The Color Green in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, set apart by its “secular subject and romance form” (Prior 92), portrays many ideas and customs related to the understandings of chivalry, law, and religion. However, much more is to be understood when reading this Arthurian “tale of enchantment” (Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight), like the color green. This color can stand for many different things, but in this specific poem it symbolizes nature, supernatural, and monstrosity to support the Green Knight’s reasoning for challenging Arthur’s knights.
When first introduced, the Green Knight’s green hue and the items that he brings with him force a visual relationship that he has with nature. Along with
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his unexpected arrival, he brings with him “the threat of a huge axe he carries” and “a holly bob-a traditional Yuletide ornament symbolizing the continuation of life throughout the harsh winter months-as an effective olive branch” (Martin 311-312). The axe can be directly related to an axe used while working in the woods. The olive branch even more directly relates to nature as it is a part of nature and its own symbolization is about winter. Even in the absence of the things he brings, green is a universal reminder of the natural world. The setting that the poem is written in for example: a time of winter, when evergreens will stand out the most. There is also the meeting place of the Green Knight and Sir Gawain. The Green Knight says to Sir Gawain, “To the Green Chapel come, I charge you, to take such a dint as you have dealt” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 177). Even the place where one of the main events occurs is covered in green. The Green Knight may stand out for the color of his skin, but in reality, it is simply symbolizing what surrounds the poem as a whole. The color green signifies more than the relationship with nature that the Green Knight evidently has. It also helps explains the Green Knight’s survival, adaptation, and absence of struggle after a fatal decapitation occurs, exemplifying his supernatural capabilities. Page 176 of the poem states, “The head was hewn off and fell to the floor; many found it at their feet, as forth it rolled…but stoutly he starts forth upon stiff shanks, and as all stood staring he stretched forth his hand, laid hold of his head a heaved it aloft.” After Sir Gawain uses the axe to sever the Green Knight’s head, the Green Knight casually walks to the place where his head rolls, and merely picks it up. His green tint simply adds the feeling of something foreign or magical to the people of Camelot. As the Green Knight rides into Camelot on his horse, and rides out missing his head, Arthur’s people see him as something different from themselves, something non-human, and unfortunately look past the qualities that prove his humanity.
His stature, supernatural abilities, and green skin forces on him the resemblance of a monster-like creature. Literary critic Alden Wood wrote, “Aside from his massive stature, wild hair, ‘berd as a busk’/ ‘beard like a bush’ and the troublesome fact that he is entirely green, the Green Knight’s vestments suggest those of a knight of sufficient stature to reside in Arthur’s court” (Wood 102). Wood explains that, yes, the Green Knight is green and he is large, and this would alone classify him as a type of monster compared to the human race; however, his attire and the way in which he carries himself resembles that of a knight of Arthur as he is “handsome and impeccably dressed” (Martin 311). Arthur’s people are too mesmerized by his entrance and unappealing physical features, rather than his striking ones, to further examine his inner, honorable qualities. Not only do his physical features favor that of a foreigner, so does his proposal to Arthur’s kingdom. Martin wrote, “The Green Knight’s proposal to endure a decapitating stroke in return for the chance to deal one himself appears to subvert the tenses of courtly civility…manifesting qualities alien to the courtly community” (Martin 311). Arthur’s people do not only find his green skin and large body odd and terrifying, they find his challenge just as inhumane. Combining this insane proposal of a fatal game, and the green coloration of his skin, the Green Knight is seen as a
monstrosity. The author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight wrote more than a chivalric romance; he wrote a poem of hidden symbols and ideas. A major component used to disguise these things was the simple color green. The author used this element to make a connection between the Green Knight nature, supernatural elements, and monstrosities. By doing so, he gives a deeper more meaningful interpretation of the poem.
