The Tale of Zeus and Dame Ragnelle

No, it will make sense. Bear with me.

So, I’ve a conference next week at which I’m speaking on The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, a mid-15C analogue of the Loathly Lady tale that also appears in, for example, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. The fact that the conference theme is “Intimacy: Family, Friendship and Fealty” means that I can’t just go haring off after the diversion that occurred to me last night, so: once more unto the blog!

The history of the Loathly Lady figure relative to Irish sovereignty tales (in which the lady represents the country) has been well established.  I have no citations by me, as I am writing this on the bus, but I believe Frederick Madden had something to say about it in his collection of Gawain stories, and it goes on from there according to the usual patterns of late 19-early 20C myth-discovery.  That is, therefore, the accepted mythical ancestor of the figure, and as hunting out mythological precedents is rather out of fashion and the genealogy is well traced I don’t believe  anyone has thought to dispute it, or posit any additional ancestor.

But surely the obvious classical precedent is the god-who-comes-to-dinner? Zeus, or some other god (usually Zeus as the patron of hospitality), disguises him/herself as some ugly, poor old beggar and asks for shelter and food. Or, of course, for help crossing a river, etc.  This is a test, the protagonist responds according to their moral stature, and the god suddenly sheds his unprepossessing exterior to reveal himself in all his glory to pass judgement on the protagonist, along with appropriate reward or punishment.  I don’t recall offhand whether any examples of that trope appear in Ovid, but it’s entirely in keeping with the system of virtue and reward evident in the Aeneid, to consider just two of the most culturally influential classical texts extant in the Middle Ages.

The main linking device is, of course, the transformation: a disguised stranger who appeared unworthy according to the ideals of the genre – poor and old and helpless in Greek mythology, disgusting and unmannerly and often old in romance – is suddenly transformed into the epitome of those ideals. In addition:

• the transformation is in direct response to the actions of the protagonist towards the stranger,
• in entering the narrative, the stranger will, explicitly or otherwise, initiate a kind of test for the protagonist, in which their response demonstrates (and thereby establishes) their virtue,
• the stranger retains to him/herself the authority to pass judgement on the protagonist’s actions after the return transformation (rather than delegating that task to the narrator), claiming the status of moral arbiter of the narrative,
• similarly, the stranger him/herself dispenses punishment or reward.

The trouble with this is that it’s a bit of a jump from Greek mythology to mediaeval romance.  And there is a good deal of cultural filtering and reconditioning that must take place there to make any Greek story (or figure) have any relevance to a late-mediaeval audience.

So where else can we find a more immediate precedent to this figure, a precedent that provides a type of bridging device between classical myth and late-mediaeval readership? a precedent in a tradition that is entirely accustomed to absorbing classical and/or pagan stories and recasting them to its own set of moral values?

Well:

... whanne Seint Iulian reste hym aboute midnyght al forweried [weary] and the wedyr colde and a gret froste, he herde a vois that wepte piteously and cried: 'Iulian, helpe me ouer for Goddes loue or ellis I perische for greuous colde.' And whanne he herde that voys he arose al sodenly [immediately] and passed the colde water and founde that pore creature that deied nigh for colde, toke hym up and bere hym to his hous and light the fere and dede al his diligence to warme hym. And as he myght in no wise make hym take warmthe he toke hym in his armes and bare hym to his bedde... And a litell after he that apered to be so sike and as a foule lepre stied vp shinyng into heuene, saieng to his oste: 'Iulian, oure Lorde hathe sent me to the, sendyng the to saie that he hathe receiued thi and ye bothe shull reste in oure Lorde witheinne a litell tyme' And anone he vanished awaye... (Gilte Legende, ed. Richard Hamer, EETS 2006; v. 1, 144)

Appropriately enough, that comes from the story of St Julian Hospitaller, Zeus’ descendant in the role of protecting the sacred laws of hospitality and defending the safety of guests.  But it works perfectly well in a Christian context, thus refigured – well enough that throughout the Gilte Legende (and elsewhere), saints and even Jesus himself regularly pop up where they’re not expected, mysteriously disguised, usually as someone helpless, and initiate a test of some kind or another.  Quite of a piece with the popular belief that saints really could interfere in a very material way with everyday life – all your big brothers are watching you.

