Arthuriana Volume 4 Issue 2 1994 (Doi 10.2307/27869055) Elizabeth D. Kirk - Sir Gawain and The Green Knight 'Wel Bycommes Such Craft Upon Cristmasse' - The Festive and The Hermeneutic in Sir Gawain

'Wel Bycommes Such Craft Upon Cristmasse': the Festive and the Hermeneutic in "Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight"

Author(s): Elizabeth D. Kirk
Source: Arthuriana, Vol. 4, No. 2, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SUMMER 1994), pp. 93137
Published by: Scriptorium Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27869055 .
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'Wei Bycommes Such Craft Upon Cristmasse :

the Festive and theHermeneutic
in Sir
Gawain and theGreenKnight1

ELIZABETHD. KIRK
offers a context for examining
setting of SGGK
to the decorative and celebrative in late medieval
The Christmas
relationship
its analysis of the conflicts within
the poems
art and for
the chivalric ideal; the presence of three

verdicts on the poems action is central to its portrayal
mutually-exclusive
of human action is constructed.
of how the meaning
(EDK)
*ir Gawain
and the Green Knight, however diverse the conclusions
about
itoffered by critics employing differentmethodologies, strikes all its readers

as the
quintessentially aristocratic and courdy poem. As such, itpresents readers
with a question that is not merely aesthetic but also theological, social, and
cultural: is this text aristocratic' in the sense of embodying and reinforcing the
class-based values of its courtly audience? Does the poem go further to extend
and redefine the notion of the aristocratic by suggesting that the aristocratic
ethos offers an ethical and aesthetic model that can be generalized beyond the
itoriginates, and if so does the new model transcend the

limitations of the courtly or remain hostage to them?Or is itultimately critical
of the chivalric, borrowing the very idiom of an aristocratic audience to call
class base fromwhich
their own assumptions into question? The aristocratic' character of the text,
and itsplayful, celebrative, ceremonial, and stylistically sophisticated manner,
to say nothing of its traditional romance motifs, have been perceived as
own
are in tension with
embodying values absolute in their
right, values that
the overt moralizing offered by much of the poem's own commentary on its
tension is ultimately embodied in the poem's presentation of
three evaluations of the action that appear to be mutually exclusive, voiced by
theGreen Knight, by Gawain himself, and by theArthurian court. This essay
action.
This
Arthuriana
93

4.2
(1994)
94
ARTHURIANA
will argue that the poem s association with Christmas offers a resolution of the
tension not only between its historically distant, anthropologically-rooted
motifs and its fourteenth-century aristocratic milieu, but also between its
celebratory style and its didactic judgments, and, further, explains its
juxtaposition of the three apparently contradictory verdicts by putting these
tensions in the context of the theological perspective which the feast of the
Incarnation offers on the relationship between the finite and the absolute.
The presence of such conspicuously conflicting elements in the poem has
resulted in equally conflicting interpretations, some of which respond to the

poems celebrative medium and some which seek to place its action in a
conceptual framework that provides a basis formoral judgment. On the one
hand, SGGK is experienced as themost radiant and festal of poems, whose
every detail conveys high, skilled, deliberate delight, the quality E. C. Bentleys
Trent found inmusic he described as expressing mere joy, the genuine article.'
This phrase, with its characteristically
de si cle veiling of celebration in a
its
ironic
flippant idiom,2 reveals, by
guardedness and its choice of a musical
a
a
text, how unusual such quality is in work of language, compared with the
visual arts and music, and how rare it is to find any comparable triumph of joy
in a literarywork. Can a poem ever be about mere
joy, the genuine article'?
a
sense
SGGisf
transmits
vivid
of celebration, a high comedy of action
Certainly
and dialogue most distinctive and unusual for itsperiod, and a
reveling in the
senses and in game and ritual behavior: a virtuoso
of
the power of
display
to seize,
events.
and
the
character of
shape,
language
heighten
In contrast with this affective reaction ofmany readers to SGGK> however,
scholars have tended to stress the poems overt didacticism, itsmoral

analysis,
and its evocation of penitential tradition. Certainly the serious
implications of
the story are underlined by its setting in the early stage ofKing Arthurs
reign,
with theArthurian 'folk... in her first age' led by a
child-gered' [boyish] king
(54, 86).3 This focus on beginnings forcefully suggests the ending to come.
The fall of theArthurian world is all too immanent in the
perspective of the
rise and fall of kingdoms since Troy with which the poem opens. The reader
knows - though the characters do not - what is to happen to them, yet knows
no better than
they do why.4 This distances readers from the characters while
simultaneously giving them a special stake in the events, since these events
and theirmeaning are asmuch a part of the audiences past as of the characters
future. In such an ethical and historical context, causality and the assessment
of guilt are necessarily a major preoccupation. Gawain, likeKafkas K

though
for different reasons, must be guilty. But if so,
guilty to what extent? And

FESTIVE AND THE HERMENEUTIC INSGGK
95
guilty ofwhat, precisely? Interpretation is furthercomplicated by the conflicting

most obvious
generic affiliations of the narrative: The genre may be, in the
sense, courtly romance, but much of the poems discourse suggests overtly
didactic narrative forms, and the poem also invites consideration as comedy
as
tragedy
(suggesting comparison with later high comedy of manners) and
as
as
or
sense
the
Renaissance
well
the
Aristotelian
the
medieval) or elegy
(in
more difficult by the presence in the poem ofmaterial
Interpretation ismade still
which predates it and which anthropologists have argued embodies an older,

non-Christian mythology whose value system is not easily reconciled with the
overt Christian morality explicitly invoked in the text.The text itself seems to
achievement in so complex a cultural
acknowledge the difficulty of assessing
evaluations
setting by its striking and distinctive device of the three conflicting
of itsprotagonist s achievement. Whatever may be concluded about the greater
one verdict over the others - and a case not only can be but has
validity of
- a more
been made for each, as we will consider in more detail below
is placed in a position of
problem is the fact that the reader
5
indeterminacy in the text itself.
dealing with what looks like conspicuous
This poem, which is in one sense so obviously celebrative, is about an event
which itsprotagonist, though not his opponent or his peers, regards as a failure,
more suited to evoke Vergil's lacrimae rerum than theGreen Knight s praise or
fundamental
the young court s laughter.

II debate between
Symptomatic of this situation is the post-World War
terms
its
in
of
the
theNew Critics, who interpreted
poem
sophisticated style
and celebrative tone and privileged what was most distinctive and least
traditional in the poets treatment of his materials, and the anthropological
in the pre-existing value systems

sought the poems 'real'meaning
the traditional materials brought with them, irrespective of whether the poet
of this particular redaction intended them or not. This controversy, which
now seems so dated, is nevertheless even more revealing today than itwas at
the time of the tension between interpretations dominated by the poems
critics who
and those based on its substantive content. It reveals how

it
is to strike an adequate balance between a sense of the text
nearly impossible
as radiant and funny and the sense inwhich it engages the fallibility of human
effort and the difficulty of assessing finite achievement and failure.
distinctive manner
I. THE ETHICAL
IMPLICATIONS OF THE ARISTOCRATIC ETHOS
All the poems of Cotton Nero a.x., with the possible exception of Patience\
examine the extent to which the chivalric ethos and especially the image of

ARTHURIANA
96
of a great lord provide an illuminating

metaphor for the ethical and religious life.^ Even the least sophisticated of the
s
poet s treatments of this subject, Cleanness, inwhich God wrath against human
an
sees
as
felt
failure is portrayed
by
analogous with the rage
earthly lordwho
the festive decorum of his feast violated by the presence of a guest in filthy and
ragged clothes, makes clear the great advantages thismodel for ethics offers
aristocratie
life in the household
as
or proscriptive models. The
essentially negative
good life is portrayed
a
as like a courtier
intrinsically desirable and the ethical human being
living
over
self-evidently attractive and satisfying life that is dictated by, shares in, and is
inkeeping with the sensibility of a fastidious and gracious lord,whose household
reflects in itsevery detail his own exacting taste,his perfectionism, his generosity,
and his love of gratuitous and leisured splendor. The price of admission to the
lord s household
is conformity with what he finds desirable; its reward is that

very conformity, which brings participation in a relationship of reciprocal
esteem, loyalty,and companionability, within an environment fromwhich all
effort and everything discordant have been banished. What makes this image
an aristocratic one is not so much its outward
trappings, which the poem so
conspicuously displays, the clothing, settings, activities, and manners that

imitate thosewhich real courts offered (or attempted to).These elements would
be attractive to the have nots as well as to the haves - presumably anyone
like to be clean, beautifully dressed, splendidly fed, continuously at
would
leisure, and entitled to self-esteem on the basis of one s conformity to a code of
behavior shared by the group. The courtly ethos ismarked by a sense of
entitlement to these things: because one is a member of a privileged group
within the larger society, one may assume that lifenot only can be, and should
be, but will be like that. Because one has a certain sensibility and belongs to a
group that shares it, that sensibilitywill be provided for as a matter of course.
sign that it is achieved at the price of any effortor depends on economic
and political underpinnings can be allowed to surface. (This myth is,of course,
as
conspicuously unrealistic in terms of the realworld economics and politics
of aristocracy as such myths by definition are.)
No
Cleanness's vision of the ethical life as desirable in theway that life in an

earthly court is desirable dramatizes a return to a more organic vision of the
as Aristotelian and Thomistic ethics offered, in contrast to the
good, such
contemptus mundi language and body-denigrating prescriptions of much

medieval religious discourse, the legalistic codifications of human behavior
like the treatises Chaucer drew on for his Parsons Tale, or the conspicuous
arbitrariness of contemporary nominalist philosophy
inwhich God

does not
FESTIVE AND THE HERMENEUTIC
INSGGK
97
it is good, but rather,what he commands is

he commands it;he might have commanded the opposite. 7
good simply because
Cleanness's vision is nevertheless ultimately an extremely limited, reductive,
almost claustrophobic one, because its courtly model cannot accommodate
command what
the elements
is good because
in human
experience
from the lords household
that ethics must
address but which
are
along with the ill-dressed guest because

not
with this totalizing image of life.8An
of
harmonized
admit
do
being
they
aesthetic ethic of the kind Cleanness offers cannot resolve the problems of
banished
human finitude and imperfection, nor the uneven and too often tragic course
of human history. Above all, it cannot admit the relationship of the divine to
the creation embodied in theChristian doctrines of the Fall (which God could
have prevented), the Incarnation (in which God takes on the flesh, and with
the flesh vulnerability to death, and potential to be tempted and to refuse
(in which the incarnated God suffers). All

will), and the Atonement
these central Christian doctrines implicate the divine nature with the flawed
medium of human experience, with failure,with mourning, with repentance.
Gods
greets what offends him in human conduct with

s
as immoderate as the
paroxysms of rage, feats of destruction
banqueting lord
to dungeon and torment; in the poems
consignment of the ill-dressed guest
Christ is born without blood and
courtier-like
the
of
the
Incarnation,
picture
without pain, in the perfume of roses, and does not actually touch themaimed
The
God
of Cleanness
and diseased when he cures them.9
in contrast, the poet addresses the usefulness of this aristocratic

in a narrative that confronts at a much more complex level the
metaphor
elements of human limitation and fallibilitywhich Cleanness represents as either
to people of heightened sensibility or as intentionally
self-evidently unattractive
boorish and perverse. In SGGK Gawain is defined at the outset, in his role of
In SGGK,
the premier knight among his peers, by the device of the pentangle which the
at considerable length in a passage we will examine inmore
text
expounds
We
detail below.
may say at the outset, however, that the pentangle is the
is connected to every other inwhat the narrator
figure inwhich every point
calls an endless knot (630).10 The narrators exposition of itsmeaning in terms
of the perfection of five fives is the emblem of a way of life in which the
with the superlative of every other, in
superlative of every value corresponds
which excellence in any area is equatable with excellence in every other, in
which the fulfillment of any demand is the fulfillment of the rest. It postulates
a way of life inwhich, given enough commitment and effort, a person could
make self and world into a seamless whole, where no good is at the expense of

ARTHURIANA
98
a
art:
morality and courtesy,
anything and life has the perfection of work of
are but themanifestation in different
beauty and action, religion and politics
realms of the same radiant and effortlessperfection. This is the ideal Huizinga
so
shrewdly summed up when he called the myth of chivalry an aesthetic
ideal masquerading as an ethical ideal.'11The pentangle is a visual emblem for
the way
chivalric society rationalized its own role. To wear the

is to define the value of one's life in terms of the degree towhich one
in which
pentangle
actualizes this synthesis orwholeness. To be most fullyhuman in this aristocratic
vision is to be most fully a pentangle.
The idea that such unity can exist between what we anachronistically
differentiate as the secular and the religious, the aesthetic and themoral, the
luxurious and the idealistic, is seductive. But how problematic it is becomes
look at a less sophisticated formulation: the lines on courteisie in
clearer ifwe
the early fifteenth century conduct book for children, The Young Childrens
Book
Clerkys
Jât canne
jê sevens
seuene
Seys t>atcurtasycame froheuen

When gabryell owre ladygrette,
And elyzabethwith heremette.
All vertus be closyde in curtasy,
And Aile vyces invilony.12
[Clerks thatknow the seven sciences

Say that courtesy came down fromheaven
When Gabriel greetedOur Lady

And Elizabeth met with her.
All virtues are comprised in courtesy
And all vices invillainy.]
Not only are all virtues and vices reduced to these two, with
strikingly
anti-climactic effect. The fact that their very names
embody those of two
opposing classes, courtier and villain, aristocrat and peasant, could not offer a
more dramatic
example of conflating the sociological with what purports to
be an absolute ethical and aesthetic vision.
as the
Choosing theAnnunciation
of
the
in
of
all
virtue
courteisie
assimilates
paradigmatic example
coalescing
supposedly transcendent reality ruthlessly to cultural expectations.*3 The crass
innocence of the
Young Childrens Books educational rhetoric dramatizes the
(to pursue
negative side of making religion and culture co-extensive. When
this text's terms), theVirgin Mary is pictured as the perfect courtly lady, as in
the lyric 'I Sing of aMayden,'
the image is an enormously powerful one, as the

INSGGK
99
no surprise thatGawain's shield

enduring impact of the lyric itselfattests; it is
carries on the reverse the likeness of ê hende heuen-quene'
[the high Queen
of heaven] (646-50). Yet potential in this very conflation of divine authority

with social grace is exactly the degeneration of the notion of gentilesse which
Chaucer so remorselessly exposes in the General Prologue sequence: from the
Knight, whose chivalrie embodies troutheand honour,fredom and courteisie (I,
45-46), through the elegant Squire, the Prioress who peyned hir to contrefete
cheere/Of court' [took pains to imitate the style of theCourt] (I, 139-40), the
Friar who was
as
curteis-and
lowely of servyse' but only 'ther profit sholde
where therewas profit to be got] (1,249-50),
arise' [courteous and humble
down to the Summoner who was a gentil harlot [foul-mouth] and a kynde' (I,
467) and the 'gentil' Pardoner who thinks (erroneously) that he 'rood al of the
newe
is all
and who
[all done up in the latest style] (I, 669,682)
^ Yet the festive
so central to the
impact of SGGKdepends
quality
performance.
on this very conflation of disparate spheres that carries such potential for
aesthetic splendor, and the ideal itselfremained powerful and inmany respects
jet'
enabling formany centuries.