The Green Knight is a mysterious being where his actions are often left up for interpretation. The Green Knight is a supporter of the law and its justice system. The Knight who is viewed as monstrous does not have the typical monstrous personality however it is supernatural. As stated in the poem, “He met with the lord in the midst of the floor, and all with joy did him greet, and gladly he said:‘I shall fulfill the first our contract now, that we settled so speedily sparing no drink.’Then he clasped the lord and kissed him thrice, as strongly and steadily as he well could.‘By Christ,’ quoth the other, ‘you’ve found much luck in transacting this trade, if your profit was good.’” By creating a verbal contract with Sir Gawain, it shows the Green Knight has a binding trust with the law and justice system of his society. The Knight who is in respect with the law and justice system of the society forms a connection between the wilderness and natural
The story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight provides an excellent example of Hyde’s trickster figure in the character of Bernlak, also known as Bertilak, Bercilak, or simply as the Green Knight. The tale of Sir Gawain pits him against the daunting and formidable Green Knight; a mystical and intriguing character, who rode into Arthur’s court, brandishing a great axe and clad all in green. He challenges the knights to a game, and only after Arthur concedes to play the Green Knight’s game, does Gawain instead offer to take his place, thus setting in motion the story. In Sir Gawain, the Green Knight displays several key characteristics of Hyde’s trickster such as: crossing boundaries, being contradictory, and questioning
The Green Knight then arrives at Arthur’s court to pose a challenge for someone to cut off his head and to have the favor returned a year later. He and his horse are both entirely green and are clad in rich attire. The horse’s saddle is described as follows, in lines 164-167: “ About himself and his saddle, set upon silk,/ That to tell of the trifles would tax my wits,/ The butterflies and birds embroidered thereon/ In green of gayest, with many gold thread.” The Green Knight’s appearance makes his supernatural qualities apparent from the start, even before he is able to survive decapitation. Though his ornate clothing establishes him as a respectable knight, the fact that he is entirely green is not normal. Green is often associated with creepy, monstrous things, so therefore the knight is given a supernatural quality by that color.
shall fare forth to find you, so far as I may, and this I say
King Arthur stands up and speaks to the Green Knight, obviously excited by the thought of the tales that this stranger will tell. The Knight offers a challenge to anyone brave enough to accept it. The Green Knight will allow his opponent to strike his neck with the large ax that he holds. The opponent must travel to the Green Knight's castle in one year to accept a similar blow in return. When none of the knights volunteer, Arthur rises to accept the Green Knight's challenge. Sir Gawain, the youngest of King Arthur's knights, asks to be allowed to stand in for his king.
The most obvious reason why the green knight is green are stated throughout his introduction. "Fellow, and his hands were green, and his face. And his armor, and his shirt, were green, all green...everything about him was elegant green" (line 150-55,66). Every piece of clothing that the Green Knight is in is green. His skin color was green and he was elegantly dressed in all of it. This gigantic man was the total opposite of Arthur's Knights. They were smaller and clean-. The Green Knight had a manly beard to symbolize Celtic culture. He rides in on his great green horse! "He seemed half an ogre, a giant, but clearly the biggest creature in the world" (line 141-42). The most frightening thing any of the Knights of Camelot could ever see. The combined aspect of being green and a giant to the knights is what makes him so frightening.
As this mythical poem begins readers are quickly introduced to the pinnacle of this “pyramid of power”, the king and queen. King Arthur and his “full beauteous” wife Queen Guinevere were “set in the midst, placed on the rich dais adorned all about” (Neilson 3). During this time, royal monarchs often hosted large illustrious gatherings in order to display their wealth, prestige and power. This display of rank is evident when the all powerful “King Arthur and the other knights watch approvingly as Sir Gawain advances” to take the place of his cherished king and accept the Green Knights challenge (Swanson 1). Randy Schiff further clarifies the difference between kings and knights in medieval times when he states, “ Displaying his mastery of courtly deference, Gawain in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” publicly defines himself through kinship, telling Arthur that he is praiseworthy only “for as much” as Arthur is his “em” (uncle)”(1). In the fourteenth century feudal system the top ranking social class position belong to the king and the queen.
