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.

Sir Launfal and the ubiquitous Veiled Homosexual Reference

So, I have been quiet again, for real life is intruding - in a good way, this time! The arrival of my formal offer letter from Ottawa University has precipitating a little fluffy of Things To Do, which leave little time for creative thought. Fortunately, one can still manage the more mathematical work of grammatical study and translation - so in addition to Latin, I am now having a lot of fun (re)teaching myself modern French[1], and trying not to get distracted by Anglo-Norman spelling patterns.

But we were reading through Sir Launfal today (using this online edition) and one thing struck me particularly.

For background: Guenevere, in this poem, is the traditional Evil Predatory Scheming Evil Seductive Evil Emasculating Threatening-Homosocial-Bonds Evil Female. She has already managed to get Launfal sent away from Camelot in shame (severing him from his masculinity, or at least the ideal proof of it, as Evil Predatory Scheming Females are wont to do). Now he has returned in glory, she tries another trick in the traditional repertoire of the Evil Predatory Scheming Female. She tries to seduce him - and when he (being a noble and virtuous knight, and also in love with someone else) refuses her, she goes to Arthur and cries rape[2]. However, before stalking off in a huff, she resorts to insult:

Sche seyde, "Fy on the, thou coward!
Anhongeth worth thou hye and hard! [Thou art worthy to be hanged high and hard]
That thou ever were ybore!
That thou lyvest, hyt ys pyté! [Probably, both 'that thou's should be read as dependent on 'it is pity'.]
Thou lovyst no woman, ne no woman the -
Thou were worthy forlore [to be lost/damned]!" (485-490)

Obviously, if one cannot lust after the beautiful Guenevere, one cannot lust after any woman, or so her logic seems to run. Certainly, given the consequent beauty contest, physical attractiveness (presumably as a metaphor for other noble/virtuous qualities) is at issue here. Launfal's reply confirms this:

The knyght was sore aschamed tho;
To speke ne myghte he forgo
And seyde the Quene before,
"I have loved a fayryr woman
Than thou ever leydest thyn ey upon
Thys seven yer and more! (491-496)

What concerns me here is the terms of her accusation. Firstly, she calls him a coward - a sore insult for a knight, but her phrasing suggests it's merely a throw-away line, subsidiary to and dependent on what follows. The primary accusation - which she holds as strong enough to damn him - is that he loves no woman, and no woman loves him.

The editors of this edition read this, without a 'maybe', as a barely-veiled accusation of sodomy. The equivalent tale by Marie de France has, at this point, a much more open accusation: Launfal prefers boys to women. Yes, dramatic, shocking, scandalous, and most delectably convenient to modern sensibilities. But..?

That's not what she says. I don't deny that the accusation of homosexuality[3] is present, or the threat of theological damnation for the act (or preference) of sodomy. But I feel that her primary concern is with exactly what she says: Launfal is apparently opting out of the intricate social game of courtly love. Whether that be in the interest of celibacy or chasing pretty boys is beside the question. Guenevere is out to emasculate Launfal; and, in this poet's view, stepping out of that ultimate knightly game of courtship and stylised self-elevating self-degradation, the theoretically bloodless game with its rules as intricate as those of any tournament sport, is as damning in social terms as sodomy itself may be in theological ones. This accusation is, and should be, enough. If Launfal cannot prove his manhood in courtly love - not because he fails in it, but because he chooses to avoid it - then there is no man to be proven. The potency of the venom lies in the central accusation, which is exactly what she says: "Thou lovyst no woman, ne no woman the".

The occasional (or habitual) act of sodomy may be a corollary to this, but I think it is imposing modern sensibilities too far to say that this is the heart of Guenevere's accusation. Rather, she is accusing him of opting out of the primary activity[4] of the homosocial network that proves his knighthood (or masculinity, if you prefer), thereby revealing himself to be less than a man[5].

And Launfal, tellingly, responds to the accusation in kind. He protests not that "I love a woman, she is definitely female, so there", but "I love a woman more beautiful than you have seen in seven years" (or possibly "I have loved a woman for seven years who is more beautiful than any you have ever seen"). Like Guenevere, he ties the issue back to feminine beauty - which is, of course, one of the most potent points-scorers in the Courtly Love game (along with Difficulty Of Attaining Maiden, Brutishness Of Beast Threatening/Wooing Her, Length Of Years Spent Wandering In The Wilderness / Locked In A Dungeon Before Attaining Her and Mystical Virtue-Affirming Objects Attained In The Process). Is there any solemn tale of courtly love in which the beauty of the objet desire (object in every possible sense, of course) is not extolled above all others[6]? Launfal replies in the terms of the game, asserting that not only does he participate, but he excels - as, of course, the subsequent contest will prove. Women are scorepoints, the higher the better; and the player who doesn't bother moving his little character across the screen to chase the points won't end up on the high score table.

