Elegies in Binary

A little cheeky of me, perhaps; but I was reading Lukacs' Theory of the Novel (trans. Anna Bostock, London: Merlin Press, 1963), and felt that his writing was best answered in a medium that can respond fully to his binary worldview. And therefore...



Mr. Lukacs,
I couldn't help but notice that your code seemed a little faulty, and was throwing up some awkward errors in unexpected places.  I have taken the liberty of extracting the source code and reading through it, and believe I have located some of its weak points.

Your first problem is a simple typo.  On line [page] 30 you have written:


if(epic = "homer")

rather than


if(epic == "homer")

["... no one has ever equalled Homer, nor even approached him - for, strictly speaking, his works alone are epics..." (30)]

As you know, of course, if(epic == "homer") reads 'if the value of the variable epic is equal to the string "homer", while epic = "homer" sets the value of epic to "homer". One considers the current value, the other defines a new one.  This holds true even within an 'if' expression, so in checking the value, you appear to have inadvertently set it to have that and always that value from that line on.  This, of course, greatly reduces the flexibility of your code later.

I do recognise that this part of your code has been copy/pasted from that of Webmeister Hegel; but even great coders can make typos, and once you incorporate them into your own work you take responsibility for them.

Secondly, in this same early stage, you seem to fall into the trap of setting up all your arrays in simple binary form, so that you end up with a series of arrays with only two elements each.  Eg, ({"world", "self"}), ({answer, question}), ({"wholeness", "fragmentation"}), ({"interior", "exterior"}), ({"Greeks", "us"}), ({epic, novel}), ({old, modern}).  There is, of course, nothing wrong with this in itself; but arrays can support more than two elements at a time, Mr Lukacs, and some of the situations you consider could do with more than a simple choice between 0 and 1.

Moreover, I feel that you do not need quite so many arrays as you have here.  The first elements of all the arrays I have noted above are all almost synonymous with each other, defined only against the second element, their relationship to each other left barely coherent. Perhaps you could use fewer arrays if you clarified these relationships?

For example, you elide "Greeks" with "Homer", and "Homer's world" with "the Greek world", and "Homer" with "epic" (although see above).  However, you also consider "Plato" and "Greek tragedy" as an indistinguishable part of this Greek world, particularly in your opening chapter, which overloads your definition of "epic" to the point of meaninglessness, at least insofar as it may be used to define a genre.

Perhaps "epic" should be an array instead of a variable?

The same determination to reduce all your code into binary also leads you to this declaration:

if(year < modernity) { genre = "epic"; }
else { genre = "novel"; }


["... the epic had to disappear and yield its place to an entirely new form: the novel." (41)]

Now, given you have defined what precedes modernity only as "Greek", and the true epic only as "Homer", this does seem to leap somewhat precipitously over the intervening years. Dante is by no means the only tripwire between these two trees; and though you do strive to accommodate him, he cannot ultimately be fully reconciled with your argument, as you never quite redeclare the array ({"epic", "novel"}) to include a third element, "dante".

Of course, if you were to include a third element, you would be obliged to add exceptions in every other instance where you have assumed that the array has only two elements.  You would also need to master not only the if/else structure, but the if/else if/else.  For example, if we allow "dante" to stand as the name of the genre for now:


if(year < mediaeval) { genre = "epic"; }
else if(year < modernity && year > mediaeval) { genre = "dante"; }
else { genre = "novel"; }

However, this will quickly become messy if you want to add more exceptions, and is ultimately an extended form of binary. May I suggest instead the use of switch(), into which you can incorporate as many gradations along a continuum as you like?  Eg (assuming year is a number):

switch(year) {
    case ..-500:  # Less than or equal to -500
       period = "pre-classical";
    break;
    case -501..0:  # Between -501 and 0
       period = "classical";
    break;    
    case 1..500: 
       genre = "late classical";
    break;    
    case 501..1500: 
       genre = "mediaeval";
    break;    
    case 1501..1800: 
       genre = "early modern";
    break;    
    case 1801..: # Greater than or equal to 1801.
       genre = "modern";
    break;    
}

And so forth. You might also consider using strings instead of ints, for a little more subtlety and complexity.  Instead of providing simply for -500..0, 1501..1800, and so on, you could instead consider tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, and poem unlimited.  And of course, you may also define a default case for those works that just refuse to fit in anywhere else.

