Knight in Tarnished Armour: The Meaning of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"Author(s): Gordon M. SheddSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jan., 1967), pp. 3-13Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3724104 .Accessed: 17/10/2011 16:31

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JANUARY 1967 VOL. 62 NUMBER I

KNIGHT IN TARNISHED ARMOUR: THE MEANING OF 'SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT'

Now holde youre mouth, par charitee, Bothe knyght and lady free,

And herkneth to my spelle; Of bataille and of chivalry,

And of ladyes love-drury Anon I wol yow telle.

(Sir Thopas)

Few students of medieval letters would have the temerity to suggest that the 'drasty speche' of Geoffrey constitutes memorable romance; after all, even Harry Bailly loses his customary sang-froid and blurts out 'Namoore'. We accept without question the view that in Sir Thopas Chaucer is parodying a literary form, and while we may think the Host something less than tactful, subscribe wholeheartedly to his verdict that this kind of stuff is 'nat worth a toord'. Of course, parody implies excess or deficiency of some type in its target, and it is true that by the time of the mythical pilgrimage to Canterbury we find abundant signs in romance, stylistically and thematically, of both extremes of mediocrity. Yet it is also in this latter half of the fourteenth century that there appears 'le joyau du moyen age',1 the unani- mously praised alliterative romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and we are faced with the apparent non-sequitur of a withering parody and a superb flower of the romance genre being born simultaneously.

To explain away this seeming contradiction simply by relegating Sir Gawain to the limbo of a literary tradition lying outside the mainstream of romance is too easy. The poem's author, whatever else he may have been, was no northern provincial out of contact with the current scene; nor is Sir Gawain merely a deliberately archaic recreation of an earlier, golden age of chivalric story. In his own way the alliterative poet is as sophisticated as the cosmopolite Chaucer, and his poem is as 'modern' as Troilus and Criseyde. This twin birth of parody and perfection must be accounted for in some other way, and the explanation lies in recognition of the fact that Sir Gawain and Sir Thopas are not mutually contradictory: ultimately they are both criticisms of romance.

Aside from this fundamental similarity the two works do not admit of fruitful comparison, and there is nothing to be gained by attempting to force them into the same mould. The tail-rhyme stanzas of Sir Thopas constitute an amusing but essentially negative reaction to the repetitious plots and pedestrian verse so often found in medieval narrative, whereas the highly-wrought northern poem moves beyond simple concern with triteness of form and content, to grapple with the limitations of ideal inherent in chivalric literature. Chaucer uses a mirror of comic distortion to produce caricature, and annihilates with laughter a seemingly shopworn genre. The Gawain-poet (who in effect answers Chaucer's criticism by creating a work of great formal beauty) utilizes a magnifying lens to throw into sharp focus the assumptions of romance, revealing through his portrayal of Gawain and Arthur's court the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the knightly code.

1 Gaston Paris, Histoire litteraire de la France, xxx (I888), p. 71.

The Meaning of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'

In so doing, he reaffirms certain vital truths about the nature of man, and the poem thus embodies a positive rather than negative criticism of the code he finds lacking.

This is not to suggest that Sir Gawain is a tract for the times: it is first and always a work of art. But in common with all art that endures, the poem is essentially serious, for it tells us something about the human condition. Within the frame of romance, but at the expense of the traditional portrait of knightly excellence, the alliterative poet invokes the classic metaphor of human existence - that man stands midway between the angels and the animals, partaking of both natures, and capable of moving in either direction. The portrait of Gawain suggests that progress toward perfection demands awareness of this dual nature, and that without self-knowledge all striving is in vain. It is on this point that the northern poem differs so fundamentally from the typical romance, for although all chivalric quests are really quests for human perfection, they largely ignore the possibilities for failure that are man's by definition. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight succeeds as a work of art where many medieval narratives do not, because despite its traditional invocation of the marvellous it does not falsify the truth about man. The salvation of this fourteenth-century poem resides in the meaning implicit in the failure of its hero.