This aestheticized chivalric ideal came into being only as knighthood ceased
a matter of social utility, only to be
to be
problematized retroactively
primarily
to the
by furtherhistorical change from the earlymodern period
Enlightenment.
As Maurice Valency summarizes thishistorical process, itwas only as the knight
ceased to be the practical mainstay of medieval warfare that he could become
an idealized image of human
life:
The knightwas originally differentiatedfromotherwarriors chieflyby the

nature of his equipment, and his superior ability in thefield gave him social
status. But his utilitywas ephemeral. In battle afterbattle fromCrecy to
Varna, itwas amply demonstrated that the armed knight could not hold his
own against the brigaded anonymous infantrymanarmed with the bow or
pike. Yet knighthood did not die. Long after itspractical value was lost, it
retained itshold on the imagination. Its substance faded,but itsstylesurvived,
and in thisprocess of keepingalive what had neverquite existed,the poet was
indispensable.1^
the same kind of critique thatValency formulates on a historical

.
as
soon as the notion of the
was
tst\ As
basis
already offered by SGGK
knight
a
perfect pentangle escapes from the carefully selected realm of courtly narrative
and encounters the different areas of experience whose unity it presupposes,
But much
the factitious character of that unity becomes conspicuous and the irreconcilable
character of itsoverlapping demands apparent. The Gawain-poet plays exactly

IOO
ARTHURIANA
the opposite role from the one Valency attributes to the courtly poets he
discusses; he puts this image back into contexts inwhich its constituent images
to come apart; he denaturalizes and d
mystifies it.
begin
ii.MEANING
AND INDETERMINACY
Before we can pursue how the poem deconstructs themedieval notion of

as a
we must focus on the remarkable structural
knighthood
totalizing ideal,
feature of the poem which we have already noted, the presence of threemutually
exclusive and fully overt interpretations of the poem's action. The presence of
three contradictory and unmediated verdicts on Gawain's deed presents so
a
to received notions of how medieval texts transmit
conspicuous
challenge
that there is a natural temptation to explain the contradiction away

to historical context to show that the apparent
by turning
indeterminacy does
not
to suggest
exist.
tradition
has
been
actually
variously evoked
Theological
that amedieval readerwould have known definirely,on the basis of information
exterior to the poem, that two of the three verdicts are wrong, so that the
meaning
validity of the thirdwould have been self-evident; such analyses tend to support
Gawain's penitential perspective. The anthropological critics, on the other hand,
seized on themany motifs in the poem which have their origins in folklore,
particularly fertility
myths, to show that the story's 'real'meaning is independent
of itsparticular treatment and that the apparent contradiction between pagan
fertility cults and Christian penitential rites is superficial and anachronistic,
an attitude that tends to
as a matter of
privilege the Green Knight's verdict
course, as exemplifying the underlying values in the inherited material. It is
certainly true that the poem shares certain anthropological elements with The
Wife ofBathsTale. Both have antecedents in rituals for the renewal of nature
and in some cases connects these with policial sovereignty, as when the
acquisition of the sovereignty of Ireland is aquired through an encounter with
an apparent
hag who has power in her gift in return for the hero's social and
sexual submission,1^ motifs relevant to SGGKs more overt themes. This
as we have noted, found itself
anthropological approach,
pitted against New
Critical analyses, the former undertaking to find the 'real'meaning of the text
in the generic elements it shareswith other texts,while New Critical
readings
found the 'real' meaning in the distinctive artistic treatment present in the
particular poem, identifiable through close analysis of the very things that
recent cultural
differentiate its treatment from the generic matrix.T7 More
studies approaches to medieval texts, by addressing the way inwhich texts

embody and reinforce the assumptions of an established order, also return

INSGGK
IOI
readers attention to generic elements rather than to unique literary effect and
problematize theNew Critical assumption that originality in the treatment
of traditional materials is of self-evident value or can ever break a text free of
the cultural matrix of values out ofwhich
itarose. Thus
the question
raised by
the
distinctive
important
handling of
materials ishas raised again in a new form some of the same issues thatmarked
the debate between theNew Critics and anthropologists.
modern
and
theoretical debate over how
Recognition of the tension between the traditionalweight of storymaterials

the meaning given to them by a particular poet s treatment is not a
was a concern of medieval writers and

peculiarity of modern scholarship but
to
thinkers. Even without turning
sophisticated clerical traditions of biblical
and iconographie interpretation, we find the problem overtly addressed by
medieval vernacular poets. Chretien de Troyes andMarie de France in particular,
romance narrative, made a clear distinction between the

at the
beginning of
mati re (the story or subject matter) of a narrative, which they do not speak of
as their own creation, and its sens, its point, which
they consider their
most
explicitlywhen he describes
responsibility.Chretien makes thisdistinction
Le Chevalier de la Charette (however ironically) as anomalous in that, in this
one instance, his patron, Marie de Champagne, gave him not only themati re
for his poem but also the sens (1-29). Elsewhere, at the beginning of Erec et
Enide, he refers to the traditional plot elements and motifs out of which he
fashions his narrative, which are served up dislocated and clumsily connected
a conte d'avanture' (13), as rawmaterial out ofwhich he must
hy jongleurs in
create a molt bele conjointure
(14), a structure which in itself,quite apart
from overtly didactic commentary, provides the readerwith thematrix inwhich
is to be sought (9-26).18 Marie

de France, in the
the poems meaning
introduction to her Lais, carries such an analysis of the relative roles of the
even further.
subject matter, the author, and the reader in constructing meaning
She does not merely differentiate mati re from sens; she further distinguishes
the sens the particular writer gives thematerial from the furthermeaning the
reader, in turn,must create. The writer must not only put sens into themati re
but must refrain from making that sens so definitive as to prevent the reader
from going on to add what she calls the surplus (Prologue, 16), themeaning
above and beyond what resides in the pre-existing mati re and the poet s sens
a
large responsibility for the
(Prologue, 9-21). She thus leaves the reader
construction of the poem's meaning. *9
the problem of integrating mati re and sens is
In the case of SGGK
rewhich
complicated by the conspicuously traditional components of themati

ARTHURIANA
I02
it, like a glacier, all sorts of elements from a previous

environment; scholarly labors have leftus almost no integer of the poem that
or comparative literature cannot assure us was
anthropology
already in the
common domain.20 Even so
an
as the
element
apparently idiosyncratic
opening
to
a
reference
the history of Troy and its aftermath, in poem that
begins with
theNew Year, is no exception. If the resemblances between the
opening lines
of SGGK, Winner and Waster, and The Parlement
the
Three
of
Ages must be
securer
considered inconclusive without
dating for all three poems,21 then the
thus carries with
fact that the feast of January, in the opening seasonal illustration in the Tr s
Riches Heures du Due de Berry, is adorned with tapestries
depicting the fall of
an
as
established topos, just
the fact thatDecember
is illustrated
Troy suggests
with a hunting scene echoes the choice of Christmas entertainment for Sir
Bertilak.22 It has often been remarked thatSGGK seems
to
deliberately
embody
and play upon every clich of romance tradition as overtly as Chaucer's Tale
of
Sir Thopas, though with less

obviously satiric effect. SGGK uses each topos
as to
with such aptness and integrates it so smoothly into
plot and tone
naturalize itspresence, so that recognition of itscommunal associations
depends
on a conscious efforton the part of the reader.The association of thesemotifs
with the rise and fall of societies, issues of

gender and power, the cycle of the
seasons, death and rebirth is so conspicuously relevant to the poem's explicit
subject matter that the seam between traditional connotation and explicit
denotation is invisible except in a tiny number of
places, of which the late
revealed role ofMorgan
le Fay in the
most
is
the
plot
commonly debated.
The anthropologists' raids on the historical roots of the poems mati re
have complicated interpretation of SGGK'm another way as well,
by focusing
attention on origins at the cost of
obscuring contemporary connotations. The
evidence forwhat a fourteenth-century audience would have
recognized in
smaterial and how

theywould have
to
its
must
in
the
role
of
the
poem
responded
dynamics
inevitably be largely
case
as
so
in
customs
the
of
and art forms that
indirect, since,
many medieval
involve strong folklore elements, written records are mostly later than SGGK
the traditional folklore elements in SGGK
and
their evidence must
be extrapolated backwards. Of the presence of

and
mythic antecedents in the poem there is no question.
anthropological
we
examine what evidence there is,however, itbecomes clear thatSGGK s
When
mati re, instead of offering us an externally validated hermeneutic code, bears
a
problematic relationship to interpretation.Not only is the ostensibly objective
evidence exterior to the poem itself the product of a process of interpretation
and inference at least as much
implicated with the assumptions of the

INSGGK
103
as the processes of critical

interpreters time
analysis to which it offers an
ostensible corrective. The associations of the mati re itself are contradictory.
emerges even more clearly from a study of traditional elements in the

as Larry Benson's2^ than from earlier
such
poem
approaches likeKittredge's, is
how ambiguous the traditions are once we try to correlated themwith specific
What
nd explicit meanings. To take a very obvious example, the colors, especially

the red and green which receive such dramatic and heraldic emphasis in the
text, cry out for conceptual glossing. Yet ifgreen means fertility and nature,
which it obviously does inmany contexts, it also means, equally clearly, in
others love (Lancelots colors for escorting Guinevere, 'green-sickness'), hope
a
(liturgically), and death. To intrude knight who is oueral enker-grene' (150)
into a warm-hearted and festive gathering of human beings does not tell the
reader what he is.The one thing his color does convey unambiguously iswhat
he is not: a human being. Beyond that, his greenness raises questions instead
of answering them. The text, so far from palliating or censoring the conflicting
connotations of green which scholars have glossed, throws them into relief
because they involve precisely the conflicting yet overlapping issueswith which
the text confronts its audience from the outset: the cycle of nature, the erotic,
life and death, rebirth and renewal. Each one of the contradictory associations
of green passes the test of a good close reading' by being demonstrably relevant
to elements highlighted by the actual
tone of the text, the test
language and
that is supposed to permit us to apply some meanings and discard others.
the 'relevance' testdoes not permit triage among the available iconography
and tradition.What
scholars have discovered comes as an enrichment, not as
Here
a
surprise, to anyone who has been attentive to the complexity of the poem's
own
language. The connotations uncovered both by the anthropologists and
as
New Critics,
the
antithetical
their
they themselves considered
by
rather
than
and
and
problematize
expand,
simplify, the
methodologies,
gloss
poem's
action.
m. A CHRISTMAS GAME
Connecting motifs through origins rather than through contemporary
connotations has obscured the fact that not only the folklore motifs but a
number of others have a more immediate and quite obvious connection in the
laterMiddle Ages: theywere associated with theTwelve Days of Christmas.
green in its association with nature,
Admittedly, many of the poem's topoi
the holly bob, the beheading game, the 'wild man - are connected by their
origins in spring rites, sun worship, or fertilitycults. But essentially all of the

ARTHURIANA
i04
and New Year observances had migrated to that point in

from as far away as October
and May. Christmas-tide,
by
a
major Christian festival with the winter solstice and theNew
medieval Christmas
the calendar
combining
Year,24 had attracted to itselfobservances originally associated with theCeltic
and German Yule, which seems to have been the feast held when cattle were
slaughtered in the late fall; with the Roman Saturnalia; with theMithraic
festival of Sol Invictus; and with spring rites enacting the victory of summer
over winter, or the annual death and rebirth of summer. 2 5This rich and
somewhat unstable compound has since partially disintegrated. The modern
is now quite sharply distinguished fromNew Year's Day. Many of

these observances, whether now folk-associated or liturgical, have been spread
Christmas
out again across the year's dark half fromAll Saints and All Souls, the fall feasts
of the dead, to Pentecost; and subsequent enthusiasm forMay Day has re
transferredmany of the elements that had been spring rites originally - the
sword and Morris dances and the plays on the beheading theme, like St. George
and theDragon
back to the spring. But in the high Middle Ages, thesewere
all associated with Christmas. This isparticularly true of thebeheading game'
motif; many of the St. George plays have Father Christmas as a character, and
the related plays inwhich the Fool is killed by his sons and revived are largely
associated with Plough Monday, the day afterTwelfth
Night.2^
Two other medieval Christmas and New Year observances have an even
more obvious relevance to SGGK. One is the ritual, still an
important feature
of the Scottish New Year's Eve, surrounding the 'firstfoot' to cross the threshold
in theNew Year. If the first person ismalevolent, or a woman, or even a man

with thewrong physical traits, the ensuing year will be unlucky; a dark-haired
boy, possibly embodying what were considered Celtic rather than Germanic
racial characteristics, is a good omen.2? It became customary for a suitable
person bearing a branch (or a 'bush') in his hand to enter the house ritually
and uninvited as soon as theNew Year had actually begun, and the ambiguity
of theGreen Knight is thrown even more sharply into relief by recognition of
this.What future does he foreshadow for young Arthur's house? But themost
obviously relevant custom is,of course, the invasion of the hall by themummers
(or 'Guisers'), the traditional performers of the St. George and Fool plays.
What precisely themumming consisted of in the later fourteenth century is
hard to tell and seems to have varied; the basic feature is that theMummers
came
disguised, sometimes frighteningly (as we later learn the Green Knight
was
le Fay), sometimes in masks or animal skins,

disguised by Morgan
sometimes bearing a 'bush.' They presented some sort of game, challenge, or