Now of course, the basic assumption and assertion behind binary is that 1 != 0 and 0 != 1.  There is a fundamental and unbridgeable gap between them.  Your "modernity" is, accordingly, defined by the fact that is is not "the age of the epic": although these never appear in the same array, they appear to be your ultimate 1 and 0. Your opening paean makes it clear that your world, your modernity, is defined not only by the separation of interior from exterior, of the world from meaning, but by a longing for a state in which this separation did not exist - in which there was only 0, not 1 - which you call the time of the epic.

It follows, therefore, that you would create this 0 if it did not already exist; that it is very likely modernity, feeling this lack in itself, would try to create it somewhere - in the past, if nowhere else.  Feeling your wholeness fragmented, you have created an inaccessible whole, and simultaneously pushed it back behind an unbridgeable gap of time.  If 0 did not exist, you would invent it, and it would tell us little about Homer and his work and a good deal about you.

Personally, I like the number 6.  It brightens the place up.

What Would Mordred Do?

I stole this from Susan Higganbotham's blog a while back, then forgot about it. It's designed for authors to fulfil with ten characters from their own writing, but as I'm not writing anything, let's go with something more traditional!

Choose ten of your characters, then answer the questions. For best results, put names in a hat and number them at random.

* 1. Mordred
* 2. Lancelot
* 3. The Green Knight
* 4. Arthur
* 5. Yvain
* 6. Gawain
* 7. Guenevere
* 8. Morgan le Fay
* 9. Lunette
* 10. Merlin

4 [Lancelot] invites 3 [the Green Knight] and 8 [Morgan le Fay] to dinner at their house. What happens?
As the guest couple do not approve of french food, they bring their own contributions. The Green Knight thus arrives dragging a herd of bloodied deer corpses, but accidentally substitutes his own head when it comes time for cooking. Morgan helpfully finds it and reattaches it with her Magical Ointment Of Head-Reattaching. Her husband and her host later use this for a merry after-dinner game of bowls. As a gift for their host, in lieu of wine, she brings ointment of Making The Desired Married Lady Fall Asleep And Appear Dead So That You Can Marry Her After The Funeral, patented when she developed it for Cliges, but later stolen by Friar Lawrence.

9 [Lunette] tries to get 5 [Yvain] to go to a strip club. What happens?
She manages to persuade him by reminding him that she's already seen him naked. Once there, he fails to recognise that Laudine is among the strippers because she is not wearing clothes or any other insignia. As he is in his guise as The Knight With The Lion, she fails to recognise him.

You need to stay at a friend's house for a night. Who do you choose: 1 [Mordred] or 6 [Gawain]?
Well, whom would you trust not to enter your bedroom in the middle of the night and make pressing suggestions? On the other hand, given Gawain's later English reputation... best invest in a lock. Or a lion.

2 [Arthur] and 7 [Guenevere] are making out. 10 [Merlin] walks in. What is their reaction?
Puppy-dog eyes, then reminding Guenevere of all the times she said things like "Who'd want to marry Arthur" and that she'd never want either Arthur or Lancelot and liked much more ordinary men like Merlin? This, unfortunately, woudl lead to Guenevere pointing out quite reasonably that Merlin never noticed her attachment to him despite her telling him about it every episode and sometimes kissing him, while Arthur alternately mocks Merlin and wonders quietly which of them he's actually jealous of anyway.

3 [the Green Knight] falls in love with 6 [Gawain]. 8 [Morgan] is jealous. What happens?
I believe we have a whole poem about that already.

4 [Lancelot] jumps you in a dark alleyway. Who comes to your rescue: 10 [Merlin], 2 [Arthur], or 7 [Guenevere]?
Arthur turns up first, via his magical powers of Distressed Damsel Detection, but is rather startled to find that it is Lancelot doing the jumping. As he demands an explanation, and Lancelot attempts to explain that all he wanted to do was offer to rescue me from my next appointment with a stake and flames, as he would for any woman, Guenevere turns up in her husband's wake and demands an explanation for why he hasn't offered that to her, then. As the discussion descends into recrimations and bewildered protest, I am quite forgotten and wander off to have a sensible conversation with Merlin, who had been left behind to polish Arthur's saddle and is rather bored by now.

1 [Mordred] decides to start a cooking show. Fifteen minutes later, what is happening?
Mordred has got side-tracked by making special invasion cupcakes in his own colours (Here's something I prepared earlier!), and abandoned the stage to Morgan and her Magical Mayhem Special. Meanwhile, in the wings, guest star Merlin is stealing guest star Arthur's poisoned wine.

