Romance as a word and concept is something that can be defined in a different way by anyone you ask to give a definition. Romance is defined as a literary genre in the Norton Anthology of literature as “…a tripartite structure of social integration, followed by disintegration, involving moral tests, and often marvelous events, itself the prelude to reintegration in a happy ending, frequently of marriage; and aristocratic social milieux (A23). This sounds pretty formulaic and broad but several different types of romance stories can be born out of this one format, with the writer free to experiment with tone and all the details that make up the story. Exploring two very different stories within the same literary scope and universe, within the …show more content…
same romance genre, can still lead to very surprising results on the variation of execution and style. The Gawain poet’s “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and Sir Thomas Mallory’s “Morte Darthur” are two examples of stories within the same universe, despite being written at different times with different styles and tones that are almost completely opposite. “Morte Darthur” examines the idea of courtly love, with Lancelot valiantly fighting for his lover, Queen Guinevere when she is sentenced to death by Arthur for her adultery. The tone is very serious, the story is full of violence and the ending is more in line with a Shakespeare tragedy than what would be called a romance with a happy ending. However, if you examine exactly what happens to the characters, the belief in being rewarded in the afterlife is something that can be taken away from “Morte Darthur”. The other King Arthur story that focuses on Gawain, who is a minor character in “Morte Darthur”, is one that is filled with misdirection and humor in regards to romance. Gawain is on a transformative quest due to a Christmas game that he played with a giant green knight. The story fits the definition of romance a little more clearly, the story has a happy ending even if it doesn’t end with marriage or courtship. Examing the text of each story will show that despite their difference, they both belong within the same genre. Picking apart each different stage of a romance will help us make clear connections within both of these stories to the same central theme. The first part of a romance is social integration, which is disrupted by forces in both stories, just from different places.
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” begins with a Christmas feast, all of King Arthur’s knights enjoying a bountiful meal and socializing with one another without any sort of fear of impending disorder. “It was Christmas at Camelot-King Arthur’s court, where the great and the good of the land had gathered,, the right noble lords of the round table...” there is an introduction to the world in the story in a peaceful state (Gawain 187). The peace is disturbed by the arrival of the Green Knight, challenging King Arthur’s court to a Christmas game. The knight offers one free blow to anyone in exchange for him getting the same chance in one years’ time. Gawain accepts the challenge when no one else will, but instead of giving the giant a simple knick or playful pat, he decapitates him. Gawain figures if he kills the knight, he won’t have to worry about the flip side of their agreement. However, the plan backfires when the knight simply picks up his head and rides off. The final chapter of Morte Arthur starts with peace, but there is a plot to cause trouble for Lancelot and Guinevere by revealing their affair to the king. Gawain is a minor character in this story, trying to keep the peace between the king and Lancelot, whom he respects and admires. Lancelot and Guinevere are happy together before the knights come to seize them both for betraying the king, and he responds by defending his lover, killing the knights in his way and promising to save her from any danger (Malory 487). Lancelot and Gawain are both responding to a situation that is thrust in front of them, Gawain for his king and fellow knights, and Lancelot for his
love. The second part of the romance comes when disintegration occurs, which is the major conflict within the story that forces the hero into action, and often times must change something about themselves in order to achieve the final goal. One may see Lancelot waging war with the king as his moral test, but it can be argued that comes later on in the story. After Guinevere’s death, Lancelot is full of sorrow and the biggest part of his life is now gone. Lancelot responds to this development, by becoming a monk in God’s service. He realizes what damage the affair between himself and the queen has done to everyone involved, and he receives god’s heavenly blessing before he passes away. This ending shows the knight at peace, with a hope for something beyond the world he is leaving. Gawain is tested by the king when they make a wager; the king tells Gawain “what I win in the woods will be yours and what you gain while I’m gone you will give to me” (Gawain 209). Gawain is then pursued by the King’s wife, and despite her persistence he only receives a few kisses from her, which he gives to the king in exchange for the days catch. He is given a green and gold sash by the queen that will allow him to be safe from anyone who strikes him, here he violates the terms of the agreement and fails to disclose this information to the king (224). Gawain is too afraid to give up the magical garment because he knows he must face the giant green knight in just a few days. The third and final step, reintegration to a happy ending is present in both of these stories, in two completely different contexts. Gawain goes through all of the trouble of a transformative journey, trying to outsmart the Green Knight in the beginning and trying to conceal he had taken the garment just to find out the entire sequence was a big joke. Gawain realizes the folly of his actions and is embraced by his fellow soldiers and gives them a speech. “The symbol of sin, for which my neck bears the scar; a sign of my fault and offence and failure of the cowardice and covetousness I came to commit” (Gawain 237). The garment then becomes a symbol of his mistakes and his vow to not make them again. Gawain is integrated back into the world, without a wife or romantic ending, but a transformation into something stronger. Lancelot’s death at the end of Morte Darthur is not one would call a happy ending, but after the death of Guinevere he makes his peace with his land and with God. He is taken into heaven into heaven at the end of the story by several angels. The Bishop tells Sir Boros that “here was Sir Lancelot with me, with mo’ angels than ever I saw men in one day. And I saw the angels heave up sir Lancelot unto heaven and the gates of heaven open up against him.” (Malory 498). Lancelot dies smiling and happy that he is finally at peace with his life and with his new found bond to the lord. Both of these examples would never be called romantic by the average reader, but the genre defined by the above three components are present in each of the stories. Despite the language, tone, writing styles, humor and everything else being drastically different, the structure does hold true for both stories.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a stranger rides into King Arthur's court with a challenge. This stranger, green in color from head to toe, proposes to play a game with a member of King Arthur's court. This game will be played by each participant taking a blow from a weapon at the hands of the opponent. The person that dies from the hit is obviously the loser. On top of this, the Green Knight offers to let his opponent take the first swing. This sets up the action in the passage beginning with line 366 and ending with line 443.