INSGGK
105
play, and made demands, usually formoney, from the spectators.28 Though
much of the evidence post-dates SGGK, Chambers cites one clear account of
such a mumming before Richard II in 1377, in which the masqueraders
lost).By theearly
challengedthecourt toplaydicewith them(and tactfully
fifteenth century, a poet of Lydgate s standing was writing lines for such
occasions, and thewhole matter is obviously involved in the development of
at court at Christmas,
importance of presenting plays
at least from the early sixteenth century, isno doubt another outgrowth of this
tradition.
to
to the same complex.
Other less obvious elements of SGGKprove
belong
The feast at which theRound Table is gathered together and Arthur will not
eat until he has seen a wonder is normally Pentecost; the fact that this poet has
the court masque.2^
The
shifted it toChristmas/New Year s is one of the features of the text that suggests
conscious reorientation ofmaterial toward the seasonal setting and its associated
and New Year swere until recently a time for ghost stories
and stories of the supernatural and the dead, storieswhich stress how thin the
wall is between humanity and theOther in all its forms, New Year s Eve in
a time of portents, omens, and foretelling the future. The
particular being
are
Twelve Days
pre-eminently the time for feasts, which epitomize both
sensuality and festive decorum, since here ritual and ceremony permit reveling
issues. Christmas
in the physical world, its richness heightened by cold and danger without,
while integrating itwith ceremony and social order. Certainly the Green
a
Knights hollyhad become Christmasfeature(judgingby earlyChristmas
- theGreen
carols), and the poems persistent pairing of red and green
Knight
inhis enameland gold and his littleredeyes(304) andGawain inhis heraldic
redwith, ultimately, his own touch of green may have this association among
others. 3 Furthermore, the text itselfmakes these connections with Christmas
what takes place at Arthur s court a
explicit. The Green Knight actually calls
an
in
attempt to help the court to recover
'Crystemas gomen (283) and Arthur,
from their fright, equates the events with theChristmas entertainment they so
much resemble: 'Wei bycommes such craft vpon Cristmasse' (471).51 Even if
do not suggest an occasional
such associations
purpose for the poems
a
court, theymay give fresh
composition at particular northwest Midlands
to the poems humor about sophisticated provincials ambivalent attitude
point
towards the model of courteisie set by the royal court: The Green Knight is
ofArmures ho us' (309).
conspicuously unimpressed with the fabled splendors
Sir Bertilaks retainers apologize to their guest for theAdvent menu and see
the coming of the great SirGawain as a chance to pick up a few tips by observing

ARTHURIANA
io6
his 'sle^tez of jDewez (916), his feats of conduct or custom, but the noble
visitor himself is overwhelmed by the comforts, decor, and cuisine which
outdo anything he is used to. The Christmas context need not, however, be
based on any occasional origin. It involves the most basic elements in the
poems structure and sens and provides a complexly suggestive context for
a
court and itsvalues.
examining the ethos of noble
iv.THE DECORATIVE
One
AND THE THEMATIC
of the reasons
that the Christmas
elements
in Gawain
are so
a
to a
study ofmedieval aesthetics is the fact that, by concatenation
illuminating
of historical factors, Christmas offers one of the few occasions in themodern
world when forChristian, deracinated Christian, and non-Christian, alike, an
sense of holiday survives: the security
analogue, however muted, of themedieval
and pleasure created by the cultural interconnectedness between custom,
aesthetics, economic and political power, sensual enjoyment, and ideology

that was a central characteristic of the late Middle Ages and is generally
uncharacteristic ofmodernism. The modern assumption is that the decorative
are in inverse proportion to the serious and intentional.

different this assumption is from that of medieval culture is clearly
and the conventional'
How
illustrated in the illuminations of late fourteenth-century psalters, books of

hours, bestiaries, and even hunting books. These are essentially serious works
use in the secular and aristocratic world, but characterized
designed for daily
by their splendid profusion of playful and gratuitous detail and elaboration,
not necessarily related in any direct or
conceptual way with the subject and
of the text. Subjects for illustration are still, in general, chosen and
given meaning and continuity by the serious, even ritual, significance attached
to them, sometimes inways that are unclear without
knowledge of medieval
even
But
the
illustrations
when
themselves,
iconography.^2
they do illustrate
seem
not to be focused on the seriousness
what the text is talking about, often
meaning
of the content, nor on what is peculiar to the event in its uniqueness, but to
convey the delight of the scene aesthetically and humanly considered.
Itwas a cliche of earlier scholarship to regard this characteristic of late
art pejoratively as 'secularization,' a sign of trivialization of
religious
on the face of it a curious
interpretation, given
experience, which would be
medieval
thewidespread evidence of a heightening of affective spiritualityacross a broader

spectrum of people in the same period. More recent analysis of fourteenth
century spirituality by Carolyn Walker Bynum and others has resulted in a
more
complex assessment of the embodiedness
and immediacy expressed in

INSGGK
107
The apparently gratuitous delight,

religious observance and experience.
most of all in the freedom of the detail and in the relatively small
expressed
to the central subject as distinct from the context,

proportion of space devoted
is not frivolous. It is released by the serious meaning; the significance of the
whole attaches itself implicitly to the energy of the secular detail. The vitality
of the Presentation at theTemple in the Book ofHours ofJean Sans Peur, for
not in the central figures. It is in the landscape, in some of the
example, is
a
a
bystanders, and particularly in the apparent delight of small boy ringing
bell perched in a cupola as wholly improbable and decorative as the Green
itmaterializes mysteriously before Gawain's eyes in the
Knights castle when
forest. The animals in the Peterborough Bestiary and Psalter all convey some
make an anachronistic
supposedly scientific but primarily allegorical point (to
of
color
formal
and
distinction). But the sheer splendor
design, the sly look
the elephant casts upwards at the threewarriors in full armor leaning out of
thewindows of a full-scale castle perched on itsback, the expression of the fox
who is playing dead to entice birds down to him which looks like an open
wink addressed to theviewer, all delight the user of the textwith their gratuitous
elaboration which seems an invitation to revel in the pictorial medium not
means of conveying truth but, simultaneously, as playfully celebrative.
only a
This characteristic of latemedieval art depends on and reinforces a sense
of the unity of an interconnected universe, where the different levels of creation,

the successive events of history, and the patterns of social behavior echo and
redefine each other and where the outward expression of an idea, reality, or
to be, if not the same as that truth, then its authorized

it. This sense of the
representative, intimately and literally connected with
connection between interior and exterior, which originally meant that a
truth is considered
reverential and religious aura was imparted by the religious concept to its
associated detail, had by now produced the reverse situation; the joyous, varied,
aesthetic and human reaction to the detail was transferred to the associated
concept. To enjoy the colors and shapes, themaking and fashioning, the human
was felt as a serious and appropriate
pageant and the cultural associations,
to
an
became a connection or bridge
The
aesthetic
response
underlying reality.
outer
realities.The aesthetic expression comes to assume
between the inner and
the role of the reality; to respond to it in ways appropriate to its aesthetic

character, and to enjoy so responding, assumed the validity of a religious
response. There was assumed to be a connection between living in thematerial
world and the significance behind it as obvious and real and taken for granted
(ifoften, to the layman, arbitrary) as there isfor us today between the appearance

ARTHURIANA
io8
of an object and its atomic structure (which we too take on the authority not
of experience but of learned clerkes). Some of the same sensibility flickers in
themodern Christmas, inwhich, even ifno connection with the underlying
doctrine of the Incarnation remains, tomake a mince pie a better mince pie is
not 'just' an aesthetic pleasure or social task but has an implicit and sustaining
connection with presents, carols, family ties, candles, history, the smell of
evergreens, the prose cadences of theKing James narrative, Handels Messiah
to say
nothing of themixed
sing-alongs, turkey,Dickens, mistletoe, and holly,
and
cultural
aroused
pressures to do so.
by spending money
by
feelings
That profound problems come with such an attitude, which is so seductive

and so fraughtwith ideological assumptions, is one of the poems subjects, as
a consideration of its threeVerdicts' will make clear.What
is to be noted now
is that the complexity and debatable implications of the social and psychological
forcesmobilized by such conflation of the secular' and the 'religious' have not
were well
only to latter observers. Many
appreciated by
more
with
respect to extremes in affective
contemporaries, though generally
to aristocratic self-definition and social ceremonial. Some of
spirituality than
been
apparent
like the author of The Cloud of Unknowing,

contemporaries,
the
tradition of 'negative' mysticism which
pseudo-Dionysian
perpetuated
rejected the role of images, not only (like the Lollards) visual images but images
in themind and the imagination. Some, less ascetic and more social in their
the poet's
focus, like JeanGerson, offered a critique of the contemporary religious scene

which viewed with caution the tendency to consider psychological intensity a
sign of ethical substance and theological authority.The mixed reactionsMargery

Kempes
religious emotionalism evoked from contemporaries as well as from
scholars are a case in point.
The medieval Christmas, even more
modern
than the rest of the year,was a time

this inclusive way of perceiving theworld, conflating the aesthetic, the
social, and themythic, was accentuated. 5GGA"shares with latemedieval carols,
as well as with later Christmas narratives, a number of
qualities that reflect
this synaesthetic awareness. The first is the enhancement of thematerial world
when
and our sense of its sharp reality, conveying pleasure and profusion in sharp
contrast with cold and deprivation. This is so obvious in the indoor scenes as
to need no elaboration. But it is just as true of a passage like the one
describing
Gawain's winter journey, so sharply convincing a picture ofwinter conditions,
yet enhanced with some extra jewel-like clarity and absoluteness which shows
how Thomas Aquinas's insistence on radiance as a central element in beauty
can
to the verbal as well as the visual arts:
apply

For werre
wrathed
hym
not
so much
INSGGK
J?atwynter
109
nas wors,
pe colde clerwater frope cloudez schadde,

And freser hit fallemyst to pe fale erjê;
Ner slaynwyth pe sietehe sleped inhis yrnes
Mo ny 5tez pm innoghe in naked rokkez,
Per as claterande frope crestpe colde borne rennez,
And henged hese ouer his hede inhard iisse-ikkles. (726-32)
When
if the wars
[And
were
unwelcome,
the winter
was
worse,
When the cold, clear rains rushed from the clouds

And froze before theycould fall to the frostyearth.
Near slain by the sleethe sle{pt} inhis irons
More nights than enough, among naked rocks,
Where clattering from the crest the cold stream ran
And hung inhard icicleshigh overhead.]
is a particular kind of traditionalism both of matter and of
manner, inwhich each motif is so presented that the reader who knows the
cultural context greets itwith conscious recognition and connoisseurship, like
the modern observer watching a swan dive inOlympic competition, seeing
what is the same and what is different in the execution, or like th medieval
The
second
of the mystery plays thinking both 'this isYork now' and 'this is
Jerusalem then,' or a modern child unpacking the creche figures and greeting
each with a thought that combines 'this is the shepherd who heard the angels'
audience
'this is our own shepherd we have every year.' Everything receives the
a constant
playing
appreciation of game. At the stylistic level, this becomes
and
and realism, between fully traditional literary language and

us to see the
colloquial diction, whose juxtaposition forces
sharply precise
s
one
more
context.
Marie
As
in
Borroff
than
action
analysis of SGGKs
between
clich
or
on audience
recognition of the traditional
vocabulary shows, this conscious play
takes the form, among others, of playing the poetic diction of the alliterative
school, used in the alliterating positions in the line, against words which do
not a
to it, used in the
not
non-alliterating stressed position.33 This is
belong
matter of ordinary irony inwhich one context is suggested at the expense of
the other (like The Rape of theLock's 'Or stain her honor, or her new brocade')
nor is it tongue in cheek, or a device that distances the audience from the
actors like the intentional anachronisms inTH. White's The Sword in the
Stone. The result is, rather, an appreciative detachment from codes and rituals
which, by making us aware of them as elements

them both more and less important.
in their own right,makes

no
ARTHURIANA
a
description of Gawain's winter journey, quoted above, is good
so much fcatwynter
werre wrathed
example. A single line like Tor
hym not
nas wors' (726) breaks with the ceremonial of romance inmeasuring the feats
The
of the hero by real-life standards, inwhich a winter journey through damp,

slush, and ice in an iron suit knowing what a single iron stirrup does to the
best-booted foot would quite obviously be worse than occasional fightswith
their accompanying adrenaline, however risky.
To take the knightly predicament
on
one
in thisway is,
the
hand, funny; Gawain is diminished and humanized
away from romance stature by even a single detail of this sort.On the other
hand, the realism makes his feats more convincing and thus invites more
same way, to
empathy. In the
picture Gawain fighting wolves in the frozen
wastes draws on another register of

a sense of a real
feelings,
danger that is also
a
to
while
him
picture
primordial fear;
encountering etaynez, pat hym anelede
oft>eheê feile'(723),giants
who pantedafter
him fromthehighhills,suggests
not only real

danger but the slightly blundering excess thatmakes giants more
terrible (Borroff captures the tone when she translates came
than
grotesque
a text
rhetorical moves have a double-edged effect.When
Such
gibbering').
a
makes
detail click into place in the audience's mind as part of their own 'real'
experience, the effect is,on the one hand, an intensifier;on the other, it suggests
a context
contradictory to the stylized and self-contained world of a traditional
genre with its attendant expectations, and to that extent undercuts it.To take
another example with somewhat different dynamics, when the frozen Gawain
for a place to spend Christmas and hear mass and instantly sees
materialize before him the perfect story-book castle looking as if ithad been
cut out of paper (802), the effect on the audience is
one
complex. On the
romance
convention
the
world
the
for
hero
whatever
hand, by generic
produces
experiences he is now ready for; the incident reinforces this expectation. On
wishes
the other, thismanifestation is almost too apropos for a

knight troubled by the
effect of cold and rain on his armor and his morale, and the castle itselfcan be
once: it is the very paper castle that is a traditional decoration at
recognized at
feasts.34To that extent themoment is as
as themoment
unsettling in itsway
when
Sir Bertilak
'lerned Jâthe J)e leude hade' and 'Loude laêd he f)erat'

name
the
of
the knight was made known to the lord,/Then loudly he
[When
more
like a fisherman who realizes he has hooked his fish
laughed] (908-09),
than a host recognizing the standing of his guest, a response the guest must
find disconcerting and the reader suspicious.35 But however the balance actually
falls in any given case where conventionality and concrete 'realism' are
simultaneously evoked, both are reinforced and at the same time. Equally

INSGGK
III
s
important, the poem overall play of styleand motif, of context against context,
makes the audience acutely conscious of their role as interpreters and of the
nature of ritual and convention in narrative and in social structures.As a central
enigma of human culture, the very existence of artifice, convention, and ritual,
in counterpoint to the supposedly unconstructed realities of nature, fertility,
desire, hope, and death, is the subject of the poem.