Remarkable as it is, the failure of Gawain - 'pe fautlest freke pat euer on fote 3ede'l - has never received the weight of critical attention it deserves. The poem constitutes a glaring violation of the traditional success-story pattern, and the hero's lapses of courage and honour, those twin corner-stones of the chivalric edifice, are highly untypical of the knightly conduct we find illustrated with such stultifying sameness in medieval story. To say (as does one recent critic of the work) that 'no sophisticated reader will be deeply disturbed to realize that ... Gawain is not perfection'2 is to equate the modern and medieval reactions, and to ignore the dramatic impact which the knight's flawed behaviour must have had on a fourteenth-century audience.

The flaws do not appear in the first testing situation of the poem, of course. The Beheading Game is a straightforward and uncomplicated affair, deliberately orthodox in conception and presentation. Given the fact of the Green Knight's blunt challenge in the presence of the assembled court, the trial is by definition an overt one, designed to put to the proof the courage, honour, loyalty, and courtesy of whoever accepts. That it is clearly a test, and that Gawain is fully aware of what it means to accept, does not detract from his achievement: the Gawain-poet makes it equally clear, through his description of the awed and fearful silence that descends upon the holiday court, that this outlandish intrusion is not to be dismissed lightly. Furthermore, when the time comes for the hero to depart in search of the Green Chapel and the return blow, we cannot help but be strongly affected by the spectacle of his unflinching honesty and bravery. He has had a year to reflect on the approaching journey, which seems destined to lead nowhere but to an early grave in an alien land; yet despite the despairing looks of his friends and the seeming hopelessness of the situation, the knight never falters in his decision to keep

1 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited by I. Gollancz, E.E. T.S., Original Series No. 210 (I940), vs. 2363. All quotations of the poem are from this edition.

2 Albert B. Friedman, 'Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', Speculum, 25 (I960), 274.

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GORDON M. SHEDD

the compact made with the Man in Green. Thus, though the Beheading Game as here utilized is thoroughly traditional in execution, we react favourably, and in fact are cheered by the sight of the legendary Gawain comporting himself with his customary grace and virtue.

The comfortable and familiar - not to say predictable- romance pattern invoked up to this point in the story is not so guileless as it may appear, however. Having aroused in us the expectation that Sir Gawain is to be another document in support of the chivalric code of conduct, the poet proceeds to thrust his hero into another - and infinitely more difficult - testing situation, in the course of which our sanguine expectations of a successful outcome are rudely upset by the failure of Gawain. The shock is rendered greater and the irony more striking by our realization that the Temptation is no less than a repetition of the Beheading Game, in terms of the chivalric qualities tested. The poet employs a new set of traditional story elements, but he is probing for the same virtues: courage, honour, loyalty, and courtesy. What constitutes the essential difference of this trial from the first, a difference which makes it so difficult of successful execution, is the simple fact that Gawain does not know he is being tested.

Unfortunately, critical interpretations of the poem have largely ignored this crucial truth about the Temptation, and in concentrating on the superficial aspects of difference between the two trials, have often read the second part of the poem as a chastity test. Such a misreading not only obscures the carefully wrought parallel structure of the work, but raises the question why the poet, seemingly so much in control of his traditional material, has committed the major gaffe of selecting as exemplar of clannes the Arthurian figure least likely to qualify. The most damaging effect of such an interpretation, however, is the muddiness of meaning which it foists on the poem as a whole. Read as a chastity test, the Temptation makes Gawain practically a subject for canonization; as a result, his failure of courage and honour becomes minimized to the point of apparent irrelevance, and the work itself becomes no more than a sermon.

One cannot, of course, disguise the fact that Bertilak's lady has every intention of trying to seduce Gawain. She makes this abundantly clear at their first meeting in the hero's bedroom, with the unblushingly direct statement:

3e ar welcum to my cors, Yowre awen won to wale. (I237)

Three times she comes to the knight's room, and each time suggests more or less delicately that her favours are his for the taking. Throughout the term of the three encounters she manipulates the thread of conversation, and always it is of love. Despite her singlemindedness of purpose, though, we see no indication of libidinous response on the part of Gawain until the third morning. He replies with tactful good humour to her questions about himself and love, and delicately parries her persistent proposals, all the while demurring modestly when confronted with her statements about his reputation as a ladies' man. The knight shows no sign of being swept off his feet by the lady's advances, nor does he give the appear- ance of unduly relishing her kisses. He is completely in control of the situation- at least until that dangerous moment on the third morning when, awaking from a terror-filled dream, he is thrown off guard by the sight of the seductively beautiful chatelaine, who enters his room

