Comparing Armitage's 'Sir Gawain And The Green Knight'

In lines 151-202 of Armitage’s translation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, Armitage gives the reader a detailed account of the Green Knight’s elaborate appearance. This consists of a list of descriptions based on the knight’s ornate, entirely green attire as well as his green horse, hair and beard, a literary style that is typical of the poem, a medieval romance which frequently intricately narrates certain chosen aspects of the tale. However, there are other ways in which the passage evidently aligns with the poem’s wider stylistic aspects and thematic concerns.

At first glance, it is evident that Armitage has mainly written these lines in accordance to the non-rhyming, non-metrical style of free verse; the lines also clearly demonstrate

Armitage’s frequent use of alliteration. This allows Armitage to stay true to the 14th century Anglo-Saxon heritage of the poem’s original author. It also creates a vibrant soundscape that imitates the tone of the tale’s developing events. For example, when Armitage describes the Green Knight’s outfit as being “embroidered with butterflies and birds” (166) , the breathy echoes create an effect in the reader’s mind that reminds them of the sound of the wings of those animals beating together repeatedly as they fly through the air. The soft, fricative sounds of the quote “fine flowing locks which fanned across his back” (181) used to describe the Green Knight’s hair imitate the free, continuous sounds of a river travelling freely across the land, heralding the vibrant fertility of the growth of new lush, green spring foliage. Armitage has created a continuously changing acoustic space here and, in this sense, the chosen lines are definitely characteristic of Armitage’s project as a whole.

Another significant feature of the way in which the poem is presented is the use of “bob and wheel” sections consisting of a word or phrase that contains two syllables followed by a quatrain that creates a sense of closure for each of the narrative sequences before moving on to the next part of the story. The Gawain poet is seen here as paying his respects to the Romance languages which were seeking a place in the British Isle’s literary high ground during the early 14th century. Armitage has mentioned that he had eagerly aimed to maintain this aspect of the poem in his own translation, stating that he had wished for his poem to “harmonise” (1) with the work of the Pearl Poet. This indicates his emphasis on retaining the spirit of the tale’s original poet and the text’s poetic sensibility in his rendition of the tale over creating a strict scholastic interpretation of the words themselves which offer literal translations where the text’s poetic character is lost.

The repeated use of the colour green in the passage is undeniably characteristic of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, as green is the Green Knight’s predominant colour and it is often that we see green aspects of the tale being featured again and again as the poem progresses.

Green is commonly associated with vegetation and its cycles of growth, portraying the Green Knight as being a fertility god, emphasising his connection with nature and the earth. The theme of man/ creatures being with the natural world is characteristic of the tale as we observe how Gawain’s mood corresponds with the natural passing of the seasons, for example, from merriness in pleasant weather during spring to bleakness in winter. However, unusually here, several critics have argued that “ the Green Knight is in fact the devil, come to tempt the virtuous Gawain.”(2).Green was often the colour worn by the devil in medieval literature.It is not coincidental that the challenge that Gawain faces leads to a possibly fatal result and that Gawain’s sense of chivalry is tarnished due to him being untruthful to the Green Knight by wearing a “green silk girdle trimmed with gold” (1833) as a form of protection from

him.

Line 165 presents the beginning of the use of unusual aspects in the passage as Armitage demonstrates the intrusive voice of a narrator who writes something that is separate from what the reader is being told, as in the quote “All the details of his dress are difficult to describe”, Armitage expresses difficulty in informing us about the details of the Green Knight’s clothing despite the fact that the vividness of his descriptions suggest the opposite.

Lines 196-198, “No waking man had witnessed such a warrior or weird war-horse, otherworldly, yet flesh and bone” portrays the Green Knight as being mysterious and supernatural, but Armitage’s perpetual minutely detailed picture makes him seem to be “immediate, solid and very

real”(3).

It is also notable that Armitage, in seeking to portray the Green Knight as being a powerful, monstrous and possibly violent creature in the quote “A look of lightning flashed from somewhere in his soul/ The force of that man’s fist would be a thunderbolt” (199-202) the words “soul” and “thunderbolt” do not rhyme with each other, causing the familiar ABAB rhyming scheme of the “bob and wheel” to unusually “disappear”. The lines present a change in the poem’s atmosphere as metaphorical language and pathetic fallacy is used to indicate the sudden seriousness of the issue of the Green Knight’s arrival, and for the first time in the tale there is the sudden realisation that Camelot may be facing a potential threat.This contrasts greatly with the previous cheerful and lighthearted ambiance of the New Year’s Day feast before the Green Knight was introduced to the court. Shifts in the poem’s mood are characteristic of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” as a whole and are commonly recurring feature used throughout the story. Another example of when this is witnessed is when Armitage reminds Gawain to “keep blacker thoughts at bay” (488), warning him not to carried away by the comfort of the Christmas celebrations as the game which he has promised to play is “lethal” (489).