. Based on the unit, we learned that when you begin to imagine how your characters will look and how they will act, there are two important approaches to remember. Please name and briefly define these approaches. Direct characterization and indirect characterization are two approaches to remember. Direct characterization-
A recurrent theme in almost all Old English writings involves the number three. Beowulf fought the dragon in three rounds. In Morte Darthur, King Arthur sent Sir Bedivere to throw Excalibur into the lake three times. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the number three has a triple importance. In this story there were three different events that each happened in three stages: The three hunts of the Lord, the three seductions by the Lady, and the three swings of the ax that the Green Knight took; all three relate to each other.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a fourteenth-century tale written by an anonymous poet, chronicles how Sir Gawain of King Arthur’s Round Table finds his virtue compromised. A noble and truthful knight, Gawain accepts the Green Knight’s challenge at Arthur’s New Years feast. On his way to the Green Chapel, Gawain takes shelter from the cold winter at Lord Bercilak’s castle. The lord makes an agreement with Gawain to exchange what they have one at the end of the day. During the three days that the lord is out hunting, his wife attempts to seduce Gawain. At the end of the story, it is revealed that Morgan le Faye has orchestrated the entire situation to disgrace the Knights of the Round Table by revealing that one of their best, Sir Gawain, is not perfect.
Deception is one of mankind’s most versatile and powerful tools and is used nearly every day for both evil and good. Whether it be deceiving an army in battle or using exaggerations and myths to teach a child right from wrong, deceit allows one to advance his selfish or selfless intentions by providing them a source of influence on others. Such deception is evident throughout Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—the host’s wife’s dishonesty in particular—as it helps to spur the plot of the poem. Lady Bertilak’s purposeful deception of Gawain has questionable motives that highlight the theme of human imperfection and susceptibility to temptation.
There are many parallels that can be drawn from the three temptations and hunting scenes and the three blows exchanged by the Green Knight. All of these scenes are interlocked together in the way that Gawain's quest is told and his trails he endures leading up to his meeting with the Green Knight to fulfill his promise made the year before.
In the opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Gawain-poet predicates the numerous dualities—which lead the reader through questions of moral seriousness—that exist in the poem. The opening historical recounting, according to Richard Hamilton Green, reminds the reader that “the greatness of the past is marred by reminders of failure” (179). The paradox of triumph and greatness arising out of failure foreshadows Sir Gawain following the same pattern of fate as his predecessors. While the completion of Gawain’s quest reaffirms the historical paradox of greatness, his journey to renown is fraught with situations and symbols that develop the poem’s main concern of moral seriousness. The Gawain-poet skillfully reveals his theme by leading Gawain on a journey in which nothing is what it seems. Sir Gawain and the reader are confronted with several contrasts of characters’ actions and intentions, symbolic meanings, and Christian and secular virtues. Mainly by showing the difference between actions and attitudes while inside in a social situation and outside in a more wild, untamed environment, these contrasts help to emphasize the importance of unbending faith and loyalty.
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 – A Test of Chivalry Essay with Outline: Loyalty, courage, honor, purity, and courtesy are all attributes of a knight that displays chivalry. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is truly a story of the test of these attributes. In order to have a true test of these attributes, there must first be a knight worthy of being tested, meaning that the knight must possess chivalric attributes to begin with. Sir Gawain is admittedly not the best knight around. He says "I am the weakest, well I know, and of wit feeblest; / and the loss of my life [will] be the least of any" (Sir Gawain, l. 354-355).
Sir Gawain is presented as a noble knight who is the epitome of chivalry; he is loyal, honest and above all, courteous. He is the perfect knight; he is so recognised by the various characters in the story and, for all his modesty, implicitly in his view of himself. To the others his greatest qualities are his knightly courtesy and his success in battle. To Gawain these are important, but he seems to set an even higher value on his courage and integrity, the two central pillars of his manhood.
The "Christmas game" that the Green Knight comes to play with Arthur's court at the instigation of Morgan Le Fay provides the structure with which the plot of the entire story is held together. At first, the court believes that the knight has come for "contest bare" (line 277); when he reveals his intent to exchange one blow for another, it seems that it would be an easy contest for an opponent to win, since no one expects the knight to survive having his head removed with his own axe. However, the knight picks up his severed head and leaves, revealing the seriousness of Gawain's promise to accept a return blow, Arthur downplays the importance of this promise, saying, "Now, sir, hang up your axe," and returning to the feast. (line 477) Arthur also downplays the importance of the contest before Gawain deals his blow to the knight, prophesying Gawain's eventual success:
In the opening scene Sir Gawain faces his first trial when the Green Knight proposes his “Christmas game.” The room falls silent for “If he astonished them at first, stiller were then/ All that household in hall, the high and low;” (lines 301-302). The Green Knight begins to mock the court; and then boldly, King Arthur accepts h...
“Culture does not make people. People make culture” said Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian writer and educator, in a presentation on feminism in a TedTalk. The culture in which Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written was misogynistic and it shows in the writing of the poem. Medieval cultural misogyny manifests itself in multiple ways in SGGK. This paper will examine the negative relationships between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and gender by discussing: the representation of female characters, gendered violence, and Christianity in the Middle Ages.
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.