3 [Green Knight] has to marry either 8 [Morgan], 4 [Lancelot], or 9 [Lunette]. Whom do they choose?
Despite his penchant for noble, well-muscled young knights, the Green Knight is enough of a traditionalist to insist on a female fairy partner to rule over his fairy/underworld/forest kingdom with him. He considers Lunette, but soon breaks off the engagement when he realises that all her lotions and potions and ointments are made by the hands of another woman. And history is made!
Besides, Lancelot is French, and turns up his nose at the Green Knight's cooking.

7 [Guenevere] kidnaps 2 [Arthur] and demands something from 5 [Yvain] for 2's release. What is it?
She demands that he either stop injuring himself and making the maids blush, or just pay up for his own maid. Or she won't let her husband out of their room. And then they'll really make the maids blush.

Everyone gangs up on 3 [the Green Knight]. Does 3 have a chance in hell?
Well, he IS the devil. I'd say that he'd have a pretty good chance in Hell.

Everyone is invited to 2 [Arthur] and 10 [Merlin]'s wedding except for 8 [Morgan]. How do they react?
A poisoned spinning-wheel, of course. This condemns Arthur to sleep for centuries in Avalon, and Merlin to sleep for centuries in a rock. She tops this off by bearing Arthur an incestuous love-child who will destroy his kingdom and make horrible cupcakes. Never let it be said that one may lightly scorn Morgan le Fay.

Why is 6 [Gawain] afraid of 7 [Guenevere]?
Some mysterious, inexplicable presentiment that her actions will result in the deaths of his two most beloved brothers.

1 [Mordred] arrives late for 2 [Arthur] and 10 [Merlin]'s wedding. What happens, and why were they late?
He was too busy mustering his army, and by the time they arrive all the invasion cupcakes have been eaten.

5 [Yvain] and 9 [Lunette] get roaring drunk and end up at your house. What happens?
Upon closer inspection, the lion is the one doing the roaring, while Yvain is quietly tearful about his wife. Lunette gives him a full-body massage with mysterious Morgan oils on your couch and uses the whole bottle, even though it was very expensive, and puts him to bed without offering to pay for the couch to be steam-cleaned.

9 [Lunette] murders 2's [Arthur] best friend. What does 2 do to get back at them?
In revenge for Lancelot's failure to fulfil his traditional role of Turning Up At The Last Minute To Rescue Ladies From The Stake, she substitutes Morgan Oil Of Lavender-Scented Hip-Bath Lusciousness for the Morgan Oil Of Head Re-attaching that he was using to play games with the Green Knight. This casts rather a pall over their dinner. But makes the cuisine appear considerably less French, thus appeasing the guests, who are hardly averse to gore in any case.

6 [Gawain] and 1 [Mordred] are in mortal peril and only one of them can survive. Does 6 save themself or 1?
This all depends on a) the height of the sun and b) whether Gawain has realised yet that Mordred is doomed to kill Arthur and is therefore on the List Of Ultimate Evil.

8 [Morgan] and 3 [the Green Knight] go camping. For some reason they forgot to bring along any food. What do they do?
They conjure up a magical castle, complete with serving staff, which for some reason mysteriously resembles a cake decoration.

5 [Yvain] is in a chariot crash [jousting accident?] and is critically injured. What does 9 [Lunette] do?
More oil action, and tutting over the lengths to which this young man will go to get oiled by the maid.

Merry Christmas from the Kilpatrick household!

Every family has Christmas traditions, right? Each has something unique that they do that they can be fairly sure no one else is doing right at that moment. For example, two years ago as we hung our newly iced gingerbread men on the christmas tree, we could be fairly sure that no other family in Australia had a gingerbread Lucia di Lammermoor, swaying sensuously in her blood-spattered white nightdress. I think I even managed to make a dagger for her, possibly out of slivered almonds.

This Christmas, gingerbread forms were dictated rather by chance. For example, someone lost his head accidentally. So of course, he had to be consoled by translation into an approprate semi-Christmas figure:


He isn't wearing a dress. The Green Knight is far too manly to wear a dress. It is an embroidered robe. With almond embroidery on the belt.

His flashing red eyes did run a little, though.

Unfortunately, we didn't have any horse-shaped cutters, so his colour-coordinated steed lacks a little grandeur:


But his friend/adversary is very pretty, in appropriately Christmassy colours, and with an almost-pentangle on his shield.