The thirdChristmas element springs from the tradition thatChristmastide
is the time when the barriers between human beings and the a-human forces
that surround them break down and when the spirits of the dead and the
realities of the future come close enough for fear and knowledge. This is a
remnant of the non-Christian side of winter solstice observances, with their
foretelling of the future and propitiation of ghosts. But ithas been intensified
and redirected by theChristian view of Christmas as a timewhen human life
was (and is) invaded and transformed
by another order of reality from outside.
The material world becomes, as itwere, translucent, since the presence of the
it through the Incarnation reaffirms the immanent in the
act
of superseding it.The fear of the Other, on the one hand, and the
very
on the other,
security of a theocentric universe where nothing is entirely alien,
reinforce each other just as cold and luxury do at the material level. The
Christmas ghost storyand the stories ofChristmas marvels of other sortsbecome
so traditional as to acquire a counteracting human familiarity, in the same way
that a child s fear of the unknown is tamed by being voluntarily encountered
transcendent within
the safe and familiar limits of the fairy tale, no matter how horrific
their traditional endings (often edited out inmodern versions). The resulting
blend ofOtherness with domestication of theOther is essential to SGGK and
within
is responsible for the unparalleled success of the Green Knight as a figure in

his uncanny combination of vitality,warmth, and immediacy with devastating
alienness.
v. THREE CYCLES AND THREE VERDICTS

If the leading motifs of the poem identified themselves first and most
as
on the familiar
directly to itsaudience
plays
integers of Christmas festivities,
does thismean anything more than itdoes when a Renaissance masque writer
contrives an atmosphere of 'Moorishness' or an eighteenth century satirist
couches a poem in the idiom of chinoiserie? Has Christmas any more integral
relevance to the poems structure and theme?The plot itselfseems quite distinct
from this atmosphere of aristocratic holiday. It turns on the combining of two
s
widely attested testing stories: the beheading game and the host tempting of

ARTHURIANA
112
n ither involves
a guest
through his wife. Neither is of courtly origin, and
activities associated with specifically knightly accomplishment. Neither tests
the knight as a warrior, a force in action, establishing his ascendancy over
other forces, a process inwhich success is defined in terms of the knights
a situation exterior to himself. Instead, the textmakes the
capacity to change
two games inwhich Gawain finds himself
are tests not of prowess in the usual sense
incompletely-informed player
terms for the knights
but of integrity and style, or, to borrow Chaucer's
plot
an
a test ofwhat the

knight is.The
combination of inner and outer qualities, testsof trouthe and 'honour,' Tredom'
courteisie,' and cannot be passed by displaying any of these virtues in
isolation from the rest.36 SGGK not only presents such a collective test, but
makes its complex character clear by setting it in the context of three archetypal
and ongoing patterns which surround and define it: the cycles of the year, of
romance quest.
history, and of the
The cycle of the seasons is themost prominent, at least to the modern
and
is highly unusual in
reader, since the portrayal of nature found in Gawain
narrative in its stresson nature as a process in itsown right and in the
medieval
vividness of its descriptions, which differ strikingly from the celebrations of

so common inmedieval lyrics.The natural cycle ispresented as endlessly
spring
recurrent, endlessly renewed fromwithin; lifeand death, heat and cold, moist
and dry, austerity and beauty, succeed each other in an eternal pageant of
change and familiarity:
oxp\pis 3ol ouersede, and pc sere after,
And vche sesoun serlepes sued afterof>er:
AfterCrystenmasse com pc crabbed lentoun
Pat fraystezfleschwyth pc fysche and fodemore symple;

Bot ]3enne Jê
weder of pc worlde wyth wynter it^repez,
schedez
pc rayn in schowrez fulwarme,
Schyre
Fallez vpon fayreflat,flowrez t>ereschewen. . . .(500- 07)
[And so thisYule to theyoung year yielded place.

And each season ensued at its set time;
AfterChristmas therecame the cold cheer of Lent,
When with fish and plainer fareour fleshwe reprove;
But then theworld sweather with winter contends:
The keen cold lessens^?, the low clouds lift;
Fresh {bright}falls the rain in fosteringshowers
On the face of thefields; flowers appear.]

INSGGK
113
a keener sense of the inherent

descriptions give
vitality and
autonomous will of the process: weather
cold
clouds
winter,
shrinks,
fights
lift themselves. Later 'hyês heruest, and hardenes hym sone (521) harvest
No
nature
(clearlymeaning thewheat to be harvested, not the human process of reaping

it) raises itself up and hardens itself (i.e., turns from grass to hard grain), and
drives the autumn dust clouds into the air.The autumn leaves are said not to
fall but to leap ('lancen [526]) from the branch, the weather of the world
contends with winter (504), and the angry autumn wind wrestles with the sun
some of the seasons are identified
(525). Though
by liturgical names
the characterization of each season in terms of the human
Christmas, Lent
work and activities characteristic of each, traditional in visual representations
of the year cycle in church carvings and Books ofHours is conspicuous by its
absence38; the human component of the cycle is almost completely elided.
The most obvious comparison in the verbal as opposed to the visual arts is
with lyricscelebrating the coming of spring,where for a number of lines together

a poem describes the
sights and sounds of the season. But with the exception
of the familiar short lyric 'Svmer is icumen in/ the point of such lyrics is
always, quite
Alysoun'
explicitly, the association
of spring with human
emotions.
begins
Bytuene mersh & aueril
when spraybiginnef) to springe,
Pe Iud foul haj) hirwyl
on hyre Iud to synge.
[BetweenMarch and April
When spraysbegin to burst into leaf
The littlebird has herwill
To raise her voice and sing]
But the next lines immediately relates the scene to the speakers state:
Ich libbe in louelonginge
for semlokest
of aile
f)ynge.
. . .
[I live in love-longing
For the loveliestof all things]
'Lenten Is Come with Love toTown
lines cataloguing
follows the opening linewith thirty

spring plants and creatures, but the point turns out to be
3efme shalwonte wilie of on,
Pis wunne weole ywole forgon,
antwyht inwode be fieme.39

ARTHURIANA
114
[If I can thave my will of one,

All this joyful richness Iwill forsake
And be an exiled creature in the forest]
of nature description is the initiative
accorded nature and the lack of anthropocentric perspective, so that the human
names for seasons and certain cultural patterns like
are
eating fish in Lent
What
subsumed
autonomous
is striking in the SGGKstanzas
of the same
cycle as one more manifestation
and primordial rhythm.This self-renewing process is embodied
in the natural
in theGreen Knight forwhom to be beheaded is just part of a cycle inwhich

lifeprecedes death and death precedes life, and stands behind his assessment
of Gawain.
second cycle, the perspective of human history, is insisted on from

lines. It too subsumes human beings within a larger process, but
one of a different kind:
perilous, transitory like the seasons but without their
The
the opening
security, bought at the price of constant effort and constantly reversed. This
process is dependent in the short run on the good and bad behavior of kings
and warriors and peoples but, merit aside, ultimately constitutes a spiral in
which failure inevitably follows success. Britain is the land
Where werre and wrake and wonder
Bi syjsezhatz wont gerinne,
And oft boJ)e blysse and blunder
Ful sketehatz skyftedsynne. (16-19)
[Wherewar and wrack and wonder
By shiftshave sojourned there,
And bliss by turnswith blunder
In that land s lothad share.]
absent from the opening stanzas which relate the ensuing
Conspicuously
action to chronicle and epic perspectives, is any association of success and
are
failure with ethical goodness and badness. The cited
kings and knights
called 'bolde' (21) or 'riche (8. 20) or 'hendest' - noblest - (26) or 'luflyche (38), not good or evil, and the alternation of'blysse and blunder
gracious
seems as autonomous a process as the
cycle of the seasons, and not at all so
reliable or comforting. Nor does this evocation of the rise and fall of states
convey any unambiguous set of standards for the evaluation of human worth.
The absence of a teleological, let alone a providential, view of history from
these passages is conspicuous, and the noun blunder, while often used inways
and MED
synonymous with strife,disturbance, trouble, or distress (see OED
s.v blunder n), remains
derivative
from
the
verb
blonderen
whose
clearly

FESTIVE AND THE HERMENEUTIC INSGGK
115
meanings are all clearly associated with going wrong because one isworking
s.v. blonderen).
blind or clumsily, rather than frommalice (seeMED
If the importance of the nature cycle is confirmed by itsobvious relevance
to theGreen
Knight, the equal importance of the historical cycle is confirmed
court for the setting and by the Green

by the choice of the young Arthurs
he
insistence
that
the
proposes is a test not of theworth of
challenge
Knights
as
one
of
such
but
individual
Armures hous' (309). The emphasis on the
any
characters who are so blissfully ignorant
promise-filled youth of theArthurian
of what the audience knows will all too soon become of them adds an elegaic
note to the present festivities.The Green Knight s test becomes associated for
the reader with the testhistory was ultimately to present to this court, and the
narrator lavishes on these best knights and loveliest ladies is a
superlatives the
reminder
simultaneously of the beauty and splendor they did achieve
sharp
and of the tragedy to which they came in the same process. To stress the
'firstage' is to re-echo the transitoriness of the best that has
joyfulness of this
been inTroy, inRome, in Britain. Why does a culture so invariably fall short
of its promise? The story of Arthur in particular is the story not just of a
a
inwhich
society that gradually became great and gradually fell, but of reign
to
at
be
a
seemed
order
and
greatness
succeeding only
bring
specific attempt
to
seem
reasons
face
each
own
which
downfall from within, for
about its
4
Arthurian text, in itsdifferentway, with the puzzle of historical causality. As
Chaucer's Knight observes when he interrupts theMonk s anthology ofwheel
of-fortune tragedies, simply to say that everything that goes up must come
down and that Fortune is our enemy does not tell us much that is useful or
The problematic history of human
interesting about historical process.
institutions frames the poems representation of theArthurian court and stands
behind its assessment of Gawain.
The third cycle in terms ofwhich the reader is invited to assess the action
is its primary narrative genre, that of courtly romance. Romance
of SGGK
two other genres, epic and chronicle, which treat closely
distinguishes itselffrom
related subject matter indifferentways. The most important difference between
romance and the other two in this connection is romance s portrayal of aworld
is not subject to the constraints of natural or historical and political

out from a place associated with theworld of
process. The romance hero goes
the court (and of the text inwhich it is represented) to encounter what is not
thatworld, in order to experience challenge thatwill change him and return
him to the court as a more complete member of it. Like dream worlds, the
romance world exists only to the extent and in theways necessary to permit
which

ii6
ARTHURIANA
the hero to develop certain selected social and psychological qualities as they
can be exteriorized in a characteristic repertoire of actions and motifs. The
romance world presents the questing hero with the events that he is ready to
in the process of acquiring or demonstrating his chivalric quality
and which he must display before he can continue. Their role is precisely a
encounter
function of their generic character, their recognizable lack of uniqueness.

Furthermore, these actions do not test something historically or ethically
distinctive about thishero;41 rather they showwhether he has met the standards
of a group inwhich, though there are rankings and degrees of excellence which
are clear to themembers, all are peers. The
journey into the other is a journey
back to inclusion in the group.42 Thus the romance world is in one sense the
other' against which the 'real' world, the court world, is tested, though of
course the courtworld, like thevery courts forwhose entertainment the fictional
courts were
a
developed, is itself self-conscious construct. Furthermore, the
'other' world into which the questing knight enters is a very tame 'other,'
whose qualities are a highly factitious counterpart or obverse of the hero's
home world, itsotherness serving purposes dictated by the structure towhich

it isother: 'orientalism'made up from scratch, rather than
to an
applied
existing
alien culture. Deeply satisfying as this quest pattern has
to
the human
proved
imagination, there is no clearer example of a genre developed to project and
reinforce class-based values and patterns of behavior, even
though the precise
mechanisms by which thismyth developed and forwhat precise purposes, in
different regions and centuries, remain a matter of
ongoing historical debate,
and even though particular writers have been able to use the genre in some
respects to problematize those values.
In these respects, SGGK would seem to be the
quintessential romance,
to
of
resemblance
and
is tested not in his
chronicle:
The
hero
stripped
epic
own
a
right but as representative of his group. The test involves actions which
have no utilitarian value and no direct
applicability to the 'real'world of history;
are
they
purely gratuitous or, as theGreen Knight and Arthur both explicitly
a game. In SGGK, there is no
acknowledge,
question of founding a city,
an enemy army,
a
a monster,
a
hall
from
defeating
cleansing
dragon
killing
that isvictimizing one's people, or even
at
with
the
Roncevalles;
dying
rearguard
unlike many romances, there is not even a maiden in distress or a virtuous but
victimized host to be rescued, and the giants and wolves Gawain encounters
on his
journeys get barely a reference. As the Green Knight tartly observes,
therewould be no point in an actual test of
strength between himself and the
court, since there is no one there capable of fighting him. The point is for a

of the court to go out

hero, his peers, and the reader
discover not so much what he
what he is the extent towhich
member
INSGGK
117
from the known world, theworld which the

take for granted, to the not-known, and to
is strong enough or clever enough to do but

his ostensible allegiance to an established set
of values will hold up when placed in a different context and subjected to

extreme stress. In this respect, the poem testsnot the epic or warrior ethos, but
the aristocratic or courtly. It portrays a test of a sensibility, not of prowess.

Gawain seems to think that his sensibility failed the test, and that, as a result,
can
only report himself to the court as
by the standards of courtly romance, he
a complete failure.
the genre issue ismore complex than the quest motif alone
one of the contexts in which Gawain's
romance is
since
for,
only
are
to
actions
be judged, and theway the poet has abstracted what he presents
romance pattern has made the poem an epitome of the
as the
quintessential
romance ethos but, at the same time, anything but a typical romance. SGGK
is in some respects a reversal of the traditional romance. Where in the romance
But in SGGK
accounts
the court is the ultimate norm, here the court is being tested in a more
fundamental way than by being asked to pursue a white stag or act as a lady's
to do something that ought to be impossible
champion. Gawain is being asked
court
know it is the norm. Above all, while Gawain
if the 'real' as he and the
as the exemplar of the court, he becomes differentiated from his fellows
begins
to such an extent that when he returns, according to
the
testing process
by
traditional romance pattern, to recount his adventure to the court, he can not
make them understand what he thinks happened. He begins as the superlative
of a common quality; he ends as the positive of a singular one which cuts him
off as sharply from those who were once his peers, in spite of their kindly if
amused welcome, as it does from his antagonist. The test does not serve to
establish Gawain's precise ranking within the hierarchy of a common system.
Instead, it sets him apart and makes his relation to the court so unstable that
he isnot part of the same system anymore, though the court, characteristically,
does not appear to notice. Gawain's story is as much the story of a man who
(at least according to himself) failed as of a man who (according to others)

succeeded, and the relationship of his adventure to the courtly romance is
a success or not? Is
fundamentally problematized by that situation. IsGawain
he heroic or funny?How does the text engage us in judging a man who did
more than he might and less than he might (and, at least according to him,
should) have?

