Sources and Analogues of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'

2372 Words10 Pages
Sources and Analogues of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight The English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a significant piece in Arthurian Literature. The story approaches Gawain’s character much differently than in Sir Thomas Malory’s well-known Le Morte d’Arthur. Unlike Malory’s version of the Arthurian legend where Sir Lancelot is known as the Round Table’s finest Knight, the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight chose, instead, to have Sir Gawain play the role of Camelot’s most noble gentleman. In staying true to the theme of chivalry and virtue, the Gawain Poet tells a captivating story of a knights struggle to uphold the chivalric code in the face of temptation and danger. The poem is built on the topics of a beheading game and temptation, both common at the time the poem was written and perhaps familiar to the poet’s audience. However, the way in which the author intertwines these themes, making them dependant upon one another, is unique and sets Sir Gawain and the Green Knight apart from any other literary work during it’s time period. Unfortunately, little is known about the poem other than the story itself. Although written at some point during the fourteenth century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was not discovered or printed until the nineteenth century. The original work was a unique manuscript bound together with three other poems in which the author is unknown. Because the poem is thought of as a literary masterpiece and so little is known about its origin, speculations are made about where the idea came from and if the Gawain-poet could have combined all the different elements and structured such an impressive tale on his own. Today, translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are an essential part of Arthurian and medieval literature and the Gawain-poet is recognized as an outstanding literary figure of his age. “If ye wyl lysten
Open Document