I'm not sure why Gawain has no eyes. Either there was some solemn symbolism about his inability to see truly due to being distracted by earthly beauty, or I had used all the cashous by this time.

In any case, he probably got the better deal:
Poor Grendel is not only missing an arm, and some claws from his remaining hand, but he was strung up to the tree upside down - and as a result, an enterprising beagle has nibbled his head.

In fact, limblessness and missing bits seemed to be a theme this year, right down to the story my younger sister told with some of the old Christmas tree ornaments:



From left to right, Mrs Dobbins (missing her legs, an arm and the loop of string on top of her head due to her enthusiastic habit of rolling down the street), Clive the Headless Rocking Horse (ran afoul of a beer company for criticising its objectification of women, a subject about which he feels very strongly despite the fact that he is neither female or human), various soldiers who lost their bits in battling the evil chicken minions of the Easter Bunny, and another horse who's quite literally gone off his rocker and also has to wear his head slung over the left side of his rump for fear of over-balancing. I don't remember his story, except that he now runs a bicycle shop.

A slightly more serious attempt at decoration (I disapprove of Yule logs that involve feral plants like holly):


... and my two dogs worn out after a long morning beach walk.


Not that Snowy went on the walk. He was worn out by all his quiet sleeping while the rest of the family (including both beagles) was on a morning beach walk. He's seventeen, blind, deaf and doddery, lives with my parents because he'd be far too disoriented if I took him with me to Melbourne, and we've been expected him to die suddenly for about three years.

He quite likes Oliver, though I don't think Oliver really notices him.

I also think it's fair to say that we were the only family in Adelaide or farther playing the dictionary game from the Oxford Latin Dictionary (we found it's easier than the English, because it's much easier to find a word that no one knows), and making up family line-by-line stories involving Chrétien de Troyes, Cleopatra and Amanda Vanstone.

It works like this. Everyone in the circle has a piece of paper. They write a man's name up the top, followed by the word 'met'. They fold the top down to hide the name from the next person, then pass the paper on. On the next paper, they write a woman's name, then fold it down and pass it on. Everyone contributes a sentence to each story, following a consistent pattern to preserve some coherence. In this case, the pattern was:
[man's name] met [woman's name] at [place]. He [said/did something]. She [ditto]. [repeat actions, alternating he/she, a certain number of times agreed in the group]. The upshot was that... [something happened].

For example:

David John Kilpatrick [my father] met
Cleopatra at
Windsor Castle.
She raised one finely plucked golden eyebrow at his choice of garter.
He tickled her tummy.
She rose onto her tiptoes and wiggled her ears conspiratorially.
The consequence was they got married and had lots and lots of babies and two rather scrawny cockatoos.

Or:

Margaret Thatcher met
Kevin Rudd [our Prime Minister] at
the Chelsea Flower Show, where he was judging the cyclads and she was dressed as one.
He remembered that he'd always had a phobia about that kind of female and began to run around in circles, squawking and flapping his arms about.
She replied, "But sir, where do you put your Grumpy Old Mysterious Stranger Who Holds The Information Necessary For The Quest, But Who Talks Only In Cryptic Epigrams?"
He rabbited on a bit longer, but finally shut up when they started playing some of his favourite music.
She raced after him, intending to catch him by train, but then remembered that she'd previously rigged all the points.
The upshot was that he joined the Australian Labour Party and developed a terrible phobia of floral print.

I don't know how we got such an appropriate final line, given whoever wrote it can't have known that the story had previously contained either a Labour PM or flowers.

Merry Christmas and New Year, and may you lose no limbs, or even claws!

The joy of Middle English glossaries

They serve a useful purpose: they tell you what words mean.

But they also serve a much more worthy purpose: they give you words out of the context that gives them some kind of sense, leaving them alone and unnaturally exposed and... quaint. It's been so long since I looked at a Middle English word and thought it was quaint. But here:

abayinge: barking. Of course it is. That's what my dog does if people do something suspicious like dare to walk past the house after dark, or if his Samoyed friend next door gets a shave for the summer weather. He does this to hide his baishtnesse (perplexity) and the fact that he is also somewhat adaunted (subdued), and to seem like a misterman (kind of man). I suspect if he were ever to meet a moldewerp (mole), his reaction would be similar.

Now, if only I could work out the html to make a widget that would generate a different Middle English word and definition each time the page was refreshed.