II8
ARTHURIANA
a text, which we noted at the

potential indeterminacy of such
can not be dismissed as an anachronistic
problem, definable only
beginning,
text
since
modern
the
the
itself
the
conflict in the open.
reader,
by
places
Gawain's, the Green Knight's and the court's perspectives on the action are
The
in three overtly stated verdicts on the action that are completely

to be
contradictory. The Green Knight, whose view might have been expected
a
success:
most
the
hostile, says thatGawain has been dazzling
embodied
..
.sothlyme )3ynkke|}
On pe fautlestfrekepat euer on fote 3ede;
As perle bi Dequite pese is of prysmore,
So isGawayn, in god fayth,bi o 3ergay knystez. (2362-65)
[{truly,I thinkyou} most faultlessby far
Of all that everwalked over thewide earth;
As pearls towhite peas, more precious and prized,
So isGawain,
in good faith, to other gay knights.]
According toGawain himself, precisely the opposite is true: he has failed

so
utterly and completely that nothing is real for him except the humiliation,
and the only meaning in his adventure is shame:
isê bende of pis blame I bere inmy nek,
ispe lape and pe losse pat I lagthaue
couardise and couetyse f>atI haf cast pare;
ispe token of vntrawê jât I am tan inne,
And Imot nedez hitwere whyl Imay laste. . . . (2506-10)
Pis
Pis
Of
Pis
[This is the blazon of the blemish {lit.fault} that I bear on my

neck;
This is the sign of sore loss43 that I have sufferedthere

For the cowardice and the coveting that I came to there;
This is the badge of false faith that Iwas found in there,
And Imust bear iton my body till I breathemy last.]
the court, in a much more enigmatic passage,
to
laughs but decides
honor him; apparently the feat of returning alive from certain death,
voluntarily
encountered, seems an affirmation of the community and its values, so that
turn the lace Gawain has made themark of his
they
lonely moment of self
And
awareness
into the badge ofmembership
in the group:
Pe kyng comfortezpe knyst, and alie pe court als

La3en loude >erat,and luflylyacorden
Pat lordes and ladis Jâtlonged to pe Table,

INSGGK
119
Vche burne of pe bro 3erhede, a bauderyk schulde haue,

A bende abelef hym aboute of a bry^t grene,
forpe sake of pat segge, in swete towere.
And J3at,
For pat watz acorded pe renoun of pe Rounde Table. . . . (2513-19)
[The king comforts the knight, and the court altogether
Agree with gay laughterand gracious intent44
That the lords and the ladies belonging to theTable,
Each brother of thatband, a baldric should have,
A belt borne oblique, of a bright green,
To be worn with one accord for thatworthy's sake.
So thatwas taken as a token by theTable Round].
Readers have the preliminary task of figuring out what the court thinks it
has decided is the renown of theRound Table (what is the elusive antecedent
'
of
>at'?)4S before they can even begin on the question of what the courts
verdict means and how to relate it to the other two.
conflict in the text reflects the fact thatGawain's
feat is intrinsically
can
case
be made for each of these contradictory verdicts.
ambiguous. A good
The Green Knight is right: to keep faith in the face of certain death with a
an opponent who is
promise obtained under deceptive conditions, and with
test
itsmeaning (since he can pick up
immune from the realities that give the
his head and ride off) is (unless it ismerely silly) an awe-inspiring demonstration
This
of integrityand the primacy of the given word. In the lightof that achievement,
to save one's
a minor slip
brought about by the basically commendable wish
life if that be still possible, is neither here nor there. From the point of view of
this eminently reasonable and natural assessment, Gawain's self-pre-occupation
and hand-wringing would seem a comic excess, even a sort of hubris.

The court is right: ifa culture is the sum of the experiences and meanings
must then become
brought into it by the experience of individuals, which
assimilated into its continuities and priorities, the heroism of those who do
more than can be expected may be selected by the group as a sign of its 'renown.'
But going beyond the group is, in the larger pattern of cultural assimilation
and transmission, an excess, grand but comic, to be laughed at even as itmay
be endorsed and appropriated. The 'truth'of an event, from this point of view,
is found not in private and subjective catharsis, but inwhat is transmissible to
and by the culture, what can be integrated into communal action. The group
selects either what validates itsown way of looking at itselfor innovation that
does not take it too far from its existing values to be sustainable. The group
may appropriate new experience itcan see value in,but assimilating itnecessarily

ARTHURIANA
I20
new (and
redefining it. Gawain's
impossible) standards for himself,
to
which cannot be successfully explained
anyone who has not had the same
experience, are a private luxury.To adopt the sign of Gawain's adventure as a
means
mark of group identity is to interpret that adventure as the superlative of the

not the positive of a new one. The group as a group can not
existing code,
cope with values that stand outside its own system, nor can it afford to be
reduced by Gawain's newly acquired otherness' to the silence intowhich it fell
at the
answer is towear the green lace as
sight of theGreen Knight. The court's
meaning something other than what Gawain has just told them itmeans to
him.
For the reader, however, whom the text has made privy to Gawain's
experience, it is clear that the court doesn't, and can't, understand what
can the Green
happened. Nor
Knight, who can only wonder why Gawain is
so upset. But Gawain's
experience is the only one towhich the reader has been
admitted and which
the reader has been able to share. To
that extent, the

narrative privileges Gawain's verdict over the other two. This third view of
Gawain's is themost problematic, themost easily dismissed by any standard
from the heroic code to post-Christian skepticism, and themost difficult of
the three to reduce to conceptual meaning. The puzzle it offers is, however,
the key to the poem's ambivalent assessment of the chivalric ideal which it
in so many obvious ways. The crucial question iswhat values are
initially attributed to Gawain and towhat extent they are problematized by
his adventure. Gawain's verdict is the only one which focuses on finitude and
fallibility,and thus offers a potential connection between the poem's aristocratic
ethos and the theological context provided by Christmas.
celebrates
vi. FROM THE PENTANGLE TO THE GREEN LACE

As we have already noted, the
pentangle which marks Gawain's identity
at the
beginning of the poem embodies a notion of knighthood as the
reconciliation of all the norms embodied in the aristocratic ideal into one
seamless and unified whole. Knighthood as a historical and social
realitywas,
a
far
less
amenable
however,
phenomenon. The mythic (as opposed to the
was
pragmatic) function of the knight
inherently contradictory on every front.
In so far as a knight isdefined in practical terms
by his function, which entitles
him to an iron suit, a powerful horse, and the necessary economic
case that the
underpinnings, it is surely the
only good knight is a live knight;
or, as Gawain puts it to himself in a crucial line, 'My^t he haf slypped to be
vnslayn, j3e sle^t were noble [Could he escape unscathed, the scheme were

INSGGK
121
(1858, emphasis mine). Looking beyond the single warrior but still
as a force, he is the
considering the knight
guardian and sanction of the bonds
noble!]
that bind everymember of society to every other; this is the role of the knight
defined in the social paradigm enacted on Piers Plowman's half-acre.4^ In this
sense, the central demand on the knight is that he be fullypublic and publicly
useful, and his treatment of every individual must embody his and the others
ties to every other person and responsibility. If, on the other hand, the knight
is the courtly lover, he must embody a synthesis between themost untamable
and intense of human instincts and the reverence for the autonomy of another
at which courtly love liked to represent itself as aspiring. Such a

personality
reconciliation of opposites could only be achieved by creating, through
a
discipline and artifice, complete divorce between the lovers and every other
to which, in the rest of their lives,
were bound.
they
reality and obligation
This is the precise opposite of the requirement that the knight be fully public,
and is even more obviously dependent on a fictional environment. Moreover,
if the knight is to be the embodiment of courteisie, his every gesture and word,
every aspect of his appearance, must mark the taming of brute reality into an
ordered whole where no ugliness, rawness, or brusqueness, appears, not even a

sign of the effortbywhich this has been achieved; Chaucer's Knight managed
a career of
nevere yet no
military encounters and yet he
vileynye ne sayde/ In
al his lyfunto no maner wight' (I, 70-71). Even if the knight's attempt (and
his skill) are adequate to this effort,his achievement ishostage to a sophisticated
existence and to the efforts of subordinates;
level of material
such an
in a less
is by definition communal.47
It is also communal
achievement
sense. If the
must embody honour as well as trouthe,
knight
having
not
not
is
if
is
he
his
has
still
ifhis
failed
integrity
enough
integrity
perceived;
not
a
not
is
if
manifest
and
his
is
reflection
of
integrity
fully
reputation
perfect
economic
his life; thus every other human being holds a potential veto on the knight's
success. Similarly, the knight's societymay accord him honour where he has in
fact failed in trouthe, as has (from Gawain's
point of view) happened
in this
story.
As soon as Gawain
is drawn out from theArthurian court, by his promise

the incompatibility of these various imperatives begins
to the Green
Knight,
scenes with the
to be felt. But it is especially in the
temptation
lady that their
are
not
is
antithetical character
'bedroom scenes'
exposed. The
basically a
chastity test, though overtly they take that form. In spite of the fabliau
associations of the lady's locking the door on the first day and the intense
eroticism of her entrance in even greater d collet
on the third
morning, with

122
ARTHURIANA
its contrast between her vitality and Gawain's death-ridden nightmares, it is

clear that desire is not the primary problem Gawain faces.Whatever else may
be involved in the lines at the end of the first temptation scene which still
puzzle editors (1284-88),
they make clear not only that Gawain's fear of
so
intense thatmere sensuality can not be his principal
immanent death is
temptation but that the lady herself is aware of this.And certainly the scenes
are farmore comic than erotic. The
point is rather the crisis created by the
lady's attempt to place the knight's obligation to be a lover above all his other
on Gawain's part to
responsibilities. The result is that every attempt
keep faith
with one demand of his knightly role brings him to the verge of violating
another. The situation is one inwhich the incompatibility between the good
of chastity and loyalty and the good of courtesy is almost absolute. The slegtez
of Lewes' by which he manages to keep redefining everything the lady says
into something else towhich a response compatible with the code is possible
represent a nearly superhuman achievement, in itsway as engrossing and
as a
spectacular
fightwith Grendel.48 Yet Gawain's plight is so ungainly and
success remains comic. To succeed at an
undignified that his very
impossibly
difficult task because one is the perfect knight loses most of its glamour if
success would have been
one not been a
perfectly easy had
perfect knight. The
hero of any other tradition from the saint's life to the fabliau could have made
the problem go away with one caustic remark. Gawain's perfection remains a
hot-house plant by comparison with the interpolated feats of Sir Bertilak; the
man
trapped in bed because he can not even get up without indecency looks
comic ifnot effeminate by contrast with a hunter
slaying holocausts of deer
and facing wild boars. And the crowning blow is to have succeeded in this
most urbane and civilized of tests,
to succumb in the end to the crudest
only
and most
elemental force of all, not sexual desire but the instinct for self
elaborate and sophisticated balancing of mutually
preservation. Gawain's
exclusive obligations collapses before themore basic reflection 'My^t he haf
to be
slypped
vnslayn, Ipe siegt were noble' (1858). Note that survival is not
as a
being postulated
good outside of the chivalric code, taking precedence
over it,but as
or 'best' or
overriding within the code: the adjective isnot 'good'
not
is
but
noble.'
The
system
'necessary'
being invaded fromwithout; rather,
it is being reduced to its own most primitive and fundamentally pragmatic
element: not, as the Green Knight seems to tell Gawain
later, a statement
about human nature in general, that the instinct for life takes precedence in all
of us, but a statement about the chivalric as such - the only good knight is a
live knight.

INSGGK
123
to go from the pentangle to the green lace? The

a condition of absolute harmony which the aristocratic
pentangle portrays
which
and
is,paradoxically, validated when someone asserts that
myth craves,
failure to achieve it is not a failure of the vision but of the fallible individual.
What
does
itmean
can in fact be as absolute

By this standard, the only human achievement that
as a
what one is and
the
difference
between
of
is
the
recognition
pentangle
as
care
to
one
much as Gawain
could be, coupled with thewillingness
what
about the gulf between the perfect and the imperfect, between what is complete
to be self-justifying and what remains, in the last analysis, no more
enough
a
than gesture.When Gawain finds himself revealed to himself at theGreen
that ithas been perceptible to the
Chapel in all his fallibility and understands
Green Knight/Bertilak all along, his agonies of remorse are so intense and so
as to be as comic as his bedroom predicament, themore
rhetorically excessive
so since even he cannot sustain such absolute self-reproach and keeps falling
back on outraged misogyny. Yet Gawain does have a claim to heroism. It is in
his insistence on asserting absolute accountability and rejecting all mitigating
circumstances. His assuming the green lace as a 'bende of blame,' superseding
his old badge of the pentangle, can not be considered merely as an act of
submission to an external code, or an interiorization of it.To claim responsibility
for failure as the central meaning of his experience is not merely to capitulate
a
statement about the possibility of excellence, affirmed
positive
as fullyby accountable failure as by unflawed success. Reconciling an awareness
of values with an awareness of reality and limitation is a pre-occupation of art,
ritual, heroic action, social responsibility. But only in shame can fallibility
take on a quality as absolute as perfection. Gawain is faced with guilt, which is
a matter of degree, a situationally analyzable state.He chooses instead, by the
arena of
way he presents himself to the court, to translate guilt into the public
but tomake
him a voluntary relationship to

overtly and ritually chosen shame. This gives
the inevitable fallibility of a finite creature and a way to render that fallibility
as much the mark of absolute achievement as success in a heroic adventure
not a practicable possibility for the finite and

pentangle is
true badge of honor.49 It is
not
the
the
mortal;
green lace,
pentangle, is the
is
true
thatGawain's turning guilt (which
also
interior) into shame (which is
would
be. The
his failureby shiftingitfromtheChristiancontextof

public) has redefined
penance to the aristocratic context of honor and disgrace. The question then
remains: does the poem portray Gawain's choice to claim the green lace for his
new chivalric badge as successfully remaining within the aristocratic ethos in
the face of the most fundamental challenge to it, or is he going outside it?