I've nothing against reading gay theory into literature, of course. It's certainly necessary, and we've an awful lot of re-writing to do over centuries of phobia and repression. But it does concern me that it becomes a fad and an obsession - that we see OMG GAY SEX and focus on that to the exclusion of what might actually have been meant. It's as if, at work, I were to see two women or two men walk in hand in hand, and be too busy jumping over the counter to say I AFFIRM YOUR RIGHT TO HAVE SEX WITH EACH OTHER, GO TO IT, HOORAY FOR NON-HETEROSEXUAL CHOICES to hear them say, "Um, hey, actually, I just wanted a latte".


[1] My modern French is weird and erratic. I can read an academic article with no trouble, needing little more concentration than I do to read Italian - but then, the thought pattern for reading that form of writing is familiar, and the English vocabulary for formal writing is largely French/Latin-derived anyway. I'm lost in a French chat forum, where you'd expect the language to be simpler. And I can read a letter to a neighbour in Anglo-Norman, eye an unfamiliar verb with an odd collection of vowels and say "that looks like an early form of the French equivalent of this verb, and that is either the subjunctive or the imperfect, third person plural", which makes it very easy to locate the right form in a verb table to cross-check. But ask me to form the subjunctive or imperfect of any given verb in any form of French and I'd be stumped. It's all intuitive leaps and no recitable verb tables. And of course, my accent is terrible and my ear is quite untrained in following a modern French speaker at normal conversational pace.

So: I have the vocabulary, and the instinct, and just need to cement my grammar and build my aural skills. Easily done - that is, after all, what online resources are for!


[2] Actually, what she says is 'he propositioned me, and ALSO HE INSULTED MY BEAUTY, HE MUST DIE'.

[3] Or homosexual preferences, or homosexual acts. Caveat lector, homosexuality being an anachronistic concept, etc, though I'd dispute the absolute generalisation that sexuality was completely defined by the act in the middle ages and that there was no concept of sexual preferences - witness this accusation, if nothing else. If one reads this passage as being primarily concerned with OMG GAY SEX, as the modern reader is conditioned to, Guenevere does appear to be referring to an established preference: a lifestyle choice, in modern terms. But I think that is only secondary to her main point.

[4] Well, yes, there's also fighting. But this is courtly romance we're talking about, and the hero is always good at fighting: it's the courtly-love half of the two primary strands of knighthood that causes the problems and requires most intricate and difficult proof.

[5] And earlier in this scene, she actually stepped between him and Gawain, thereby symbolically cutting him off from the epitome of English knighthood and manliness! The wiles of women know no end. He should just hand her a cleaver and be done with it. And then go and exchange sob stories with Erec and Yvain about losing his precious Gawain because of a woman.

[6] The Grail legends may, at this point in the argument, be read as a tale of courtly love, if you so desire, or the courtly love paradigm read as a metaphor for the Grail hunt. Either works. The Grail is shiny and pretty.

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!

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!

Well, thif if a nice meff you've goc us inco!

It isn't a typo if you meant to spell it wrong, right? But what if you're a mediaeval scribe, sitting around with his pen and treated pig skin, copying out someone else's crabbed handwriting into your own crabbed handwriting, and you make a mistake? Is that a scribo? Scribble, maybe? Middle English spelling is often said to - well, to not exist at all, really, but most scribes drew the line (as it were) at substituting one letter for a completely different one - say, a 'w' for a 't'[1].

But sometimes you're just not sure. My edition of Gawain (Anderson's) has the following line in the description of the five five-fold virtues represented by the pentangle on Gawain's shield:

Now alle these fyve sethes, for sothe, were fetled on this knyght, (656)
[Now, Gawain possessed all these five sets of virtues.]

Anderson glosses "sethes" and "fetled" in this line: the first as "sets (of five)", the second as... "settled".