All from the glossary in Avril Henry's edition of the anonymous Middle English translation of Guillaume de Deguileville's The pilgrimage of the lyfe of the manhode. (Early English Text Society, London: Oxford University Press, 1985), vol. II. Her glosses, of course, relate only to the usage of the words in the text itself.

Havelok the VIKING

In our ME reading group today (which Stephanie has already posted about), one thing struck us as so odd that we exclaimed and giggled over it even before we settled down to the serious business of eating, reading, translating, exclaiming and giggling.

We're reading Havelok[1], and due to perhaps excessive amounts of exclaiming and giggling over the year are less than halfway through. The story so far involves two noble kings (England's and Denmark's), both of whom die leaving their kingdom and baby heirs in the charge of stewards. Anyone could tell these stewards were both going to turn out to be traitorous and evil, because they have very similar names (Godrich and Goddard), indicating that, as the Trinity is mysteriously three in one, these wicked stewards are one man in two bodies. Really. Their plot purpose is identical, and the poet uses the exact same rhetoric to convince us that each is worse than Judas/Satan on several occasions.

The heirs - Havelok in Denmark and Goldeborw in England - are each dispossessed of their kingdom. Evil Danish Earl tries to have Havelok killed, but the man he hires to murder him, a fisherman called Grim, repents when he sees a golden light coming from the boy's mouth, and a golden cross on his shoulder: clear signs of royal heritage, as everyone knows[2]. Grim and his family and new adopted son therefore flee to England, where the boy shows a truly royal appetite and proceeds to apparently bring famine down by eating far too much, so Grim sends him off to Lincoln to earn his living there. He grows up and turns out to be handsome, chaste, mild-mannered (mostly), and of course very strong. When Evil English Earl notices this, he promptly marries Goldeborw off to him, because he had promised the former king to marry her to the "greatest" man in England. He is therefore in a watertight legal situation if he chooses to marry her to the man who is physically strongest, even though he appears to be a lowly peasant and she will therefore be unable to challenge for her inheritance.

Havelok and his new wife flee back to Grim's family, where she laments being given to a peasant. Never fear - the cross shows up again. Jubilation! Suddenly Havelok without explanation digs up all the memories of being a prince's son and shows a remarkable retrospective perspicacity in managing to narrate the events from his infancy from Evil Danish Earl's point of view, and they all set off for Denmark to claim his heritage.

Unfortunately, at this point a folio is missing in the manuscript, meaning that we have 160 lines of unnarrated action. When the text resumes, they appear to have reached Denmark, and Havelok is pretending to be a merchant, bargaining with Non-Evil Danish Earl for the right to conduct trade on his lands. Suddenly, to seal the bargain:

A gold ring drow he forth anon,
An hundred pund was worth þe ston (1632-3)

And this is what befuddled us. Where on earth did the cook's apprentice at Lincoln, or a poor fisherman's family, or a dispossessed princess, find a gold ring whose stone alone was worth a hundred pounds?

Upon further consideration, I have two theories.

1. They finally managed to tear that cross off his shoulder. Goldeborw was getting tired of cuddling up to it, and the angelic voice it emitted was frankly keeping her awake all night, so they melted it down and made a ring out of it.

2. Pirates. Obviously. The missing 160 lines contained pirates. Probably Viking pirates - this is mediaeval Denmark, after all. And who says you can't have a piratical sea battle in only 160 lines? Hamlet did it in fewer! Clearly they battled viking pirates and took all their treasure. In fact, they were probably ninja viking pirates. That would account for the missing folio - they were covering their tracks!

Definitely ninjas.

[1] The Lay of Havelok the Dane. Ed. Skeat, Walter W. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.
[2] Really. Everyone knows. The cross and the light keep popping up to reveal his true lineage at crucial points in the narrative.

To venture forward a few hundred years...

I was just reading Susan Higganbotham's latest entry and realised something I've never noticed before.

Lord Darnley, who married Mary Queen of Scots... was the son of the Earl of Lennox.

Now, this may not sound terribly momentous, but think about it for a moment. This means that Darnley would have been Lennox, if he had outlived his father (which he didn't). This means that, if the queen were to take the name and title of her husband on marriage (which she didn't, as she slightly outranked him) she would have been (if we blur the distinctions between surname and title for a moment).... Mary Lennox.

Did Frances Hodgson Burnett know about this? Closer examination can prove beyond doubt that this apparent coincidence was intentional, and that The Secret Garden, far from being an innocent children's story, is in fact a subversive political paper!