ARTHURIANA
124
us to take Gawain's
self
Certainly the poems structure does not permit
assessment as the only component in interpretation; ifthe romance cycle stands
behind Gawain's verdict, other elements in the poem's structure stand behind
theGreen Knight's and theCourt's. At issue iswhether the poem's problematic
hermeneutic structure endorses the aristocratic mythos as valid as far as itgoes
and as a privileged metaphor
v. CHRISTMAS,
for the relationship of human
life to the absolute.
SUCCESS, AND COMEDY
In view of this conflict, does the poem in fact offer hermeneutic

indeterminacy? The Court's and the Green Knight's verdicts on the poem's
action, with their assertion of a healing sense of proportion, would make it a

comedy. Gawain's would make ita tragedy, ifnot bymedieval standards (since
Gawain
does not end up at the bottom of theWheel
of Fortune) then
by later readers to classical and post-medieval definitions that

turn on the hero's heroism
a
being function of his recognition of responsibility
for events forwhich he isthough only partially accountable, because to be
a certain kind of person is to have limitations that are bound up with the
assimilatable
concomitant
strengths. Nature's cycle of renewal is comic; history's equally

cyclical sequence of effortand loss is tragic,by both medieval and later standards,
a
unless it is seen in a teleological perspective supplied
by cosmology, Christian
or otherwise, which makes it linear.Overt
teleological language is conspicuously
absent from the poem's opening historical perspective in

spite of the fact that
it is to be expected on the
grounds of the religious or national mission
characteristic of the epic and chronicle traditionswhich the
poem's first stanzas
evoke. Gawain's perspective seems to assert the
of
primacy
individually claimed
commitment, whether at firstby a quest forperfection or at the end by asserting
voluntary shame as a public mark of accountability. Here the framing of the
action by the feast of Christmas and the New Year, and the demonstrable
association of motifs which individually have a
variety of contexts with the
medieval Christmas celebration, indicate that a context is

being provided which
makes the rhetorical indeterminacy no less unusual by medieval standards,
but offers the reader a perspective within which its elements may be resolved.
Christmas is not the culminating feast of the Christian
liturgical year; rather,
with its preceding Advent season, it is the
beginning. It is the feast of the
Incarnation:
What tythingisbryngstus, messag re,

Of Cristis borth thisNew Eris Day? . . .
That God and mon ishon in fere.5

INSGGK
125
[What tidingdo you bring us, messenger,

Of Christ s birth thisNew Year sDay?
That God and man are yoked in companionship.]
is the feastwhich reaffirms the human
beings thatGod created
out
himself
of
the
of
from
dust
the
earth
he now makes them
because
separate
his companions. Yet it is equally clearly the fulfillment of humanity bywhat is
Christmas
outside humanity, and the end of human attempts to see their own value in
autonomous achievement of excellence. New equality; new
dependency. In
the Incarnation, humanity becomes the image of God, not as in the original
creation, nor as in the image of the pentangle, achieving perfection by individual
and social effort, but through the ultimate, if joyous, denial of human self
sufficiency.
Christmas, by virtue of itsplace in the liturgical cycle, is the fulfillment of
two of the three
cyclical patterns the poem invokes. The relation of Christmas
to the cycle of the seasons is obvious. In this perspective, the

liturgical year is
also recurrent; imbedded in the patterns of nature and annual renewal it
reaffirmsthe renewal of lifewithin life itself,and it is easy to see how observances
of the fertility cycle could so easily be accommodated within the ideology of

Christian liturgy (and vice versa). It is imbedded within the patterns of nature
and reaffirms, in a primordial rhythm of change and recurrence, the renewal
of lifewithin life itself.Not without reason does the poet use liturgical and
natural terms for the seasons interchangeably: winter and the crabbed lentoun
(502) are equally part of the context of life. It is not by becoming not-human
that human beings are renewed. The cycle of nature is ultimately Gods; he
saw, inGenesis, that itwas good. The Green Knight, so assiduous a hearer of
mass and no holder of
grudges, may be the courts antagonist, but he is not
antithetical toGod.51 He is presented as neither pagan nor primitive. Indeed,
he succeeds completely in unifying thewild and the civilized into an aesthetic
whole. If a pentangle-like wholeness is the standard of perfection, he would
seem to outrank the Round Table hands down as
as he would do
completely
in a physical fight. No one in the poem, from Arthur down,*2 succeeds in

looking anything but funny by comparison with his magnificent adequacy
and sense of proportion. Certainly Gawain does, from the moment we see
him winding himself into a cocoon of subjunctives in an attempt to volunteer

to
challenge theGreen Knight without causing anyone else fromArthur down
to lose face as a result, and continues when we see him
helpless in bed, reduced
to
to
let
him
the
get dressed (1220), or when the
lady (unsuccessfully)
asking

ARTHURIANA
126
poem
leaves him writhing with embarrassment in front of a court that cannot
even as
help laughing at him
they honor his achievement.
But Christmas is even more fundamentally part of the cycle of history,
a
commemorating the event that, inChristian terms, turnshistory from cyclical
structure (as the ancient world saw it) to a linear pattern. The mission
given to
the patriarchs of Hebrew Scripture is seen as leading to the Incarnation and
a
a
an end,
making history into plot with
beginning, middle and, ultimately,
God's immanence in time being the turning point. Each moment becomes an
element in a progress of unique events. Furthermore, God's intervention in
history addresses precisely the pessimistic trajectorywhich the pageant of history
so clearly displays. Its

a
meaning has to do with finding way to deal with
human fallibilitywithout, on the one hand, superseding human accountability
nor yet, on the other,
to
provide what is beyond their
asking human beings
notion
Christmas
the
that
works within history, not
God
epitomizes
capacity.
in defiance of it. If the poem never ceases to affirm the vitality of the Green
art of
Knight, neither does it deny that of civilization, the
working within
human events.Whether
the story ofKing Arthur is seen as the story of human

a
at this art or
beings succeeding
failing, theArthurian myth is celebration of
their attempt.
The third cycle, the quest and return characteristic of courtly romance,
adds an element different from chronicle or epic even though all three genres
treatmany similar plot elements. As we have noted, the romance world provides
the situations and events that permit a knight to experience the next stage in a
cumulative process thatwill ultimately returnhim to fellowship with his peers.
As such, the romance world offersa curious parallel to theword ofmonotheism.

In amonotheistic view, theworld ispostulated as
being defined by the ascendant
and preexisting reality ofGod; inChristian tradition it ismapped by revelation
and biblical history in terms of the events re-enacted in the church year. In
such a perspective, human effortmust necessarily be seen in termsmore like
those of romance, rather than of any other genre except possibly comedy.
Human beings do not, in such a cosmology, bring a world into being, nor, like
can
Oedipus,
they choose to take upon themselves thewhole guilt of that for
they are only partly responsible, though Gawain can be seen from this
a
perspective as would-be Oedipus whose attempt to take on guilt is redefined
context
inwhich that guilt is assessed. Within a Christian cosmology,
the
by
the achievements of finite creatures must necessarily be seen less by analogy
which
with the unique achievements of the tragic or epic hero thanwith those of the
hero of romance, whose adventures permit him not to attain the unique but

INSGGK
127
to enact the qualities thatmark him as a member of a group whose value lies
in theway of life they collectively embody, which in turn reflects the allegiances
as history and nature

they have collectively accepted. The 'real' world has,
both demonstrate, precisely that objective reality independent of the hero which
in a
the romance worlds enchanted forest does not embody. Nevertheless,
Christian view, that 'real'world serves the individual soul in the same way the
romance world serves the knight: itprovides the occasions and events through
which the knight becomes what he has committed himself to being. The
serves the knight as theAncrene Riwle tells us the real world
viator. Al pcs world is godes smijê uorto Smeojîen his
icorene [all thisworld isGod s smiths shop, in order to hammer out his chosen]
romance world
serves theChristian
in this smithy, 'Fur? Pet is scheome

[Fire? that is shame].53 Gawain's
new
on
as
to
insist
shame
his
self-definition thus seems drawn
choice
curious
from the topoi of Christian self-fashioning rather than from those of romance.
Easter, unlike Christmas, is the feastwhich faces the cost of this historical
and
and divine process and finds life and rejoicing beyond it. It thus provides a
more inclusive perspective inwhich to see the events of the poem,
larger and
as the poet indicates by deserting theChristmas setting at the end of the poem
when he places its concluding reprise of the opening historical perspective in
an Easter context with his final prayer to him '{Datbere pe croun of thorne'
which, likethe
[whobore thecrownof thorns](2529).The cycleof liturgy,
a
is the cycle which subsumes those
cycle of nature, is cycle of annual renewal,
romance.
It
is
Easter
of nature, history and
which, inChristian terms, turns
human fallibility into theology's 'felixculpa,' a faultwhose effectsare ultimately
is the feast that celebrates the fallible condition of the finite
happy. Christmas
on it.To say that,with one stroke,
as
the
creation
immediacy ofGod impinges
the fallible human creature has become God's 'fere,'his companion, may seem
too facile a response to theOtherness that separates the transcendent from the
finite, but Christmas pauses to celebrate that assertion, on the liturgical year's
as the
way to themore costly part of the story, and to accept human finitude
defining presupposition of all human excellence.

Hence the importance of the Green Knight's being so clearly defined as
not evil, but simply different. He may be 'half etayn (140) - half a giant,
but he is not savage. His otherness is represented not
whatever thatmay be
as something that threatens the cosmology, the activities, or even the elegance
of courtly life; he hears Mass, outdoes Arthurs court in elegance and luxury,
and ultimately hurts no one. The central thing about him is that he is not
human, not subject to finitude and death, and incapable of understanding

ARTHURIANA
128
them. His perspective is in no way equatable with that of a creature who will
die, and he is incapable of understanding the psychology of those who are.
The final confrontation between the two knights at the Green Chapel turns
on this alienness between them. Gawain's
attitude as he approaches
the
showdown has all the inconsistency and capacity for feeling contradictory things
ishuman beings' natural state.He iswearing the green lace and
at once which
should therefore not be frightened.He also, simultaneously if illogically, trusts

inGod to take care of him. Yet while wearing two safetybelts, as itwere, he is
as
as ifhe had none. His
horror at the place itself,with its

own
of
his
implicit exaggeration
importance, and his revulsion at the sound of
at
are
as funny as
are realistic.The size of the
the giant whetstone
work,
they
Green Knight's ax and the energywith which he vaults across the stream are in
just
frightened
excess. Never
before, even when, in one line, the poet turned him

our
green before
very eyes, has his otherness seemed so vivid. His exuberance
is almost enough tomake the situation seem
perfectly natural. His logicwhen
he rebukes Gawain for flinching at the first ax stroke isdazzling and yetmisses
delicious
totally the realities of Gawain's predicament: 'My hede flag tomy fote, and
get flag I neuer' [My head fell tomy feet,yet steadfast I stood] (2277). Gawain's
courage under the blows, since he doesn't have the luxury the Green Knight
enjoys of being able to pick his head up and walk offwith it, is considerably
more
impressive than it looks; it looks undignified. The bravado with which
he prepares to fight as soon as the sight of his own blood on the snow tells him
he is still alive is, by human standards, heroic. But it
merely fills the Green
Knight,who had foundonly 'berdlezchylder'[beardlesschildren](280) at

Camelot, with the delight of an adult seeing a child show temporarily
inconvenient but fundamentally promising qualities: 'in hert hit
hym lykez'
[itpleases him well] (2335). When at last theGreen Knight explains thewhole
story and reveals he has known about the green lace all along, he seems to find
itmore amusing than otherwise to have
a
as ifa
caught Gawain in minor slip,
on the back would make the two friends
slap
again without more thought of
the past:
And ge schal in Jîs
Nwe 3er agayn tomy wonez,
And we schyn reuel J?eremnauntof pis rychefest
ful bene.'
Per lajêdhym fastept lorde

And sayde: 'Withmy wyf, Iwene,
We schal yow wei accorde,
Pat watz your enmy kene. (2400-06)

INSGGK
129
[And you shall in thisNew Year come yet again

And we shall finish out our feast inmy fairhall,
with
cheer.'
He urged theknight to stay

And said, 'Withmy wife so dear,
We shall see you friends thisday,
Whose
enmity touched you near.]
cannot understand why Gawain

should be so excessively upset that
withinne
[So gripped with grim rage that his
'agreued for greme he gryed
He
greatheartshook {criedinanguishwithin}] (2370) and so oddly incapableof

on with business as usual.
going
The Green Knight smatter of fact explanation that thewhole affairwas
to scareGuinevere (2445-66), 54 so often considered
a
only plot ofMorgan le Fay
a detail from an earlier level of the story that has survived inappropriately in
this redaction, provides, on the contrary, the final touch in portraying the
and that of a mortal.
incompatibility between theGreen Knights perspective
contrast between the Rube Goldberg complexity of the
point lies in the
of the motivation, between the petty malice of
flimsiness
apparatus and the
the cause and the costly impact on the human beings caught up in the process,
The
between the trivialityof the event and themagnitude of the change inGawain's
self-definition that results, a contrast to which the Green Knight with his
offhand explanation seems oblivious. Understandably: in the non-human world
there isno greater or lessermeaning, nor any gradation in degrees of importance.
There is only the whole of what is and all its parts. A head can go back on
as surely and as unsurprisingly as a dead seed sprouts. Human
beings,
again
who live limited by time, create meaning and earn it through vulnerability. Of
course theywill find a total discrepancy between the order of causes and the
What sets off the process which will eventually result inhuman
order of effects.
creation of a meaning for events will necessarily seem as arbitrary and trivial as
a pebble in the road. That it shall have meaning is a choice, like the choice
Gawain made to keep faithwith a 'game' which mortality makes binding on
him as it is not on his opponent, and which he could have claimed was
invalidated by hidden conditions. In theworld of chivalric aventure ythe choice
to turn oneself into a creature who meets certain standards is a choice based
on risk,which in turn has meaning forhuman beings and not formagic knights
because human time is finite. Similarly, in a Christian perspective, that the
world should be the kind of world where such risk and such possibility exist
was, to its creator, worth both the Fall (with its cost toman) and the Passion

no
ARTHURIANA
is to choose responsibility for

(with its cost to God). To choose meaning
to choose shame. In shame the
that
is,
gulf between infinite
meaning
can be
as
not
aspiration and finite capacity
experienced
arbitrary,
meaningful,
and as voluntarily embraced, not coerced: to borrow Chaucer's Knight's phrase,
as
vertu out of n cessite (I, 3042). N cessitewe have always with us;
making
on the one
turning it into vertu,with itsdouble meaning ofmoral excellence
on
hand and vitality and strength
the other, is optional.
'
Put another way, the question is the Psalmist's What isman that thou art
(8.4). Initially, compared to the Green Knight, not much.