I find this choice of Anderson's odd. Why write 'fetled' and not 'setled'? The scribe of the single surviving manuscript of the poem uses the long 's', the one that looks like an 'f' without a cross-stroke. In his handwriting, it's often very hard to tell the difference between the two letters, because the cross-stroke is very small. In fact, sometimes he's just careless and puts the cross-stroke on 's' or leaves it off 'f'. His 'c' and 't' are also close to indistinguishable, which means that we're still not sure whether the name of the Green Knight's alter ego is "Bertilak" or "Bercilak". So (fo?) a modern editor has to make a decision based on a) context and his/her knowledge of the English language and b) alliteration. A) is complicated by the fact that this poet is writing in a rather obscure dialect, and several forms of words - even a few words in their entirety - exist nowhere else in our surviving literature. "Runischly", for example - any editor who glosses that is just guessing what it means by the context in which it appears.

In this case, Anderson seems to have gone with b), and settled on "fetled". This would mean he reads 'f' as the alliterating letter in this line, which in turn means he thinks the main emphases of the line lie like this:

Now alle these fyve sethes, for sothe, were fetled on this knyght.

I just can't agree with that. I like to think my status as a failed singer gives me a little more appreciation for rhythm and the music of words than that. To me, it's clearly the 's' that alliterates, which means the line must be:

Now alle these fyve sethes, for sothe, were setled on this knyght.

Technically, it could be either. So far as I can make out in my facsimile of the manuscript, the cross-stroke of the 'f' is visible in this line - though, as I noted before, that isn't always a sure sign with this scribe, particularly when he's just recently written two 'f's which did require the cross-stroke and had a habit of just getting into a roll with these things. Elsewhere, he repeats whole words from earlier lines that are clearly inappropriate.

The OED does cite "fettle" as a verb at this time ("To make ready, put in order, arrange. Now only dial. to put to rights, ‘tidy up’, scour; also, to groom (a horse), attend to (cattle).") and cites this line from SGGK as one of its examples. It also cites one other example from a more or less contemporary English text, which it mysteriously calls E.E. Allit. P. B. 585: "He at fetly in face fettled alle eres. Ibid. C. 38 In e tyxte ere yse two arn on teme layde, Hit arn fettled in on forme" Clearly, in both of these examples, the alliteration demands 'f'.

Still. Just because the word exists doesn't mean the poet used it here. Perhaps its existence makes the scribe more likely to use 'f' (though this one didn't really need an excuse for his scribos), but I don't think the OED's meaning of "fettled" suits the occasion, and I find it slightly ridiculous that even Anderson thinks "settled" makes so much more sense than "fettled" that he glosses one with the other. I think I fhall fly in the face of Anderfon, Fir Ifrael Gollancz, Tolkien and Gordon, and everyone elfe who'f ever edited thif text and declared the point fettled. I lay my saith and considence in my ear, and shall hencesorth servently believe that the line should read "settled".



[1] Well. Mostly. The Gawain poet does spell both "Gawain" and "Guenevere" with an initial 'w' if he wants to alliterate on that letter instead...

Sir Gawain and the Marvellous

The mediaeval romance, like any fantasy genre, is rich in the marvellous - the magical, the supernatural, the bemusing and the wonderously inexplicable. John Stevens[1] divides the marvellous into four types (pp 99-102):

1) The exotic - that which is marvellous because it is from some far-off land (the Orient, India, etc) but is not actually supernatural in any way, merely out of our reach.

2) The mysterious - that marvel which has no agent, "unmotivated, unexplained and inexplicable". Suddenly appearing castles or ships, talking animals or landscape features like a bridge made out of a sword belong to this category.

3) The magical - the marvellous controlled by man (including creatures like wizards or fairies). Morgan le Fay's vast array of send-away-for-the-magic-ointment/ring-of-your-choice artefacts all live here, as well as magic armour and swords.

4) The miraculous - the marvellous controlled by God. Miracles, divine aid or visions are the most common, and they usually occur in accounts of the Grail quest.

Like most general categorisations, as a theory it's neat and works well for most romances, particularly the ones written by poets who don't really rise above the ordinary and challenge the medium they're writing in. However, the attempt to apply it to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows how gently that poem refuses categorisation, in this as in other things.

[1] Medieval Romance: Themes and Approaches. London: Hutchison, 1973.

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 properties of the diamond

Gawain's worst mistake in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - possibly his only mistake - is one of "cowarddyse". He accepts the beautiful green and gold girdle which the Lady offers, believing her promise that it will save his life in the upcoming encounter. One of the reasons this is usually read as a serious fall from perfection is that Gawain is symbolically placing his faith in the girdle instead of his pentangle emblem, which embodies all his interdependent knightly ideals. Turning his reliance from the pentangle to the girdle, from the protection of Mary to Bertilak's unnamed wife, Gawain unwittingly fails in the Eden-like perfection in which he rode out, innocent and strong and earnest, from Camelot.