To start with, Colin is Mary's cousin, and there are hints in the book that he may have a romantic interest in her. Burnett played this down, but the film perceptively picked up on this and played it out more strongly. This may seem insignificant, until we remember that Darnley was Mary Stuart's first cousin! Though Darnley and Mary shared a surname, Colin and Mary Lennox are the offspring of two sisters, clearly in order for Burnett to change Colin's surname - to Craven. Remember, Darnley is often portrayed as a bully and coward, and he was apparently killed fleeing the scene of the first attempt on his life. Colin's fits of temper and childish violence take on added resonance in the light of Darnley's violent temper, particularly the murder of his wife's lover, Rizzio. Is the memory of sudden death that hovers over Misselthwaite Manor - particularly the Secret Garden itself - a foreboding of the violence that an older Colin is to visit on his rival for Mary's affections, the outsider Dickon?

Let us consider the figure of Dickon. Clearly an analogue for the Earl of Bothwell, his presence in the story offers Mary an attractive escape from the life in the highly ordered manor, from the prospect of commanding the miniature kingdom that Mary Stuart handled so badly. The character most closely associated with the Secret Garden himself, he draws both Colin and Mary into his insidious schemes and seduces them into believing the Garden a "safe" environment for indulging in innocent childhood play. His closeness to nature recalls Bothwell's renowned weakness for indulging his primal urges (see Wikipedia, I'm sure it has much to say on the subject), and Mary's fascination in exploring this world with him bodes ill for her ability to retain her independence for long. Published eight years after the death of Queen Victoria, The Secret Garden conceals dark and disturbing messages about feminine monarchy and its limitations, from the pen of a woman who appears to have believed that death and the changes that accompanied it were long overdue.

Hm. I just realised that Bothwell's surname is... Hepburn.

No. Too easy.

Possible thesis titles...?

So, just as I'm trying to think of a title for my thesis, Per Omnia Saecula posted a link to something worryingly called The Amazing and Incredible, Only-Slightly-Laughable, Politically Unassailable, PoMo English Paper Title Generator. It provided amusement for all of five minutes! Here is what it suggested for SGGK (minus some repetitions of "the Gawain-poet's" because it wanted to put the author's name in there, which is rather pointless when we don't know it):

1. Speaking, Complicating, Queering: Homoerotics in the Gawain-poet and the Oriental Problematics of Dissection in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Well, Gawain does kiss Bertilak six times, completely unaware of possible 20th century homoerotic readings of the act, poor lad. But I really don't want to start analysing how that relates to the dissection of the carcases on the three days of the hunt. (Possibly via the symbolic castration of the reciprocal beheading scenes...?)

2. Territories as Notions: Alienating Marginalized Production in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
True! Many of the most beautifully produced objects in the poem come from Generic Exotic Foreign Locale. Let us read this as a decentralisation of post-colonial economic nationalisation and reconstruction!

3. Representing, (Be)laboring, Hybridizing: Ethnicity in the Gawain-poet and the Encoded Attraction of Murder in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Barely there, unless by extensiving (be)labouring of the point. Given 'ethnicity' in the poem is confined to a very narrow social, cultural and racial strata (basically, they're all English noblemen, except for the women, who don't count, and a guide and a porter, who are generic churls), there isn't much cross-analysis we can do. But there's plenty of murder! And a very attractive murderer-to-be. As a matter of fact, the Lady is quite attractive too - she could be said to be attracting him towards his own murder.

4. The Gawain-poet Fraying Seduction: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Subtext of Essentialism
I'm afraid I can only understand one word here in the context of the poem, and that's 'seduction'. So clearly an ideal paper title. There's plenty of subtext, after all, and the girdle probably frayed a bit after all that riding back home to Camelot through the wilderness.

5. The Postmodern Sectioning The Alien: the Gawain-poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Religion
Once again with the sectioning. Apparently those poor deer and the boar and the fox are more important than I thought. Also implicitly connected to the alien, the external - presumably the Green Knight? He is associated with the forest, after all! And the poem is, of course, permeated with religion. Perhaps the disassembling of body parts is how one assimilates the alien, making Gawain and his antagonist closer and more similar after Gawain's implicit decapitation than could have been a possibility before. We have a metaphor for this in the literal assimilation of the dissected 'alien' deer - they got eaten, didn't they? Proof! I think we have a winner.

Of course, none of this have the tiniest relevance to my thesis, and I was, I humbly admit, considering something a little more comprehensible and, well, interesting. But at least now I know what real paper titles look like!