5

The Meaning of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'

Hir bryuen face & hir 1rote prowen al naked, Hir brest bare bifore, & bihinde eke. (1740)

For the first time we see Gawain in danger of compromising himself: Gret perile bi-twene hem stod, Nif Marye of hir kny3t con mynne. (1 768)

But wherein consists the danger? Not in a violation of chastity, for despite the mention of Mary, what is expressed very explicitly in the following lines is the fear of Gawain's violating the observance of courtesy to the lady and that of loyalty to his host. The poem states unequivocally:

He cared for his cortaysye, lest cralayn he were, & more for his meschef, 3if he schulde make synne & be traytor to bat tolke bat pat telde a3t. (I773)

The major sins which Gawain contemplates here are sins against the chivalric code, not the code of specifically Christian behaviour. The term synne is used in reference to unchastity, but according to the logic of the knight's thought we see it to be in effect a venial sin, more important for its implications of secular failure than in itself. The betrayal of Bertilak, which by definition would follow from the hero's submission to the lady's appeal, is for Gawain the truly heinous offence to be avoided; and it is the contemplation of this possibility which causes him to exclaim, 'God schylde ... pat schal not befalle' (1776).

Bertilak's lady bends every effort to seduce Gawain, but not because she is concerned to test his reputation as a chaste man. After all, her conversation is full of thinly-veiled allusions to his fame as a lover. She employs the device of sex as a means to the end of testing the knight's sense of loyalty to his host,1 and of discovering the limits of that courteous behaviour for which Gawain is famous. The lady knows full well that the offer of her person would prove irresistible to most men, given the power of the masculine libido coupled with pride at the thought of such a prestigious conquest. She knows also that to refuse such a gift from a superior is an extremely difficult and delicate undertaking, from the standpoint of preserving the cortaysye so important to the chivalric way of life. Gawain cannot simply play the boor and tell his hostess to desist (as might many another hero of romance): given his traditional reputation for refinement of manners - a point on which the lady has harped a number of times to his face - he must cope with the situation tactfully, while preserving the integrity of his relationship as Bertilak's guest. Thus the hero's chastity is here no more than a negative virtue. It is suppor- ted by moral probity of a kind, but moral probity based specifically on the tenets of the chivalric code.

Though chastity is not the subject of this trial, it is untrue to the story and unfair to Gawain to assert that the Temptation is 'accompanied by circumstances which make it singularly untempting'2 - a point of view held by some critics who feel that the audience is never meant to take the testing seriously. The circumstances referred to are the high position of the lady (which we have seen does not make her

1 Though not admissible as direct proof, it is worth keeping in mind the point of this type of test as traditionally utilized in medieval literature: whether or not the hero knows he is being tested, his enforced exposure to the temptress is designed to test in some fashion his obedience to the demands of the guest-host relationship.

2 Friedman, 'Morgan', p. 266.

6

GORDON M. SHEDD 7

therefore less desirable or attractive) and Gawain's supposed constant awareness of his approaching encounter at the Green Chapel. To view the hero as unremit- tingly beset with sobering thoughts is to neglect the evidence of the work itself and to do the grossest injustice to the character of Gawain. Were his rejection of the lady prompted merely by a kind of spiritual impotence occasioned by morbid ruminating on the return blow, there would be absolutely nothing commendable about his decision. Moreover, the whole tenor of Gawain's sojourn at Bertilak's castle is one of holiday gaiety, in which the 'gay Gawan' - as he is most frequently called by the poet - takes a conspicuous part. His verbal fencing matches with Bertilak's wife are conducted in a lightly bantering vein, and when in the company of the rest of the court, we are told, 'pe lede with le ladye3 layked alle day' (1560). There is every indication that Gawain's stay at the castle is a most pleasant one, and that he contributes in no small measure to making the holiday season a time of mirth and good fellowship. It is in keeping with his legendary light-hearted behaviour that our hero refuses to dwell morosely on the grim possibilities of the coming encounter, but lives cheerfully from day to day.