So, if Dame Ragnelle has cross-genre precedents in, for example, St Julian and others, can we expect that her contemporary audience might have recognised them and picked up on the currents? I think so – if nothing else, Ragnelle seems to deliberately play with the collision of genre, pushing herself forcibly into society, conscious of her own incongruity and playing it for all it’s worth with her fine clothes and horse.  If so, the audience could expect her at her appearance to make demands which would set up a challenge as a moral test – apparently for both Arthur and Gawain. And she does, tests which Gawain passes and Arthur fails (largely by fobbing responsibility off on his nephew).

But if she refers to or recalls testing figures in hagiography, does this have an effect on what is being tested? Courtly virtues? Christian ones?  The story of St Julian explicitly opposes the life of the court (and its values) with the humble Christian values that  attend helping mysterious sick strangers (for which you have to live in an isolated hut beside a ‘flode’). The Wife of Bath’s nameless loathly lady gives a pillow-lecture that could be read as being in opposition to ‘courtly’ virtues. And Gawain, when his ugly wife has become beautiful, thanks God for her deliverance from a curse (and presumably for his from the equally horrible fate of having to look on her all the time). Perhaps Arthur’s failure is that he tries to adhere to courtly virtues which are (or could be read as) so dependent on appearance as reflective of personal status.

A verray, parfit gentil king (part 2): The comparative bit.

Part the second of a three-part post on The Perfect King and his Eyes of Flash.
Part one.
Part three.

Following on from this post, there are a few points I want to pick out with regards to the construct of the perfect king in the passages I quoted (the scene with the Roman ambassadors in the alliterative and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur; Theseus’ condemnation of Palamoun and Arcite and the women’s intervention in The Knight’s Tale; Edward III’s reception of the burghers of Calais at the end of Froissart’s account of that siege). Each of these stories follows the same pattern, with a few – but remarkably few – variations. Within that pattern, details recur: the effect of the king’s eyes, and his criticism of the words of his opponents, for example. But there are three threads in this story (and it is, essentially, one story) that I find particularly interesting in their reflection on contemporary notions of kingship.

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Firstly, in each case the voice of the narrator or the king takes pains to keep us from sympathising too much with the king’s opponents, placing him on a higher moral plain. There is a particular emphasis on making us feel that he is acting justly in responding with anger to the challenge, especially in the two instances when this leads to death sentences.

In the Mortes, the king takes no action and says not a word against the messengers: he merely glares, and their cowering reaction both elevates him (in the power of his gaze) and diminishes the messengers, that they would respond with grovelling terror to a look. Sympathies and admiration shift firmly towards the king – of whom, after all, an unjust and insulting tribute is being demanded (at least from our partisan perspective). Linking this symbolic victory to moral qualities, the king highlights the difference between his behaviour and that of the messengers when he characterises their words as “brym”, but denies their ability to affect his decision. In considering his response to the demand, he declares (in Malory) that he “woll nat be to over-hasty” and he will take “avysement”, implying both careful judgement and proper consultation with trusted advisers. In the alliterative version this becomes a less open reprimand which nevertheless contrasts his judgement with their discourtesy: “Thow has me somonde... and said what the lykes; / Ffore sake of thy soueraynge I suffre the the more”. This Arthur also goes on to say that he will consult with his nobles before reaching a decision. In courtesy, his behaviour is more proper to the situation than that of the representatives of his rival power, while the skin-saving emphasis of those representatives on the emperor’s “commaundement” gives the impression of a far less consular and more tyrannical model of royalty at the foreign court than at Camelot.

In the Mortes, the king’s anger serves as a deserved rebuke, but the spectre of physical punishment is evoked only by the fearful ambassadors when they plead that he “misdoo no messangere”. In Froissart and Chaucer’s stories, however, he passes a sentence of death himself. The balance of sympathy is therefore more easily tipped towards the victims, and as a result the king’s justice in this particular instance is emphasised, rather than his superior adherence to social codes of behaviour overall. Both stories allow the legitimacy of sympathy towards the condemned – in fact, they dramatise it. The “tears of pity” of the nobles in Froissart, and of the ladies in The Knight’s Tale, heighten the emotional stakes and encourage a stronger engagement with the eventual outcome.

