without praise. To explain the virtues better, Beauregard pulls from Dante’s Il Convivio to define the five virtues as “temperance, …show more content…

He states that the Green Knight is a representation of martyrdom and the virtue of fortitude. He uses St. Thomas’s argument that virtue has two modes, one of endurance of evil and one of attacking evil. Beauregard argues that “martyrdom is a form of endurance and an act of the greatest perfection” (151) and that it is a personal battle between the persecutor, Sir Gawain, and the martyr, the Green Knight. He says that in the tale the Green Knight is used in order to bring out the strengths in Gawain and the weaknesses of fear in Arthur’s court and the overly daring nature of

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