The point to be made here is that, given by the poet the portrait of a naturally sanguine and optimistic spirit, we are able to recognize clearly that important moment in the story when Gawain's lightness of heart deserts him, and are thus equipped to understand more fully the motive for his failure. The moment occurs during the third bedroom scene already alluded to, and is foreshadowed by mention of the frightening dream under whose spell the knight is labouring when awakened by the lady. This is the only reference made to such dreams (hardly enough evidence on which to convict the hero of morbidity of spirit), and the fact that Gawain is dreaming of the Green Chapel is scarcely remarkable, considering that the ensuing day will find him there. One senses that it is as much the hero's violent rejection of the mood of the dream as it is the fetching vision of Bertilak's lady beside his bed which causes him nearly to forget the demands of loyalty to his host, at this point. But once fully awake, Gawain's moral perspective resumes focus, and all goes well until the chatelaine introduces the subject of a parting gift. There is no proof that she uses the term 'Pis de-partyng' (1798) with any purpose of double entendre, but the effect is certainly to remind Gawain that this parting may be forever. It is he who mentions that he has come to this part of the world on 'an erande in erde3 vncoupe' (I808), but the lady's request for a memento, coupled with his memory of the recent dream, is responsible for creating the sombre mood which is to produce Gawain's failure of courage.

Having offered the knight a gold ring, which he rejects because he cannot respond with a suitable gift, the lady then twice offers the Green Girdle which she is wearing. Gawain also refuses this, the first time, and it is not until she mentions in an offhand way that it has the power of rendering the wearer invincible to harm that he begins to weaken:

Den kest pe kny3t, & hit come to his hert, Hit were a juel for be joparde Pat hym iugged were, When he acheued to Pe chapel, his chek forto fech. (I855)

The lady having minced no words in stating that with the magic Girdle in his possession 'he my3t not be slayn for sly3t vpon erpe' (I854), Gawain needs no more prods to the imagination to become suddenly and fully aware once more of

The Meaning of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'

the dangers inherent in his approaching encounter. For a week he has been insulated from the stark realities of the northern winter and his perilous mission by the festive warmth of Bertilak's court. On this morning, however, a concatena- tion of circumstances conspires abruptly to return him to consideration of the grim possibilities that wait outside, and the shock of their return is overwhelming. As a result the knight succumbs to the fear they generate, and in the toils of this emotion is misled into reasoning that to cheat certain death by accepting the talisman would be a 'noble' stratagem. So disordered is Gawain's perspective by the sudden approach of fear and the equally sudden prospect of salvation that he listens in a daze to the lady's appeal to take the Girdle - 'kenne he bulged with hir lrepe, & poled hir to speke' (1859) - and unthinkingly agrees both to accept the lace and to conceal his acceptance from Bertilak. Face to face one moment with the fear of death, and offered in the next the gift of life, the hero is thoroughly confounded by his warring emotions, and in this confused state commits two grave breaches of the chivalric code. By accepting the Girdle he gives in to fear, and by agreeing to the lady's request for silence he violates his sworn word to Bertilak vis-a-vis the exchange of winnings.

The Gawain of this scene is neither the 'gay Gawan' nor the knightly paragon of the Beheading Game and the first two bedroom scenes. H-e is a frightened, confused, fallible human being whose emotions dominate his reason and becloud his grasp of right and wrong. And unlike the first testing situation, this trial has elicited failure. Alone, without the psychological support of an audience and without the armour of foreknowledge that he is being tested for chivalric virtues, Gawain displays imperfections that are all the more dramatically obvious because neither romance tradition nor the poem itself thus far have prepared us for them.

The magnitude of the hero's error in this moment of crisis is directly linked to the suddenness of the event; this.point is worth stressing, because it explains Gawain's dramatic access of self-awareness and shame at the Green Chapel, and because it explains away his (to some critics) 'hypocritical' behaviour in the confession scene. Not only is the knight blind to the moral implications of his action at the moment of accepting the lace with its condition of silence: in his haste to be made clean spiritually and thus prepared for the morrow, he rushes off to confession without yet having realized his wrong. Fear of death is not a sin within the purlieu of religion, of course, but violation of a sworn compact is. Gawain reviews his sins 'of ke more & Pe mynne' (I88I), but that he doesn't recognize the necessity for confessing his broken pledge is deducible from his subsequent withholding of the Green Girdle from Bertilak. Had the priest been informed of the sin, return of the lace would have been a necessary condition of valid absolution; had Gawain intended to conceal his sin from the priest he would not have bothered going to confession, since by definition the absolution received would be worthless. Engel- hardt alludes to the hero's 'false conscience',1 and Burrow states that to a medieval reader 'it would have been clear ... that Gawain was not "clene" and that the priest's absolution was invalid' ;2 the truth remains that the knight goes voluntarily

1 George J. Engelhardt, 'The Predicament of Gawain', M.L.Q., 16 (I955), 222. 2 John Burrow, 'The Two Confession Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', M.P., 57 (I959),

74.

