“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”

Introduction

The late-medieval poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is an excellent resource providing insight on the culture of the age. As with many literary works of the era, it stages its protagonist, Gawain, against a supernatural challenger, the Green Knight. Gawain finds himself making a deal with his adversary, agreeing to deal him one blow to the head with an ax on the condition that he finds him a year and a day later to receive one in return.

Throughout this tale, the Green Knight represents nature, and when Gawain crosses the Green Knight, he is in fact contending against the environment. The interactions of Gawain and the other knights with the Green Knight exhibit the Arthurian society's mutual fear and respect for the forces of nature.

When Bertilak de Hautdesert takes on the form of the Green Knight, he displays his supernatural power with nature as his medium. When the Green Knight makes his appearance in King Arthur's court, the knights are in awe to see the “verdant green” (161) man with “butterflies and birds embroidered” (166) on his clothes, and a head of hair that “to his horse suited” (180). Although the Green Knight is a human, his appearance is at once vegetative and animalistic, as if he had just emerged from the bushes into the human realm.

He is a mélange of all facets of the natural world, representing many types of flora and fauna all coexisting on a human body. The knights of the Round Table do not know what to make of him, so they both fear and admire him in their confusion. When Gawain hits the Green Knight's neck with the ax, the Green Knight “fell not… nor faltered a whit” (430), then picked up his head and left so easily in a way that was “a wonder past compare” (466). Much like a tree, he is able to lose parts of his body without enduring substantive harm.

Thesis Statement

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight establishes the setting firmly in Arthurian Britain by means of a lengthy description of the legendary history of Britain. Britain is a land of great wonders and strife, but King Arthur has established a court of utmost nobility and chivalry, peopled with the bravest knights and fairest ladies. This story begins at a lavish New Year's celebration in Camelot, King Arthur's court.

This regenerative power is fantastical and even frightening to the human world, but a very unexceptional ability for plant-life. The Green Knight could well be described as an evergreen embodied in human form, and represents the intersection between humanity and the natural world. His ambiguity makes him a dubious visitor to King Arthur's court, causing the knights to be uncertain whether he is friend or foe.

The Green Knight further perturbs the knights by challenging their belief that humans are superior to the rest of the natural world. When he appears in Camelot, he does not arrive unarmed: “In his one hand he had a holly barb… ...