SGGKs mutation
of the romance quest places the true glory of human
achievement not in the exterior featsof conquest and society-building celebrated
mindful
of him?'
in chronicle and epic but in the deconstruction and reconstruction of an

individual, resulting in individual creation of meaning. The story is, at one
level, a debunking of the notion that a knight can define himself through the
of the pentangle; nevertheless, the vision of the wholeness

and
interconnectedness of lifeoriginally embodied in the pentangle and apparently
forfeited with recognition of fallibility, can return in a new form. In such a
emblem
perspective, awareness of human limitation need not be kept at bay as if it

were the one fact thatmust at all costs be blotted from consciousness, or faced
as when Lear allows Gloucester to
moments of
only in
highest tragic vision,
kiss his hand only after saying 'letme wipe it first, it smells of mortality'
(IV.vi.136). Mortality and fallibility can be seen as part of a great celebration
of all that is. Fallibility becomes one more element in a world where everything,
large and small, has itspeculiar excellences and splendors from food to fasting,
from games of forfeits to repentance and penance, from reveling in luxury to

the fear of death. The poem is a comedy not only in its atmosphere of revelry
and richness, where every color is heightened and every smell and taste
intensified and clarified as it is in the world
of dream or in memories of
a
childhood. It is comedy above all in its inclusion of contradictory perspectives
in a larger atonement by structural juxtaposition rather than by rational
resolution. In this perspective, Gawain's choice of shame over perfection is the
most
complex of the verdicts the poem offers, but only one among three.The
Green Knight's tribute to Gawain's having done more than could have been
expected balances Gawain's vivid sense that he did less than he might. The
court's ambiguous response illustrates the fact that the individual can translate
a
privatelywon insight into culturally transmissiblewisdom only though process
that loses so much of the original meaning that it bears only a limited and
ironic relationship to it, though not necessarily a useless one.

INSGGK
131
this final perspective on Gawain's adventure with fallibility

constitutes a break with the aristocratic matrix of values embodied in romance's
vision of chivalric excellence, or a modest qualification and redirection of it,
orwhether itmerely illustrates the process bywhich an ostensibly transcendent
Whether
and transcultural system of values is subordinated to a class-based system of

- a more
maneuver of the same kind as the one so
sophisticated
priorities
- is
obvious in The Young Childrens Book's account of chivalry quoted earlier
no easier to say after exploring the complexity of the question than itwas
before. 55As with the three verdicts the poem gives on Gawain's achievement,
a case can be made for all three interpretations.What does, however, emerge
clearly is the narrative strategy by which responsibility for creating meaning
out of the story is placed on the reader,with little but the poem's distinctive
tone to channel the reader's interpretive efforts in any direction that can be
reduced to conceptual formulas. This seems almost as radical a move on the
as the more
obviously
part of an impeccably urbane and orthodox poet
controversial Langland's placing the unfinished search forTiers Plowman' in
the hands not of any kind of authority, spiritual or political, but of Conscience,
lifetime
left solitary in the ruins of Unity/Holy Church. The Gawain-poet's
as a
of
the
chivalric
limitations
and
of
the
metaphor for
strengths
exploration
an
to
him
with
left
has
the spiritual
approach
religious epistemology which
with which fourteenth
challenges the definitions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy
texts
been
have
century religious
approached.
traditionally
to such an extent for the sens of the poem Making the reader responsible
for putting in, inMarie de France's terms, the surplus is not a coy ducking of
the central issue, a game of pick your favorite verdict' between poet and reader
a serious point in an ostensibly
(though the aristocratic penchant formaking
manner
not
is
the poem's least aristocratic feature). The
gracious and playful
too
relationship between courtly excellence and Christian virtue ismuch
tension
complex for simple conceptual formulation. Such resolution of the
as
is
its
offered
and
thematic
the
between
by the
weightiness
poem's gaiety
must
festivity is inevitably incomplete. Christmas
setting of Christmas
seen not in isolation but as the first step on the way to Good
ultimately be
more costly response to human insufficiency.

Friday and Easter, with their far
Thus the poem's final lines step back from the cycles of the year and the romance
quest in order to shift the reader's attention back to the cycles of history and
to the history of
to its
beginning by recurring
liturgy, linking the poem's end
context from Christmas toEaster by closing
the
and
Troy
by shifting
liturgical
with a prayer to him that '{ât bere Ipecroun of jDorne' [that bore the crown of

ARTHURIANA
132
thorns] (2529). The wound inGawain's neck and the lace with which he has
are thus ultimately related less to the values displayed
replaced the pentangle
in courtly festivity- however convinced the court may be that they are than
to the wounds that remain on the body of the risen Christ, without which
cannot believe in the resurrection (John 20.24-29).56The

Doubting Thomas
creation ofAdam and Eve made humanity in the image ofGod; the Incarnation
in the image of humanity. Gawain's acceptance of his small wound

and Christ's of his great ones mark God and humanity as 'hon in fere' [yoked
in a thirdway that completes the other two.
in companionship]
made God
BROWN UNIVERSITY
Kirk is Professor of English at Brown University. She has recently published
s
as editor
'Clerks Tale,' on Langland
essays on Chaucer's
Christology, and she served
translation of Piers Plowman
of E. Talbot Donaldsons
(Norton
1990). Among her
Elizabeth
publicationsare also TheDream ThoughtofPiersPlowman (Yale 1972) andActs of

(ed. with Mary
Interpretation
Carruthers
1982).
NOTES
1
I am
included an early version of this essay in a session at Kalamazoo;
to her and to Beth Keiser, Karen Bock, and Beth
for
my
Bryan
focusing
thinking
grateful
about the issues this essay addresses. The argument originated in pedagogy which attempted
to engage students with the tension between New Critical
and historical
methodology
Bonnie Wheeler
I have not
and has evolved as the theoretical context has changed;
attempted
knowledge,
to eliminate
the traces of this evolution and am grateful to my students at Brown who
to it.
have contributed
2
Trent's Last Case was

occurs
published
at the end of
Chapter
in 1913
14, alludes
(London:
Thomas
Nelson).
to the last movement
The phrase, which

of Beethovens
Ninth
Case Book [NewYork:AlfredKnopf, 1953],p. 145).

Symphony{Trent's
3
All quotations
from SGGKfollow
Norman Davis's
revision of the 1925 edition by J.R.R.
set off
Tolkien
and E.V. Gordon
Press, 1968). Unless
( Oxford: Clarendon
by {}, the
are those ofMarie Borroff, Sir Gawain and theGreen
translations of SGGK
A New
Knight:
Verse Translation
(New York and London: W. W. Norton,
1967); all other translations are
my own.
the conflict between his duty to the lady and his duty to her lord, raises
was
to
comic
form
precisely the issue that
largely
eventually
bring down the Round
to remain in
with
faith
Guinevere
both
and Arthur; compare
Table, Lancelot's
inability
good
Gawain's
dilemma,
in a
Gawain's
confession of my defaute and myn orgule and
self-flagellation with Lancelot's
account of his lament forArthur and Guinevere
{LeMorte Darthur,
my pride' inMalory's
ed. Eug ne Vinaver, 3 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1967], III, 1256).
to this hermeneutical
The relevance of medieval
sign theory
problem is usefully surveyed
in Ross G. Arthur, Medieval
Bufffalo, London:
University
Sign Theory and Sir Gawain

of Toronto
Press, 1987).
and
R.A.
the Green Knight

(Toronto,
Shoaf, The Poem as Green

INSGGK 133
in Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight

(Gainsville: University Presses
that the poem
the
between
'explores
margin
'signs and
sacraments' and that 'The poem moves from a theory of inherent value, evinced chiefly in
to a
the pentangle,
theory of ascribed value, evinced chiefly in the green girdle' (29).
Girdle:
Commercium
of Florida,
1984),
observes
B. Keiser,
See Elizabeth
'The Festive Decorum
of Cleanness'
Chivalric
Literature: Essays on
and John
relations between literature and life in the laterMiddle

Ages, ed. Larry D. Benson
Institute
Medieval
Publications,
1980), 63-75.
(Kalamazoo,
Leyerle
Michigan:
7
us not to murder and

commands
because doing
blaspheme
not only others for whom
the moral agent is responsible but the
s own nature as a human
are acts the
being; murder and blasphemy
murderer/blasphemer
or
a
cannot
nature
murderer
is
that
feel
of
which
such
very
blasphemer ultimately
pleasure
and be happy. In nominalist ethics, on the contrary, murder and blasphemy are 'evil' solely
In a Thomistic
ethics, God
these things damages
has sowilled it.He might have (and may have in other universes) commanded
inwhich case these would be 'good.'
and blasphemy,
on the outside of the wall that surrounds the
the
murals
Compare
garden in Le Roman de
that must be excluded
if courtly
la Rose which portray a revealing mixture of conditions
because God
murder
8
love is to be possible,
ranging from certain moral
failings
to such
qualities
as poverty and
139-60;
for the courtier-like
old age.
9
ll. 35-44,
For the ill-dressed guest, see Cleanness,
ll. 1069-1110
{The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript:
Pearly Cleanness,
Patience,
Christ,
see
Sir Gawain
and Ronald Waldron

[Berkeley and Los Angeles:
editors' note on the guest focuses on the spiritual
as almost to erase the social
B.
image. See Elizabeth
Andrew
and theGreen Knight, ed. Malcolm
of California Press, 1979]).The
University
of the passage in such a way

Wrath and Paradisal
Keiser, Homophobic
Yale University
and Desire
(New Haven:
meaning
Pleasure:
Three Medieval
Press, forthcoming),
Discourses
especially
ofDeviance
I and
Chapters
III.
10
For a useful discussion
of the pentangle, which he calls 'the gome that knots together the
see Kevin Marti,
(Lewiston/
Body, Heart and Text in thePearl-/W
In addition to the
Press, 1991), 157-169.
Queenstown/
Lampeter: Edwin Mellon
pentagles
more
it is worth
that the Gothic
architect Villard
de
obvious
associations,
noting
storys several games'
(162),
as a schema on which
uses an
to construct the male
elongated pentangle
Honnecqurt
an
a head (illustrated and
as one basis for
and
equilateral pentangle
constructing
figure
as a
in Erwin Panofsky, 'The History
of Human
discussed
of the Theory
Proportions
Reflection of theHistory of Styles,5'Meaning in theVisual Arts [Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday
Anchor
11
12
1955], 81-88). As Panofsky points out, Villard s diagram is not functional

or rationalization of the
sense but reflects an
imaginative construction
subject.
Books,
in a practical
Middle Ages (1947; rpt.Anchor Books, 1954), 69.

J.Huizinga, TheWaning of the
two later fifteenth century

in
prints versions of this text from
manuscripts
o.s. 32 (1868; rpt.New York: Greenwood
Book . . .,EETS
Press, 1969); this
is on p. 17, ll. 5-10nthas
been applied to SGGK'm
John Burrows, A Reading of Sir
F. J. Furnivall
The Babees
passage
Gawain and theGreeryKnight

(London, 1965), 47.
13
The
of class-based values with aesthetic, moral, and spiritual values is further

commingling
illustrated by theway this short text proceeds to shift back and forth between table manners,
in the mass and other religious observances
in a way
social hierarchy, and participation
that makes clear that, for the purposes of this text at least, no distinction of kind between

134 ARTHURIANA
these different discourses was felt to exist, and that childrens
14
on that
assumption.
The question of whether
sensibilities were
to be formed
a non-class-based
definition of gentilesse is possible and what it

subject of debate among the Canterbury
pilgrims, reflecting
the changing economic base of *gende'(or genteel') behavior. Certainly The Young Childrens
Book is attempting no such thing.
would
mean
is, of course,
of Love
rpt.Macmillan
15
In Praise
16
See such early studies as G.L. Kittredge,A Study ofGawain and theGreenKnight
(Cambridge,
(1958;
Mass.:
Harvard
1961),
Paperbacks,
University
Press, 1916)
51, emphasis mine.
and thematerial
in
Sigmund
Eisner,
A Tale ofWonder:A SourceStudy

for the
Wife ofBaths Tale (Wexford,Ireland:J.English,
1957). Lady BertilakandMorgan leFay divide the 'hag' role.
17 See especiallyJohnSpeirs, 'SirGawain andThe GreenKnight,'Scrutiny16 (1949), 274
Watson {Scrutiny
300, followedbydebatewith JohnBayleyand John
17, 128-32,and 18,
Unwin,
18
S. Lewis,
and C.
191-96)
Presented
toJ. R
1962),
'The Anthopological
Approach,
ed. Norman
Davis
and CL.
Tolkien,
219-30.
tien de Troyes, Romans, ed. Mario

(Paris: H.
Roques
is inVol. I, Le Chevalier de la Charette inVol. III.
Enide
Chr
19
Les Lais deMarie
20
The
Studies
'English and Medieval
Wrenn
(London: Allen and
1953 -). Erec
Champion,
et
ed. Jean Rychner (Paris: H. Champion,

1973).
creates are illustrated
by the hypothetical
diagram of the poem's
and E.V. Gordon's original (1925) edition which takes for granted
of the beheading game and host plots must have been
combining
de France,
this
presumptions
sources in J.R.R. Tolkien
that the sophisticated

of an intermediate
the work
(French)
this material
romancer;
has been
removed
in the
second (1968) edition.

21 The problem is further
complicatedby otherechoes in theopening linesof theA-textof
in
in the
the apparent consensus
dating Winner and Waster
neighborhood
and the A-text about 1366 would make their preceding Gawain
probable.
in TheTrbs Riches Heures
See the reproductions
ofJean, Duke ofBerry, annotation by Jean
Piers Plowman-,
of 1352
22
and Raymond
Lognon
1969.
23
Larry D.
Press,
in Gawain
Meiss
(New York: George
and the Green
Knight
Braziller,
(New Brunswick,
1965).
Rutgers University
same
The
is reflected in the
complex
dating of the New
ambiguous
as
one sense in
in
considered
January and
simultaneously
beginning
Year, which
in another
was
in the
in
systems and in the treatment of January as
ambiguous
dating
with
old
with
synonymous
age, May
youth.
See E. K. Chambers,
The Mediaeval
Press, 1903), Vol. I,
Stage, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon
reflected
spring,
25
preface by Millard
Art and Tradition
Benson,
N.J.:
24
Cazalles,
in Ritual and Tradition

and 228-73;
and Clement Miles, Christmas
1913). For a highly concise treatment of a wider range of factors, and extensive
to 1960, see E. O. James, Seasonal Feasts and Festivals (London,
1961); see
bibliography
especially
pp. 226
(London,
BetweenPoetryand the
also EnidWelsford, The CourtMasque: A Studyin theRelationship
Revels { 1927; 2nd ed.New York:Russell& Russell, Inc., 1962), 5-15.The way inwhich
such ritual came
Drama
26
to serve a civic function
and the Social
Chambers,
I, 160-227;
Body
E. O.
is suggestively treated inMervyn

James, 'Ritual,
in the Late Medieval Town,' Past and Present 98 (1983), 3-29.
James, 281; Miles,
Chapters
VII
and XIII.