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GORDON M. SHEDD

to confession, and afterwards appears genuinely uplifted in spirit. We can only conclude that as yet he has neither recognized nor concealed his violated trawfie. The high spirits displayed by Gawain after being shriven are such that those around him feel compelled to remark that 'bus myry he wat3 neuer are' (I891): these are the high spirits of a man buoyed by the certainty that he has been truly asoyled, and who is therefore ready for whatever may befall - not those of a hypo- crite or one whose hysterical gaiety masks an inner unease. Gawain does not comprehend his wrong until it is pointed out to him by the Man in Green.

Before we are allowed to witness the fateful scene at the Green Chapel, the poet introduces a transitional scene in which we are made to see the hero once more in command of himself- once more the familiar strong figure. Arrived at a place not far from the Chapel, Gawain and his guide halt for a moment, and the guide suggests that should the hero prefer the path of flight to that of continuing on, no one need be the wiser. The situation and Gawain's reaction to it are reminiscent of an earlier moment in the poem when, despite his friends' muttered hints that prudence might be a more fruitful course than valour, the knight steadfastly turns his back on Camelot. In thanking the guide for his offer of silence Gawain is 'gruchyng' (2126), and his instinctive dislike of the man for his expedient solution to the problem lends strength to our impression that the hero is once more whole in spirit.l Further, neither here nor later do we sense the smug optimism we might expect from a man possessed of a charm like the Girdle. Not only does Gawain seem to have forgotten its promised powers, but twice he invokes God alone as the source of any comfort or aid he may receive in the coming trial. 'Ful wel con dry3tyn schape/ His seruaunte3 forto saue' (2138), he says, and we are heartened at this expression of a return to his normal perspective.

Continuing on his way alone, the knight arrives at what can be described only as the most unimpressive perilous chapel in romance - it is 'nobot an olde caue' (2 82). There is humour in this anticlimactic aspect of the place where the hero is to undergo his final and greatest trial, and the humour is reinforced by Gawain's unconscious delivery of a perfect oxymoron: 'Hit is be corsedest kyrk bat euer I com inne' (2196), he says gravely. But the humour is present not merely for the sake of comic relief: by stressing the thoroughly undramatic nature of the Green Chapel in this fashion, the poet invites our comparison of this scene with that of the challenge at Camelot. As a result, we are made aware of the important truth that there is no necessary connexion between the external trappings of life's various moments and the gravity of those moments themselves. We see that we cannot depend on the sounding of trumpets for warning that what we do next will vitally affect the shape of our lives. Unlike the confrontation at Camelot, this meeting is to take place without the inspirational setting provided by friendly faces and a familiar hall, and the loneliness of the site heightens our awareness ofjust how alone Gawain stands at this crucial encounter.

The scene at the Green Chapel is one of the richest and most skilfully wrought in all of medieval literature. It parallels in miniature the whole progress of the

1 The highly moral - and rather pompous - tone in which Gawain rejects his guide's unethical suggestion is amusing as well as reassuring. We recognize the hero's genuine indignation, but we cannot help noting the irony of the situation: just the morning before this he thankfully accepted the Green Girdle from Bertilak's wife.

9

Io The Meaning of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'

story thus far, amplifying and clarifying the significance of Gawain's behaviour. Beyond this, it unifies the poem by serving as the common culmination of both testing situations, thereby adding perspective to their similarities and differences. Finally, while presenting us with the spectacle of the hero's enlightenment - his movement from ignorance to awareness of self-- this climactic scene reminds us of the essential duality of human nature: in the person of Gawain we recognize the strengths and weaknesses of all men, and with him we are reminded that the real opponent against whom we strive is no external bogeyman, but the man within.