Or does he?

Fewer critics have noticed that in the first arming scene, at Camelot, Gawain also carries superstitious charms against harm: his helmet is studded with "diamauntes a devys / That bothe were bryght and broun" (617-18). Early 20th century editions of the poem - Gollancz's and, I believe, Tolkien and Gordon's, though I don't have it by to confirm - gloss "broun" as "bright", but brown diamonds do exist and (to judge by the lapidaries) were well known at this time. It's a minor point in my thesis - just one footnote - but it still needs a proper citation, so I hunted down the EETS English Mediaeval Lapidaries (Evans and Serjeantson, 1933) in the library and photocopied the entries on diamond[1]. It afforded a pleasant afternoon's entertainment coming home on the train.

Most of the lapidaries (which either all have a common source or are blithely copying each other, hardly unusual in mediaeval texts) state that "that diamand that cometh owte of ynd [India] ben clepid [called] the mal, & they ben brewen [brown] of colour & of violet, & tho that comen owte of araby [Arabia] ben clepid femal, & they ben more whight, resonable to the colour of cristall". All the lapidaries which mention colour agree on that, with the possible exception of the North Midland Lapidary, which says that the Arabian diamonds are "mor blew" rather than white - though they could mean the same thing.

As to the properties of the diamond, it seems a paragon among stones. To follow the North Midland's spelling and phrasing, a diamond gives its bearer "strength & vertu; & he sal kep a man fro dremynge & of fantasy & of venom" - to which other lapidaries add, significantly for Gawain, temptation. It will keep his "lymes & ye bones hole", protect from falling off horses (good to know!), safeguard a man in battle, ward off "wreth & lychery", and increase a man's prosperity. Interestingly, though a diamond increases virtue and encourages chastity, most of the lapidaries emphasise that "hym behoues for to be of holy lyfe yt so vertus a ston wyll ber" ["he that would bear so virtuous a stone ought to lead a holy life"]. It's also implicitly equated with purity in other ways, such as the insistence that it is only fit to be set in "golde", and that it should be born in "clennesse" - usually synonymous with purity[2]. It seems the correlation between the virtue and possession or keeping of the stone is not quite clear - which causes the other? The same may be said for wealth - I doubt many poor men would be wearing a diamond to begin with!

So Gawain is wearing some rather potent charms in his helmet right from the start of the poem, though he doesn't seem to think this is inconsistent with his ideals. Are they any use to him? Well, technically he "kepeth the boones & the membres whoole"[3], and it may give him "strencthe & vertue" - he doesn't seem to be lacking in those - but how far the power of the diamonds "kepith hym fro grevouse metynge & temptacions" is certainly up for debate!

Other fun facts about diamonds (and other stones on the same pages that I photocopied):
- Diamonds ward off "the drede that commeth be nyght". Perhaps a diamond collar for your child's teddy bear, if they're prone to nightmares?
- The allectory or electoyr is a kind of precious stone that grows in the "wombe" (stomach, one hopes!) of a "capon" (castrated cockerel being fed up for the table) when he is between three and seven years old. Putting it in your mouth cures thirst, or makes a woman beloved of her lord. I don't know if I'm game to experiment with that one.
- Though a true diamond will not break if laid on an anvil and his with a "gret hamer of yrne", it will if you first wash it "in hot new blod of a gote boke [buck]". What a good thing Gawain doesn't encounter any of those!
- "Corneal is a derke stone" which "fordoth ire... and staunchith blode of all membres, & specially of a woman that hath the priue maladye". Now there's one I ought to try. "I'm sorry, I can't come to work today. I have the privy malady - and the cornelian I bought on ebay hasn't arrived yet!"


[1] aka diamaund(e), dyamaunde, adamant, adamantis, diamonde, diamand or athemaunde - don't you love non-standardised spelling systems? Apparently the one way to tell a true diamond is to lay it on an "Andefeld" of iron and try to smash it - presumably an anvil!
[2] Incidentally, the second poem of the four in the Gawain manuscript (probably by the same poet, in my opinion) is on the subject of "clannesse". None of the poems in the manuscript are titled, and editors are divided on whether to call this one Cleanness or Purity. Personally I prefer Purity, for the alliteration with Pearl and Patience!
[3] London Lapidary this time - comparing it with the equivalent quote in the last paragraph gives you an idea of just how close the textual relationship was between all these lapidaries.


All Gawain 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.

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.