Theseus, however, seems to have no personal emotional involvement in the situation. In the only instance in these examples devoid of eye-flashing, the duke pronounces a dispassionate “conclusioun”, in which “youre owene mouth, by youre confessioun” is the instrument of the sentencing. The unemotional precision of his response is his legitimacy as a just ruler[1]. It characterises him in this moment as the stern, clear-headed judge, looking down from his horse on the two sweating, bleeding, sulking young men whose emotions rule their judgement. To condemn to death two men who have previously been banished on pain of the same and discovered again in the country forbidden them is perfectly logical, and the duke determinedly keeps it on a logical footing until the ladies unbalance it with their emotional pleas. The only reference to the kingly wrath so emphasised in the other three extracts is the narrator’s “at the last aslaked was his mood”: previously, we had not been aware that he had a mood to slake.

By contrast, in the second extract, the king’s reaction is justified entirely by his anger against the citizens of the town in question. “He hated” them, we are told, and he looks at them with his heart “bursting in anger”. Hardly an impartial judge, to modern eyes; but the reason for his hatred? “Because of the losses they had inflicted on him at sea in the past”, the narrator tells us, and the king himself says “The people of [this town] have killed so many of my men that it is right that these should die in their turn”. This is not, then, the anger of a man on a private vendetta, but the righteous wrath of the king of sword and sceptre, defending his people and enforcing justice. In retrospect, this is probably the ‘mood’ that we are meant to understand was “aslaked” in the duke.

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The second, and perhaps the most important point that I want to pull out of these pieces is the importance of balancing justice with compassion – and vice versa. If the king did not make a display of anger and authority in each case – and I call it a display though there is no indication in any of the texts that the king is insincere in making it – his power and image would be significantly lessened. In two Mortes, he would be losing face diplomatically, in an international negotiation; in The Knight’s Tale and Froissart’s account, the power at stake is the king’s ability to enforce internal justice in his realm (despite the fact that the defendants in both cases are foreigners). In any of these cases, he could have his opponents put to death. We have seen the authors justifying the king in each case, and it would take little effort to exaggerate the behaviour of the messengers in the Mortes so that even the execution of diplomats wouldn’t be viewed too harshly by the audience. Even more so in Froissart and Chaucer, the king/duke would be well within his rights to pursue justice and the full extent of the law – but he does not.

To make a point, I shall quote (slightly anachronistically) a political tract written for the education of princes which was written in 1365, but not translated into English until the mid 1400s:

Mercy is a vertue greetly necessarye to every man, ffor it is a vertue that moch causeth the sauftie of the werkys of oure lorde God... And the wise man seith that mercy with oute justise is no verrey mercy, but rathir it may be seid folye and symplesse. And also justise with oute mercy is crueltie and felonye, and therfore it is convenient that these II vertues be ever ensembled, soo that the oon may at alle tymes attempre the othir. [2]

In all four passages, and particularly the ones in which the possibility of death is raised by the king himself, this tension between mercy and justice is played out. Where punishment is deserved, it must be a real possibility: the king cannot grant justice immediately and without deliberation, or he gives in to “folye and symplesse”. But nor can he carry out the sentence in all cases with no possibility of reprieve and – perhaps more importantly – without heeding the advice of his court and the voice of compassion, or he turns to “crueltie and felonye”. Mercy must therefore be hard-won, but won nonetheless. To this end, the voice of compassion is externalised – and feminised. The call for clemency is led in both these instances by the women. This does not represent a disowning of that aspect of royal power – on the contrary, there is a repeated emphasis on how well it befits a king. I believe that it has more to do with the developing role of the queen in embodying that royal power[3]. To allow her to intercede visibly (as Philippa does with Edward III) is not to set her up against the authority of the king, but within it. She is performing within a formalised role, embodying the mercy of the crown in her own (movingly pregnant, and thus extra-feminine) body, allowing the king to concede while retaining his authority and the fear aroused by his wrath. The queen, then, becomes the feminine embodiment of mercy to the king’s masculine justice, marriage keeping them “ever ensembled” as the above passage recommends, while the separation across two bodies prevents either from eroding the other.