As W.R.J Barron says, ‘the elements [of the Green Knight] are familiar, but their fusion in one person is unacceptable, incomprehensible’. The court is stunned into ‘swoghe sylence’ (l. 242) for several moments, seemingly unable to process the almost-apparitional figure who has entered the civilised space. The poet adds that the silence was ‘not al for doute [fear], / Bot sum for cortaysye’ (ll. 246-7): the reaction is inappropriate (because these chivalric knights should not be afraid), yet completely justified, as they are showing respect for the impressive figure. The Green Knight, then, is an example of the Lacanian extimité, the ‘embedded alien’. He is the ‘intimate that is radically Other’, recognisable to the court as a fellow ‘cortays knyƷt’ (l. 276) but also a ‘selly’ (‘marvel’; l. 239) who might not be fully human. He is a symbol of liminality, embodying both ‘self’ and ‘Other’, ‘civilisation’ and ‘wild’. The items the Green Knight carries with him only further frustrate the ability to definitively categorise him; in one hand, he carries ‘a hoge and vnmete’ (l. 208) axe, whilst the other holds ‘a sprig of holly as a sign of peace and goodwill.’ Further, he refers to his challenge as a ‘Crystemas gomen’ (l. 283), but the violence of his request conflicts with the idea of it as a mere ‘game’. The unclear intentions only
The greatest part of these studies have involved the middle-English text Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Extensive work has been done on this alliterative four-part poem written by an anonymous contemporary of Chaucer: feminists have attacked his diatribe against women at the end, or analyzed the interaction between Gawain and the women of Bercilak’s court; those of the D. W. Robertson school seek the inevitable biblical allusions and allegory concealed within the medieval text; Formalists and philologists find endless enjoyment in discovering the exact meaning of certain ambiguous and archaic words within the story. Another approach that yields interesting, if somewhat dated, results, is a Psychological or Archetypal analysis of the poem. By casting the Green Knight in the role of the Jungian Shadow, Sir Gawain’s adventure to the Green Chapel becomes a journey of self-discovery and a quest - a not entirely successful one - for personal individuation.
Approximately 6000 years ago in the late 1300’s, a poem by the title of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” was written by an anonymous author. The poem was initially written in medieval literature with a very unique rhyme scheme, but was later translated to regular English for the purpose of studying and reading by high school students and researchers.
In those lines the description of the Green Knight was like describing an immortal god, for example: “a fearful form, framed in the door: a mountain of a man, immeasurably high, a hulk of a human from head to hips, so long and thick in his loins and limbs I should genuinely judge him to be half giant, or a massive man, the mightiest of mortals” (136-141). In this small section of the passage, the narrator goes into extensive detail about the Green Knights physical being and how his appearance is adequately intimidating. The Green Knights appearance is significant because throughout the story he is a very bullish individual. When the Green Knight challenges King Arthur’s court as well as Arthur himself to partake in the game he wants to perform, when no one obliges, the Green Knight questions the king and his court fearlessly. “So here is the House of Arthur”, he scoffed “whose virtues reverberate across vast realms”.
In the anonymous poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the character of Sir Gawain is portrayed as the imperfect hero. His flaws create interest and intrigue. Such qualities of imperfection cannot be found in the symbol of the pentangle, which he displays on his shield. This contrast between character and symbol is exposed a number of times throughout the poem allowing human qualities to emerge from Gawain’s knightly portrayal. The expectations the pentangle presents proves too much for Gawain as he falls victim to black magic, strays from God, is seduced by an adulterous woman, and ultimately breaks the chivalric code by lying to the Green Knight.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a medieval poem by an unknown author, written in Middle English in the 14th century. This poem is uncanny to most poems about heroism and knightly quests as it doesn’t follow the complete circle seen in other heroism tales. This poem is different to all the rest as it shows human weaknesses as well as strengths which disturbs the myth of the perfect knight, or the faultless hero. The author uses symbolism as a literary device in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to give the plot a deeper and more significant meaning. Symbolism is used to emphasise the difference of this heroism story against others and therefore symbolism is of great importance in this poem. The importance of the following symbols will be discussed in this paper; the pentangle, the colour green, the Green Knight, the exchange of winnings game, the axe and the scar. This paper argues the significance of the use of symbolism as a literary device in the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem which tells the tale of a knight who undergoes trials-testing the attributes of knighthood-in order to prove the strength and courage of himself, while representing the Knights of the Round Table. One of King Arthurs most noblest and bravest of knights, Sir Gawain, is taken on an adventure when he steps up to behead a mysterious green visitor on Christmas Day-with the green mans’ permission of course. Many would state that this tale of valor would be within the romance genre. To the modern person this would be a strange category to place the poem in due to the question of ‘where is the actual romance, where is the love and woe?’ However, unlike most romances nowadays, within medieval literature there are many defining features and characteristics of a romance-them rarely ever really involving love itself. Within medieval literature the elements of a romance are usually enshrouded in magic, the fantastic and an adventure. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight follows Sir Gawain over the course of one year, from one New Years to the next, as was the deal he and Bertilak, the green knight, struck.
Green Knight is giant-sized, completely green, including hair and skin, and riding a green horse.