The two abortive blows and the final grazing cut administered by the Green Knight are, as he tells us clearly, symbolic of the results of Gawain's three days' testing at the castle. In attending to this explanation we may forget that, in terms of plot, the meeting at the Chapel in its primary function serves to conclude the Beheading Game. We may also fail to note the interesting parallel between Gawain's behaviour here, and that during and after the course of the Temptation. Having met the Man in Green, the knight vows that he shall 'stonde stylle' (2252), but as the axe descends for the first time he shrinks in fear. This instinctive reaction, coupled with the Green Knight's accusation that 'you fles for ferde er tou fele harme3' (2272), reminds us of Gawain's betrayal by fear when the final encounter was still a day hence. As the axe is raised a second time the hero stands 'stylle as ... ston' (2293), and the axeman's statement -'Now pou hat3 li hert holle' (2296) - recalls the portrait of the morally revitalized Gawain who refuses his guide's suggestion of flight. The third blow, then, is symbolic payment both for the knight's momentary fear at the Chapel and his failure at the castle; thus the two major strands of plot are knit together in one ritual act.

The Green Knight's address to Gawain after the ordeal is much more than a mere statement of facts or clarification of events: in tone and phrasing it is a compassionate recognition of the fact of human imperfection. The hero's error is pointed out, but at the same time he is praised as 'On pe fautlest freke pat euer on fote 3ede' (2363). Noticeably missing is that mocking and contemptuous attitude towards human fear which characterized the challenger's speech at Camelot. In its place we find the remarkable and highly significant pronouncement, 'But for 3e lufed your lyf, 1e lasse I yow blame' (2368). Instead of calling the knight a coward - the negative term cowarddyse is used only by Gawain himself- he puts the hero's behaviour in a positive light as love of life. This is not a verdict of acquittal: Gawain's temporary possession by fear, however sympathetically viewed, cannot be dismissed; and certainly his breach of lewte is demanding of censure; but the verdict of guilty is tempered by a mercy whose springs lie com- pletely outside the chivalric code of conduct. Throughout the poem thus far we have been observing, in the person of Gawain, the embodiment of an artificial system of conduct. His successes can be viewed as triumphs for the code, his failures as breaches of the code. But this is not at all the frame of reference from which the Man in Green judges him. He passes review on Gawain simply as one enlightened human being on another, and we see that behaviour which would be adjudged inexcusable by one standard of evaluation is found understandable and worthy of clemency by another.

The Green Knight, who at Camelot had seemed nothing more than a stock mechanical ogre whimsically bent on destroying the court's reputation, appears

GORDON M. SHEDD

in this scene as a sympathetic and wise judge,' and we unhesitatingly accept his pronouncement as truly befitting the case. In so doing, we in effect dismiss the authority of the code by which Gawain has been living and acting, and in whose view he would have to be considered guilty of irreparable and unforgivable wrongdoing. For it must be observed that the Man in Green's appeal to love of life is totally irrelevant by chivalric standards, whose bases are courage and honour, and whose tenets are grounded in the attempt rigorously to subjugate the natural impulses of man. The situation is ironical, because the original motivation for the creation of a knightly code was just this recognition of man's essential nature, coupled with a desire to channel that nature towards behaviour most productive of a fruitful life. Yet through the process of codification the original insight has been dimmed, and the code has tended to become worshipped as an end in itself. The most dangerous and reprehensible outgrowth of this idolatry is the unconscious assumption that through faithful adherence to the code human perfection is possible. As the chivalric way of life gains stature and as its 'virtues' become entabulated, there attaches to it the implicit promise that scrupulous adherence will produce a perfect man. We have seen what this loss of perspective does to the literature it spawns: it creates a seemingly endless succession of success stories. And we have seen what this loss of perspective does to that of the individual who blindly follows the code: Gawain has been looking, throughout the poem, for an external, concrete enemy; and in the process he has shown his ignorance of the truth that the real enemy is himself.2

The hero does not, of course, immediately grasp the full significance of the Green Knight's pronouncement, for he is too stunned by the simple revelation of failure, as the poet effectively shows us:

1 This deepening and transformation of character follows naturally from Bertilak's enlargement of function. Merely a plot device in the Beheading Game portion of the poem, where he is controlled mechanically by the author, he appears in this scene as a thoroughly human figure, and as interpreter of the plot. This double function is explicable not primarily in terms of his dual status as tool of Morgan and lord in his own right, but follows from the uses to which the poet puts him. It cannot be argued that the change in character is due to disenchantment, because the poet deliberately leaves the Green Knight's physical state unresolved. Quite simply, this is so because the author has no interest in the fate of Bertilak in his lesser role of plot device, and because he is fully aware of the dangers of intruding a solution at this point. Not at all committed to traditional employment of his traditional materials, the Gawain-poet feels no obligation to tidy up his plot at the expense of meaning. Should he interject the theatrics of disenchantment at this crucial moment in the work, the meaning ef the whole piece would be dissipated by external spectacle, and Sir Gawain would degenerate into just another tale of adventure.

2 The contest between Gawain and the Man in Green can be viewed, in symbolic terms, as a struggle between the civilized and natural aspects of human nature. This point has been made effectively by William Goldhurst in 'The Green and the Gold: the Major Theme of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', College English, 20 (1958), 61-5. Goldhurst states that gold in the poem (the colour most used in descriptions of Gawain) symbolizes the refined, sophisticated values and actions of man; this is contrasted with the greenness of the Green Knight, suggestive of man's primitive, sensual, emotional side. Goldhurst is too concerned to prove the juxtaposition of these symbols in the work, however, and in the process slights their dramatically antagonistic position throughout the poem. Human nature does partake of both green and gold, but Gawain's blindness to this truth is signified by his insistence, until the moment of revelation, upon regarding the Green Knight as his sworn enemy. In adopting the Green Girdle as a reminder of his failure, the hero symbolically adopts that part of his being which he had formerly refused to acknowledge. The meeting at the Chapel underscores the point that man cannot and should not deny part of himself, nor consider the 'natural man' an enemy, but recognize the complex nature to which he is heir, and strive to achieve a balanced and complementary relationship between its parts.

II

The Meaning of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'

Pat ober stif mon in study stod a gret whyle; So agreued for greme, he gryed with-inne, Alle be blode of his brest blende in his face, Pat al he schrank for schome bat be schalk talked. (2369)

When he bursts into speech it is with a violence and intensity completely foreign to our conception of his character, and we realize that this intemperate outburst is born of Gawain's sudden exposure for the first time to the meaning of what he has done. It is evidence of the poet's sensitivity to the realities of human behaviour that he shows his hero at first incapable of comprehending the larger implications of the Green Knight's words: in typically human short-sighted fashion Gawain curses his faults and the Girdle as though they were animate hostile powers that had betrayed him; and it is not until his initial reaction has worn off that he regains perspective enough to say, 'Now am I fawty & falce, & ferde hafben euer' (2382). This reassertion of his natural honesty prompts the Man in Green to declare Gawain 'polysed of bat ply3t & pured' (2393). This phrase, coupled with the use of the terms confessed and penaunce, is evocative of the confessional, and suggests to us that the hero's present shriving is of much greater worth than his earlier absolution, because now accompanied by genuine self-knowledge.

Gawain is still very much a human being, and despite his enlarged vision cannot yet quite reconcile himself to the fact that he has been duped - and by a woman. His shame and wounded vanity prevent him from accepting the Green Knight's invitation to return to the castle, and it is vanity which provokes his tirade against the duplicity of females. The humour of this moment is delightfully akin to that in which the Nun's Priest inadvertently blurts out 'Wommennes conseils been ful ofte colde', and the knight's launching into a catalogue of exempla so typical of medieval sermons heightens the comic aspect of the situation. This leavening of humour, coming between Gawain's confession of guilt and his acceptance of the Girdle in remembrance of 'be faut & be fayntyse of be flesche crabbed' (2435), reminds us once again that even the most faultless of chevaliers is only human. We are not to be left - as romance so often leaves us- with a vision of a hero larger than life, riding unimpeachably off into the sunset; but rather we take from the poem a feeling of having encountered a figure of genuine depth and complexity, whose appeal is the greater because in his finest moments he retains undeniable traces of human limitation.