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Nevertheless – and this is the third point I wanted to make – note the flourish with which each passage ends. Rather than petering off in clemency, the king takes another step and provides a demonstration which combines (feminine?) generosity inextricably with a politically advantageous display of power. In the Mortes, the ambassadors are treated with extravagant hospitality, no “spycerye” is spared, and the representatives of the rival power find themselves cowed by merely by the spread of expensively exotic dishes on Arthur’s table. Edward III presents each burgher with new clothes, “an ample dinner”, a large noble entourage and the means to set himself up in some comfort and style in Picardy. And Theseus, of course, subsumes the petty personal duel of Palamoun and Arcite in a massive monument to his own wealth and power, in the dual form of the physical structure of the arena and the international social significance of the tournament.

So, a good king is one who can act with force and decision in the interests of his kingdom, but knows how to listen to advice, and can turn a challenging situation to a resounding demonstration of his own power. And above all, he knows how to make a good show. Acting out the drama of justice and mercy before the court, cowing messengers with a glare, positioning himself to be physically as superior as he (would like to prove that he) is morally, casting himself as the bastion and centre of civilisation, from which he may distribute mercy or more physical tokens of generosity... it’s all about the PR. And that is what I will consider tomorrow!


[1] Although, of course, one can’t take Theseus as a pure and sincere representation of the perfect monarch without acknowledging the presence or proving the absence of Chaucerian irony. Theseus has reasons selfish as well as disinterested for acting as he does; but setting the question of sincerity aside, Chaucer is using a standard trope here, and audience expectations formed by previous settings of similar scenes do play a part in how we are to understand, if not the private motivations, at least the public behaviour of the characters involved.
[2] “The III Consideracions Right Necesserye to the good governaunce of a prince.” Four English political tracts of the later middle ages. Ed. Genet, Jean-Philippe. Camden fourth series 18. (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977). 100.
[3] I know I've read an article putting forward the idea of this gendered division of royal power in the reign of Richard II, but can't quite work out where. I blame this on being in Adelaide with my parents for Christmas, hampered by my inability to check sources. My hunch is that it was one of the chapters in Cullum, P. H., and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), Holiness and masculinity in the Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).

Notes for a PHD proposal

So, in between busily scribbling bits of thesis, I somehow have to find brain space to think about next year and PHD possibilities. Here's my current thoughts.


Gentle words: choosing the non-violent approach.


Summary

In the final book of Malory's Morte Darthur, a desperate and bereaved Gawain tries to provoke Lancelot into battle with accusations of adultery, falsehood and betrayal. In failing to defend himself, Lancelot risks validating the accusations and attracting the additional charge of cowardice - and yet he, the best of Arthur's knights, deliberately chooses not to take up arms against his friend and his liege lord, even if this choice undermines his very being as a knight. I propose to explore literary and cultural perceptions of the choice of non-violence in the changing world of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Considering the centrality of violence and force to both the chivalric ethos and to an effective justice system, I will also examine the effect such a choice might have on the formation of masculine identity and power. By studying literature such as political tracts, anonymous romances and saints' lives in addition to the more consciously constructed literature of writers such as Chaucer, Froissart, Malory and the Gawain-poet, I mean to examine the way in which the latter engaged with and rewrote cultural assumptions and constructs evident in the former.


Points to consider:

- The language of the formal university or theological disputatio was dominated by terms drawn from combat and physical dispute. Karras details the culture of masculine formation in late medieval universities and the transferral of aggressive response patterns from the physical military setting to the verbal university debate[1]. How was the non-violent choice depicted in this less literal setting? Did the virtual absence of women from the scene and the ban on marriage (where applicable) change the dynamic by depriving men of one possible way to prove their masculinity?

- Given the lower visibility of women in literature and the greater passivity of the female role in society and the home, can we determine to what extent these precepts were applied in the construction of feminine identity?

- Legends of saints' lives often celebrate the choice of non-resistance, the decision to suffer martyrdom unresisting for one's faith. This is one instance in which the author almost invariably commends the character unequivocably for the decision, though other characters in the narrative may mock or chide the saint for it. But is non-violence in the name of God an act of challenge and combat in itself? To what extent is the peaceful option as endorsed by religion used as an extenuating circumstance or justification for choosing to avoid violence in other situations?