INSGGK 135
27 Miles, ChapterXVI.
28
Chambers,
29
SeeWexford,
and Miles, Chapter XIII.

3-80, although she does not discuss SGGK. The difference Bahktinian notions
to discussion
iswell demonstrated
of such material
have made
by the essays
I, 390-403,
of carnival
collected
(Stanford:
30
inNatalie
Zemon
Society and Culture

Press, 1975.
Davis,
Stanford University
inEarly Modern
France: Eight Essays
are later than the

link holly and ivy, red and green, with Christmas,
carols which
in the absence
and many are sixteenth-century, but it seems implausible
Pearl manuscript,
of evidence to the contrary that so central a feature of Christmas had no native antecedent,
tree whose
later Christmas
decorations
and traditional Christmas
(except for the much
Most
custom.
can be traced back to Roman and Druidic
to
isHanoverian)
England
some of themore obvious Christmas
features are so prominent
that J.R. Hulbert,
a
between the Green Knight's
writing three quarters of century ago, noted the resemblance
to get more
entrance and 'Christmas mummery,'
and added, 'Itwould
scarcely be possible
it is possible
that the
of a holiday spirit into a poem than this writer does. Furthermore,
introduction
31
Indeed,
of the hunts may be motivated
long description
in this direction....
A further support
for
thistheoryis thefactthattheconnectionwithChristmas is specialto [SJGGK (and The

Grene Knight);
it does not occur
in [the
analogues]'
('Sir Gawain
and
the Green
Knight'
Modern Philology12 [1916]: 143-44).This was only an aside inHulbert's argumentthat

is an occasional
Gawain
poem
order at a sophisticated
32
associated
with
court, but was
the founding
astute.
of some private
chivalric
provincial
Some marginal
illuminations, however, seem either satiric or playful inways that do not
seem
to the verbal content of the page. The Luttrell Psalters celebrated
directly related
illustrations of plowing and other farm work, cooking and dining scenes and other life
like representations of familiar processes, to say
nothing
unrelated to the text they accompany.
conspicuously
of its immense
grotesques,
are
33
SirGawain and theGreenKnight:A Stylistic

andMetrical Study(NewHaven: YaleUniversity
34
See Miles
Press,
1962).
for a discussion
over the dishes
note on the
feasting, and R.J. Menner's
'logges'
feast in his edition of Purity [Clannesse] (New Haven: Yale
ll. 1407-08.
of Christmas
at Belshazzar's
35
University Press, 1920),

is some debate about whether
There
36
Chaucer
37
Literally,
38
Studies in a Tradition ofMiddle

See, for example, Rosamund
Tuve, Seasons and Months:
1933, and Derek Pearsall and Elizabeth Salter,
English Poetry (Paris: Librairie Universitaire,
Medieval World (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1973).
Landscapes and Seasons of the
The
cited
follow
Brown (Oxford:
lyrics
English Lyrics of theXIHth Century, ed. Cadeton
the poet is
the question of when Bertilak
fudging
notes to lines 901, 908 and compare lines 980ff)> but the effect of
recognizes his guest (see
the contrast between the response of the retainers and of the lord himself is conspicuous.
Chaucer,
3rd ed., ed. Larry D.
Benson
et al.
Canterbury Tales I, 45-46.

crashes down
like a defeated warrior.
Clarendon
40
follow The Riverside
(Boston:HoughtonMifflin, 1987), and are identified

by sectionand linenumber,in this
case
39
quotations
Press,
1932),
numbers
6, 77, 81.
inMalory, which helps to

process reaches its greatest complexity
explain Caxton's
in his preface and the controversy over Malory's
ambivalent presentation ofMalory
ethical
This

136 ARTHURIANA
Status in the Renaissance.

41
42
structure of Chretien
is epitomized
de Troyes' Yvain in which
by the
same adventure up to the
at which
Yvain
and
the
experience precisely
point
Calogrenant
cannot
to the next step.
fails
and
proceed
Calogrenant
The formulation of this pattern in Erich Auerbach's
of Ywain inMimesis:
the
discussion
situation
This
ofReality
Representation
classic.
43
is an offense or shameful
Lape
as a
envisaged
marring
losse the phrase means
44
45
inWestern Literature,
action,
as well
tr.
Willard
Trask
as a wound,
of the honor
(Princeton,
1953)
remains
or even a wrong act that is

it, so linked with
and integrity of the person who does

the offense I committed and the loss I suffered.'
Literally,'laughloudlyand graciouslyagree.'
While
to be the lace, to say that the

appear, grammatically
speaking,
is tautological, and what the lace means
if it doesn't mean what Gawain
remains unclarified. Borroff perhaps inevitably elides this recalcitrant problem
the antecedent would
lace is the renown

says itdoes
or
renoun as 'token,' not
glory'
'reputation.'
is initially defined
the
function
whose
notably,
knight,
by translating
46
Where,
non-functional
appears conspicuously
in all three versions; see B VI 21-35,
eds., Wills
Press,
47
48
Visions
ofPiers Plowman,
in terms of social utility,

occurs
as soon as any trouble
begins. The passage
E.
Kane
and
Talbot
152-170: George
Donaldson,
Do-Well,
Do-Better
and Do-Best
(London:
Athlone
1975).
at his feast
the rage of the lord in Cleanness against the guest whose appearance
Compare
in dirty and ragged clothes is greeted as if the Host's entire enterprise were hostage to his
in the passage noted above.
guest's inadequacies,
it
in certain traditions, in which
out of bounds
is - it's acceptable
How
lady's behavior
to
as a lover in French as
a role in Gawain's
tarnished
role
opposed
English
slightly
plays
romance - is a matter of debate. See Benson's discussion
of this question, and Valency's
summary, 53-55 and 67-71. The debate over how sexually overt and explicit the lady's '<3e
success in
to my cors' (1237) actually is illustrates the problem, and Gawain's
an answer which seems to erase the sexual explicitness (1241-47)
has sometimes
producing
been taken as evidence that the line was in fact not explicit (see 1237n where the argument
that itwould be inappropriate for the lady to be too forward here is used rather circularly
ar welcum
to support
49
On
that the phrase is in fact not sexually overt).

and shame, and the latter's relationship to a hierarchical
guilt
see E. R. Dodds,
The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of
the notion
the difference between
and public culture

California
Press, 1959), Chapter
2, and Mary
Purity and Danger:
Douglas,
An Analysis
of
theConceptsofPollutionand Taboo (London:Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1966). Gawain
50
embodies
both notions.
the Green
Knight,'
Richard
Greene,
See also Loretta Wasserman,
'Honor &
shame
in Sir Gawain
and
in Benson
and Leyerle, 77-90.

ed., A Selection ofEnglish Carols (Oxford: Oxford
University
Press, 1962),
p. 83.
51
52
created by
corrects the impression
of the Green Knight
assumes
that his nature
his wildness
that exaggerates
and
analysis
anthropological
associations necessarily make him the representative of a religion antithetical to Christianity;
is divine.
Burrow, however, goes further to assert that the Green Knight's perspective
John Burrow's
When
the Green
discussion
Knight,
staring all around
the hall
in which
Arthur

is in the most
'Wher is . . e gouernour of Pis

gyng?'
to
of the cognates for 'governour' and especially
'gyng'
, 2nd ed. [New York:
calls attention (Criticism and Medieval
Poetry
54
55
associations
A.C.
Spearing
and Noble],
7) and which
are indeed a red

not obscure the real
herring, should
nature of the insult conveyed when
thus indicates that he doesn't see
the Green Knight
as ifhe could
anyone in the hall who looks
conceivably be the great King Arthur.
o.s. 225 [London:
Mabel Day, ed., The English Text oftheAncrene Riwle (E.E.T.S.,
1952]),
that in this religious text, too, shame, not just recognition of sinfulness, is the
p. 128. Note
purgative element.
Barnes
53
137
before the dais and observes
prominent position
(225), the modern
which
INSGGK
desire to 'assay 1e surquidr6, 3if hit soth were/ Dat rennes of be grete
Morgan's malevolent
serves
which ultimately, in spite of itsmotivation,
renoun of be Rounde
table' (2457-580),
in King Arthur's
interventions
the cause of truth, is characteristic of many of Morgan's
inMalory.
affairs, particularly
are useful: on the
Nicholls
recent
discussions
Two
(TheMatter
pro-chivalric side, Jonathan
D. S.
Suffolk:
the
and
Books
Medieval
[Woodbridge,
Gawain-poet
Courtesy
of Courtesy:
Brewer, 1985]), considers that 'it is too easy to neglect [Gawain's] triumph in not forsaking
a skillful and
his code of courtesy when his system of values is severely questioned
by
this
ordeal
from
he
'Because
and
concludes,
escapes
virtually unscathed,
persistent adversary'
side of courtesy and the values around which society

is tempered by
this celebration
its destruction. Although
of the impossibility of perfection in any man
the knowledge
(however well he exemplifies
still an optimistic poem about the possibilities
both religious and social virtues), SGGKis
on the other hand
Clein,
for the ideal values of court life' (138). Wendy
(Concepts of
story celebrates
is built, not those which
Gawain's
this positive
cause
and the Green Knight

1987]),
[Norman, Okla.:
Pilgrim Books,
that Bertilak's
'themeaning
that the 'renoun' the court accords the lace maintains
to it, a token of
and that the court's judgment that it
physical invulnerability'
lady ascribes
to say the least, if not suspect: 'For the court the girdle
does them honor is ambiguous,
over mortality celebrated in courtly games. Arthur's knights interpret
symbolizes the triumph
Chivalry
considers
Gawain's
in Sir Gawain
survival
as an affirmation
of their belief
in romance
and heraldic
ideologies'
the sign with the thing,
'comes with
'circumcised' before he can grasp that the girdle is a sign which
as you tie and untie it- this sign tells
... .This
"means"
no
only
sign
prescribed meaning
use it'(74); see
Ross finds that 'Ifwe were
especially 66-75.
you who you are, by how you
as
a
as
in
work
to remain at the level of the poem
isolation, we would be leftwith
artifact,
56
(125). Shoaf
and must be
sees Gawain
an unresolved
conflict'(1
See Sarah Beckwith's
as idolatrous
because
he has confused
see his summary on 157-58.

and highly relevant analysis in Christ's Body: Identity, culture
New York: Routledge,
1993), especially
writings (London and
57);
valuable
andsociety in late medieval

she does not make
45-63. Though
the particular
connections
I suggest with Doubting
Thomas (butnote her epigraphfromtheclosely relatedLuke 24.39) orwith SGGKin
the poem is illuminated by her discussion of how the incarnation makes Christ
particular,
'the oxymoronic means by which a theologia cordis is licensed and propagated'
(50) and the
she
'The
observes
and
of
sacred
the
'thematizes
crucifixion
profane' (56);
interpenetration
likeness, then, between man and God both required and inspired an awareness of sin and
stressed a continuity of the
the reformation of the soul, but this elaboration nevertheless
soul with God'
(48).


Arthuriana Volume 4 Issue 2 1994 (Doi 10.2307/27869055) Elizabeth D. Kirk - Sir Gawain and The Green Knight 'Wel Bycommes Such Craft Upon Cristmasse' - The Festive and The Hermeneutic in Sir Gawain

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Arthuriana Volume 4 Issue 2 1994 (Doi 10.2307/27869055) Elizabeth D. Kirk - Sir Gawain and The Green Knight 'Wel Bycommes Such Craft Upon Cristmasse' - The Festive and The Hermeneutic in Sir Gawain

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'Wel Bycommes Such Craft Upon Cristmasse': the Festive and the Hermeneutic in "Sir Gawain

and the Green Knight"

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 08:13:33 AM

'Wei Bycommes Such Craft Upon Cristmasse :

Gawain and theGreenKnight1

the chivalric ideal; the presence of three

and the Green Knight, however diverse the conclusions

itoffered by critics employing differentmethodologies, strikes all its readers

itoriginates, and if so does the new model transcend the

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 08:13:33 AM

resulted in equally conflicting interpretations, some of which respond to the

scholars have tended to stress the poems overt didacticism, itsmoral

of guilt are necessarily a major preoccupation. Gawain, likeKafkas K

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 08:13:33 AM

FESTIVE AND THE HERMENEUTIC INSGGK

guilty ofwhat, precisely? Interpretation is furthercomplicated by the conflicting

which predates it and which anthropologists have argued embodies an older,

the young court s laughter.

in the pre-existing value systems

and those based on its substantive content. It reveals how

IMPLICATIONS OF THE ARISTOCRATIC ETHOS

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of a great lord provide an illuminating

life in the household

is conformity with what he finds desirable; its reward is that

conspicuously displays, the clothing, settings, activities, and manners that

Cleanness's vision of the ethical life as desirable in theway that life in an

contemptus mundi language and body-denigrating prescriptions of much

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FESTIVE AND THE HERMENEUTIC

it is good, but rather,what he commands is

that ethics must

address but which

along with the ill-dressed guest because

(in which the incarnated God suffers). All

greets what offends him in human conduct with

and diseased when he cures them.9

in contrast, the poet addresses the usefulness of this aristocratic

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chivalric society rationalized its own role. To wear the

Seys t>atcurtasycame froheuen

And Aile vyces invilony.12

[Clerks thatknow the seven sciences

When Gabriel greetedOur Lady

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FESTIVE AND THE HERMENEUTIC

no surprise thatGawain's shield

of heaven] (646-50). Yet potential in this very conflation of divine authority

enabling formany centuries.

The knightwas originally differentiatedfromotherwarriors chieflyby the

the same kind of critique thatValency formulates on a historical

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Before we can pursue how the poem deconstructs themedieval notion of

that there is a natural temptation to explain the contradiction away

studies approaches to medieval texts, by addressing the way inwhich texts

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FESTIVE AND THE HERMENEUTIC

theoretical debate over how

Recognition of the tension between the traditionalweight of storymaterials

was a concern of medieval writers and

romance narrative, made a clear distinction between the

is to be sought (9-26).18 Marie

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