That Gawain returns to Camelot is in keeping with the traditional romance ending, and serves to round out the symmetry of the poem, but these are incidental factors. His return is chiefly important as signifying a necessary reinvolvement with the everyday world of human experience - for life must and does go on- while suggesting that never again will he be able to accept unquestioningly and comfortably the old relationships and assumptions. The experience of the Green Chapel is over only in terms of the physical event, and the anguish of Gawain while recounting his ordeal shows us the indelible imprint of that experience on his spirit. Like Coleridge's Mariner 'this soul hath been alone on a wide wide sea', and in the poem's concluding scene is conveyed a sense of the indefinable but undeniable gulf which now separates the knight from his peers. This is brought out dramatically through the laughter which follows his painful recital, and is hammered home by the searing irony of the interpretation put on the whole experience by Arthur's court. The laughter is well-meant, intended to comfort

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Gawain while making light of the Green Knight's verdict, but its effect on us is to underscore the insensitivity of the listeners. Though unwittingly so, it is heartless

laughter, because it signifies a refusal to take the hero's shame and sorrow seriously. And as a final incongruous touch the Round Table adopts the Green Girdle as a token of the renoun which Gawain has brought to the group, thus unconsciously making a parody of the knight's experience.1

Gawain does deserve the praise and sympathy of his fellows, but not of course for simply having survived his desperate adventure. In adopting the Girdle the nobles make of it what it once was to the hero - a symbol of invulnerability - and we are thus brought full circle in the movement of the poem. Notoriously ineffi- cient as a protective device, the lace is actually the instrument of Gawain's fear; and it is not until adopted by him as a symbol of human vulnerability and weakness that it achieves real worth, as a reminder of the truth about the nature of man. This complete reversal of symbolic meaning is utterly lost on the court, though; and the erroneous perspective from which the nobles insist on viewing the talisman suggests that self-knowledge is essentially an individual, incommunicable experience.

We do not condemn the court for its point of view: it is the product of that limited vision to which most of us are heir, for it is not granted to everyone to leave Camelot. Furthermore, there is much of merit in the life produced by the code to which Arthur's court subscribes, and we are honestly shown this through the behaviour of its most illustrious member. Ultimately, however, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows us a hero whose stature is enlarged not by perfection in chivalric terms, but by his arrival at awareness of a larger view of life - a view which encompasses the knowledge of the true human condition. It is the hero's recogni- tion of the strengths and weaknesses of man's nature which leads us to our final estimate of his worth, an estimate consummately expressed in the words of the Green Knight:

As perle bi be quite pese is of prys more, So is Gawayn, in god fayth, bi ober gay kny3te3.

UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA GORDON M. SHEDD

1 In the Round Table's view, Gawain has beaten Morgan at her own game. Not only has she failed to frighten Guenevere to death, but through Bertilak she has as much as admitted the worth of the court (represented by Gawain) in this trial. This superficial evaluation of the outcome points up the reason for Morgan's presence in the work, while suggesting the solution to the 'problem' of motivation. According to John Speirs, Medieval English Poetry: the Non-Chaucerian Tradition (I957), p. Ioo, Bertilak's explanation of the reason for the trial is merely 'a bone for the rationalizing mind of the audience to play ... and be kept quiet with'; but Morgan's function as intellectual pacifier is really for the benefit of Arthur's court alone - and as we see, they not only chew but swallow contentedly this explanation.

Friedman says that Morgan's presence in the work 'bears all the signs and numen of a deus ex machina, and in falling back upon such a device the poet betrays his difficulty in articulating the complex narrative framework of his poem' ('Morgan', p. 269). The simple truth is that our poet needs a villain to motivate a story set in the Arthurian mould, and Morgan is the familiarly accepted player of that role. Aside from the truism of romance that she never needs a good reason for the trouble she causes, it is true of our poem in particular that her function (as well as that of a number of traditional romance elements invoked here) has been treated with less reverence than is typical of medieval story. She is important only at the level of story, and for the Gawain-poet the story is not an end unto itself. Our author utilizes the materials of romance to dramatize the strengths and weaknesses of the code it glorifies, but the work is in no sense a reverential piecing-together of hallowed motifs.

For Gawain (and for us) Morgan is ultimately unimportant: the real source of trouble is ignorance of self. The nobles of course do not comprehend this, and their position at the poem's end corresponds to that of the earlier Gawain. The irony of this contrast of attitudes in the final scene heightens our awareness of the inestimable value of that long journey from Camelot.

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