- A fourteenth century political tract on good kingship would have it that "mercy with oute justise is no verrey mercy, but rathir it may be seid folye and symplesse. And also justise with oute mercy is crueltie and felonye, and thefore it is convenient that these II vertues be ever ensembled"[2]. This emphasis on judicious balance is paralleled by literary moments such as Theseus' careful retention of the power of both justice and mercy in The Knight's Tale and Froissart's depiction of a suspiciously similar Edward III during the siege of Calais. How do writers in the thirteenth and fourteenth century express concern with the upsetting of the scales of mercy and justice, or use their writing to explore and impose a more acceptable ideal?




That's all that springs to mind for now. It's a first draft, of course, and will probably be rewritten substantially. Of course, it would help if I knew what a PhD proposal is meant to look like... but finding out would involve research, which means time!



[1] Karras, Ruth Mazo. From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in late medieval Europe. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2002. 67-108.
[2] "The III Consideracions Right Necesserye to the good governaunce of a prince". Ed. Genet, Jean-Philippe. Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages. Camden Society, 4th Series (1977), 18. 200.

Cowardice and cortaysye

The Green Knight comes to Camelot, attracted by rumours of their twofold greatness:

"... thy burgh and thy burnes [men] best ar holden,
Stifest under stel-gere [in armour] on stedes to ryde,
The wyghtest [bravest] and the worthyest of the worldes kynde...
And here is kydde [renowned] cortaysye, as I haf herd carp,
And that has wayned [brought] me hider, iwyis, at this tyme." (259-264)

He portrays Camelot's renown as based on two things: their bravery and their courtesy. Benson (Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 1965) argues that both beheading scenes (and, this would imply, the rest of the poem) are in fact tests of both these qualities of Camelot, but that its representatives never wholly understand it.

In the first scene, Benson finds, "the frightened courtiers quickly disqualify themselves... they are courtiers rather than warriors" (214). They do not respond to the Green Knight's challenge - though the poet generously gives them an out by saying "I deme hit not al for doute [fear], Bot sum for cortaysye", giving us probably the first instance in the poem of bravery and courtesy being set at odds. But the Green Knight clearly interprets it as cowardice, and he turns to mockery:

"What, is this Arthures hous," quoth the hathel [man] thenne,
"That al the rous [talk] rennes of thurgh ryalmes [realms] so mony?
Where is now your sourquydrye [pride] and your conquestes,
Your gryndellayk [fierceness] and your greme [anger] and your grete wordes?" (309-312)

This time, he (discourteously!) emphasises bravery, and doesn't mention courtesy at all. And interestingly, Arthur's response to this is to abandon courtesy himself and reply with angry violence, grabbing the axe, declaring that no man here is afraid of the Green Knight and preparing to accept the challenge himself. Benson says that he "thus upholds Camelot’s reputation for bravery, but in doing so he deserts what now becomes the most important aspect of its fame. He forgets that he is “þe hendest”, and he becomes for the moment like the “methles” Green Knight" (215).

It is at this moment, of course, that Gawain speaks up, bowing to the king and saying "I beseche now ... this melly mot be myne" (341-2). Gawain, for now, has both the courtesy and the courage to undertake the task, showing himself (according to Benson's reckoning) superior to the other knights and to Arthur: "it is apparent that the king has failed, for to take up an adventure that one does not finish is “surquidré”, especially when one takes it up with so boastful an announcement of his intentions as Arthur makes. Yet it is also clear that Arthur has somehow failed the test even before Gawain’s interruption and that Gawain must step forward not only to show his loyalty to the king but also to save the integrity of the court" (Benson 214).

Benson then applies this logic to the second beheading scene, at the Green Chapel. The usual reading of this scene - the one the Green Knight himself gives - is that the three blows of the axe are analogous to the three days of testing at Hautdesert, and that since Gawain passed the first two days, the first two blows do not touch him, and since he failed only a little on the third day, he is only slightly nicked by the third blow. Benson offers an additional explanation, based on his division of the test into courage and courtesy. In brief, Gawain flinches from the first blow of the axe, thereby failing in courage. The Green Knight withholds that blow and mocks him, just as he mocked Arthur at Camelot - and with the same result! Though bearing the blow unflinchingly was not part of the original bargain, Gawain reinterprets it to be a test solely of courage, and responds rather snippily that he won't move again, though HE can't stick his head back on when it falls off, unlike SOME PEOPLE. The Green Knight raises the axe again - and this time, withholds the blow. This is generally considered the second "blow", Benson's test of courtesy, and Gawain fails it, bursting out in angry protest against the unfair suspense. Only after that does the axe fall, nicking Gawain's neck for the third blow and completion of the test.

It's a good theory. For one thing, it explains not just the fact of the first two blows (which is all that the Green Knight's version accounts for) but their nature. Gawain's flinching was presumably integral to the first blow because otherwise it would have nicked his neck and the test would have been over then. The second blow wasn't technically a blow, but Benson's theory explains how it was just as much a test as the first.

It falls down a little if we try to apply the failures of the first two tests to the first two days - alright, Gawain's hiding under the blanket and pretending to be asleep when the lady first enters could be seen as cowardice, but it's hard to argue that he fails in courtesy on the second day, and besides, the Green Knight does say that he didn't fail at all on those days. On the other hand, the animals Bertilak hunted on those days, which critics often argue are symbolically linked to the action in the bedroom one way or another, could be seen to relate to this theme. The first quarry is deer - specifically female deer - whose courage no one could extol. The second quarry is a wild boar, an animal often associated with bold, fierce knights, the epitome of courage, but without much association with the civilised aspects of the court.

So, if Gawain's pentangle symbolises trawthe, and the nick in his neck is (at least according to him) a token of untrawthe, and if we are to hypothetically allow that Benson's theory doesn't apply just to the two beheading scenes but can extend to describe the whole poem as a test... can we make an equation between trawthe and the combination of courage and courtesy?

Perhaps not quite in those terms. But a common thread running through my thesis is that everything in the world of Sir Gawain is made up of two opposite and more-or-less opposing halves - the axe can symbolise death or victory over death, for example - and that this is a large part of what makes it impossible to actually be perfect as a human in an imperfect world. And the poet does fairly clearly set up courtesy as an impediment to courage, and vice versa. Perhaps it would be more true to say that the trawthe to which Gawain aspires is composed of both worldly elements and spiritual ones which can never be entirely reconciled. One cannot avoid one's duties to society and fellow man (courtesy) to uphold a spiritual virtue (courage, broadly speaking - trust in a higher power?). In his A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Burrow clearly regards both of these elements in his idea of trawthe, when he says "the ideal of ‘truth’ does not require a knight to transcend these things [courtesy, fraunchyse]: it involves the perfection of a man before society as well as before God" (47).


- Benson, Larry D. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965.
- Burrow, John Anthony. A reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London: Routledge, 1965.
- All Gawain quotes (but not the glosses) are taken from J. J. Anderson's 1996 Everyman edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited together with the other three poems from the single manuscript in which the poem survives, Cotton Nero A.x - Pearl, Purity (or Cleanness) and Patience.

The Love-making of Sir Gawain

Poor Gawain. Everyone imposes expectations on him - the Lady of Hautdesert, Bertilak, the Green Knight, the audience, even critics!

On his quest to seek out the Knight of the Green Chapel to receive the return blow of the axe, Sir Gawain finds himself alone in the wilderness on Christmas Eve. After a solemn prayer to the Virgin to let him find some place to celebrate Christmas as he ought, and crossing himself three times, a castle mysteriously appears between the trees. Entering in that castle, he is welcomed by a jovial, ruddy-cheeked, "bever-hwed" lord (845), his beautiful young wife, and a terribly ugly old matron.

He celebrates Christmas there duly, much to the delight of the castle's inhabitants when they find they have the great and courteous Gawain as a guest, then reluctantly insists that he must press on, to find the Green Chapel by New Year's Day. But - a stroke of luck! - the lord laughs, and tells him that he needn't worry himself for that. The Green Chapel "is not two myle henne" (1078), and Gawain may stay and laze about in bed until the morning of New Year, have a pleasant early-morning ride as far as the Chapel (and there, presumably, lose his head bloodily all over the snow).

So, Gawain sleeps in for three days, while the lord of the castle goes hunting. They make a compact - everything they win during those days, they will exchange at nightfall. Every day the lord goes out hunting, and hands over to Gawain at night the spoils of the hunt. And every morning, the lady of the castle creeps into Gawain's room, in increasingly provocative garments.

A challenge to any hot-blooded young male, one would imagine, and one to which a knight of Gawain's reputation would readily rise in more ways than one. In the large body of French Arthurian literature, with which the Gawain-poet's audience was familiar, Gawain was courteous and loverly to the point of a fault - highly susceptible to the ladies, and not above rape occasionally. So the audience is probably as surprised as the lady when Gawain pulls the blankets up to his chin, feigns sleep, then pretends a complete lack of understanding at her ever-more-explicit little invitations. Finally, she is driven to tease, "Bot that ye be Gawain, hit gos not in mynde" - it is hard to believe that you are Gawain, for the real Gawain would never be closeted alone so long with a lady "bot that he had craved a cosse [a kiss], bi his cortaysye, / bi sum towch of summe tryfle at sum tales ende" (1293-1301).

"By some touch of some trifle at some tale's end" - what an exquisitely, insufferably smooth lover! This Gawain, however, hastily refutes that by protesting that he will kiss at her commandment, invoking the proper mistress/servant relationship of courtly love - and more insistently later when the lady suggests he'd be perfectly in his right to force any woman who would be so "vilainous" as to refuse him his way with her (1495-97). He is devoted to women and exquisite in his courtesy, but for him, this is a public virtue. His courtesy does not allow of fornicating with his host's wife under his very roof.

And of course, there is the tiny detail that Gawain is under verbal contract to return everything he wins during the course of these three days to his host, Bertilak. So he does - almost. One kiss on the first day, two on the second, three on the third, bestowed "as comlyly as he couthe awyse" (1389) in the great hall, and Bertilak makes merry capital out of this. He speaks of the value of the kisses and other winnings in almost capitalistic (yet simultaneously bawdy!) terms. The queer and gender critics, of course, make a good deal more of it. These are the only moments in the poem that can be milked for homoerotic undertones, and they certainly have been milked. Gawain dodges the first implication by insisting on the firm letter of their contract and changing the subject, and effectively repudiates the second by being innocently oblivious to it. The poet leaves very little leeway for a queer reading of the poem. Our innocent young Gawain leaves absolutely none.

So, it's off to the Green Chapel for our hero, hiding the one thing he concealed from his host - the green girdle which the lady gave him on the third day, with the promise that it could save his life. He meets the Green Knight, who feints twice with the axe before delivering the blow - which only nicks his neck. The test is over, but Gawain's near-hysterical relief is short-lived. The Green Knight is revealed to be Bertilak himself in disguise, and the three blows are analogues of the three days in which Gawain did not even know he was being tested. The nick at his neck is due to the one minor (according to Bertilak) point in which Gawain failed - keeping back the girdle that he received from Bertilak's sexy accomplice.

At this point, Gawain completely flies in the face of our expectations. Stunned and ashamed, he flings the girdle at the feet of the still-green giant, and launches into a virulent tirade against the "wyles of wommen", through which so many good men have been "wonen to sorwe":

For so was Adam in erde with one begyled,
And Salamon with fele sur, and Samson eftsones -
Dalyda dalt hym hys wyrde - and Davyth therafter
Was blended with Barsabe, that much bale tholed...
And all thay were biwyled
With wymmen that they used.
Thagh I be now bigyled,
Me think me burde be excused [I ought to be excused]. (2416-428)

This is hardly gallant, particularly not the reasoning of the final two lines. Critics have, of course, hastened to excuse or condemn Gawain for this speech, and there are many explanations as to his behaviour, and as many expressions of puzzlement over it. Reading it on a purely character-driven level, however, I don't think this is at all out of line with Gawain's previous views on women. For him, they are the other - to be protected, served, to play pretty love games with, but not true companions, never to be truly understood like men. Courtly love is, on one level, the positive expression of this foreignness, this sense of the mysterious distant female being. But is it any wonder if, at a moment of great stress, after he's been pulled to and fro in such violent emotions over the past ten minutes, he should burst out in a speech that expresses the other side of it, betraying his veneer of manners and all social expectations in his agitation?

All quotes are taken from J. J. Anderson's 1996 Everyman edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited together with the other three poems from the single manuscript in which the poem survives, Cotton Nero A.x - Pearl, Purity (or Cleanness) and Patience.