You are expected to read the original Middle English texts, although modern translations may be found helpful initially, in order to gain familiarity with the general outline of the plot and so on. Modern versions are no substitute for the original, as all translation involves refashioning and alteration. If you are intending to take the Literature of the Later Middle Ages paper you should use The Riverside Chaucer for its detailed further coverage of Chaucer’s life and background, for the excellence of its editorial material and for its detailed information as to the dialect of the fourteenth-century English Chaucer spoke and wrote. Chaucer’s language is the language of the south-east of England in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and is easier for modern readers than other fourteenth-century English dialects because it is the ancestor of modern English. Nevertheless, considerable effort is required by someone unfamiliar with Chaucer’s English before they can become a fluent reader, and you are strongly advised to study the language notes in the Riverside edition:
Benson, Larry D. (ed.) The Riverside Chaucer. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) [ISBN 9780199552092].
There are many modernised versions, including:
Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. Translated by Nevill Coghill. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958) [ISBN 9780140424386].
For Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a modern English version is recommended as a starting point for your studies, as it is written in a rather obscure north-west Midlands dialect. The original text with facing-page full translation will be found in:
James, Winny (ed.) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1992) [ISBN 9780921149927].
This edition gives the text in the original language, but provides considerable help with translation by means of regular same-page glosses:
Cawley, A. (ed.) Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (London: Everyman edition, J.M. Dent, 1976) [ISBN 0460103466].
There is also a good Norton critical edition of Marie Borroff’s modern translation, containing a selection of scholarly essays:
Borroff, M. and L.L. Howes (eds) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (London: Norton, 2010) [ISBN 9780393930252].
However, if you are intending to take the Literature of the Later Middle Ages course, we strongly recommend that you use:
Andrew, M. and R. Waldron (eds) The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2007) [ISBN 9780859897914].
Bennett, Judith M. and P.J. Corfield, Queens, Whores and Maidens: Women in Chaucer’s England. (London: Royal Holloway University, 2002)
[ISBN 0902194534].
*Howard, D. Chaucer and the Medieval World. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1987) [ISBN 0297792180].
*Pearsall, D. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: a Critical Biography. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) [ISBN 1557866651].
*Aers, D. Harvester New Readings: Chaucer. (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986) [ISBN 0710805934].
Beidler, P.G. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. (Boston, MA: Bedford, 1996)
[ISBN 0312111282].
*Boitani, P. and J. Mann The Cambridge Chaucer Companion. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) [ISBN 0521894670].
*Cooper, H. Oxford Guides to Chaucer. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) [ISBN 0198711557].
*Mann, J. Geoffrey Chaucer. (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2002) [ISBN 0859916138].
*Mann, J. Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973) [ISBN 0521097959].
Masi, Michael Chaucer and Gender. (New York: P. Lang, 2005)
[ISBN 0820469467].
*Muscatine, C. Chaucer and the French Tradition. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957) [ISBN 0520009088].
Passmore, Elizabeth D. and Susan Carter (eds) The English Loathly Lady Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs. (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007) [ISBN 1580441246].
Pearsall, D. The Canterbury Tales. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985)
[ISBN 004800037X].
Saunders, Corinne J. ‘Women Displaced: Rape and Romance in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale’, in Arthurian Literature 13 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1995) [ISBN 0859914499].
Tinkle, Theresa Gender and Power in Medieval Exegesis. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2010) [ISBN 0230104355].
*Barron, W.R.J. Trawthe and Treason: the Sin of Gawain Reconsidered (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980) [ISBN 0719012945].
Benson, L.D. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1975) [ISBN 0813505011].
Blanch, R.J. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (Troy, NY: Whitston, 1983)
[ISBN 0878752447]. A reference guide.
*Brewer, D. and J. Gibson (eds) A Companion to the Gawain-Poet. (Cambridge: Brewer, 2007) [ISBN 0859915298].
*Burrow, J. A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) [ISBN 0710086954].
*Davenport, W.A. The Art of the Gawain-Poet. (London: Athlone Press, 1978) [ISBN 048511173X].
Hill, Ordelle G. Looking Westward: Poetry, Landscape, and Politics in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009) [ISBN 0874130492].
Howard, D.R. and C.K. Zacher (eds) Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) [ISBN 0681229713].
*Johnson, L. Staley The Voice of the Gawain-Poet. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) [ISBN 0299095401].
*Putter, A. An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet. (London: Longman, 1996) [ISBN 0582225744].
*Putter, A. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the French Arthurian Romance. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) [ISBN 0198182538].
*Spearing, A.C. The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) [ISBN 0521291194].
* Especially recommended
Delony, M. ‘Gendering Morgan le Fay’s Magical Spaces in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Medieval Perspectives 20 (2005), pp.20–56.
Hardman, P. ‘Gawain’s practice of piety in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Medium Ævum 68:2 (1999), pp.247–67.
Lowe, J. ‘The Cinematic Consciousness of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Exemplaria 13:1 (2001), pp.67–98.
McCarthy, C. ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the sign of trawþe’, Neophilologus 85:2 (2001) pp.297–308.
‘Luf-talkyng in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ Neophilologus 92:1 (2008) pp.155–62.
These websites are excellent for Arthurian literature and legend:
www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/
This is excellent for both Chaucer and Arthuriana:
A fine site for Chaucer studies is Harvard University’s Chaucer pages:
www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer
For help with Middle English, try the Medieval English Dictionary Online:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med
For editions of the two Gawain analogues, The Marriage of Sir Gawain and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell:
www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/tmsmenu.htm
To begin with, it is essential to explore several key terms associated with medieval romance, a genre that is notoriously difficult to define.
Activity
Begin by looking up the term ‘romance’ in a good reference book of literary terms, or use an online resource.
From the twelfth century onwards, the term ‘roman’ was applied to a text written not in Latin (the language of the scholarly elite) but in a vernacular language (originally mainly French). It is very important to distinguish between the medieval connotations of the term and later usage. The texts in question here are in no way to be read as ‘romantic’ (involving love) or ‘Romantic’ (sharing the emotional sensibility of the early nineteenth century). Make sure that you understand these terms thoroughly. The literary genre, medieval romance, typically focusses on exemplary aristocratic figures undertaking heroic quests. The key central focus is often upon the knight-errant who journeys in search of ‘adventure’. This is another slippery term, not to be automatically associated with modern notions of exciting challenges.
Activity
Look up ‘adventure’ and clarify its original meaning.
‘Adventure’ primarily designates ‘chance encounter’, derived as it is from the Latin, ad ventum, ‘what is to come’. So the knight who sets out in search of adventure is exposing himself to whatever might happen. Random events which befall are not necessarily arbitrary, indeed they often appear more providential, or matters of ‘fate’. The concept of ‘adventure’ is inherently mysterious, signifying the unknown.
As a literary genre, medieval romance originated in twelfth-century France. The earliest poetic narratives treating chivalric conquests are those written by Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1160–90). In a series of poems, Chrétien establishes the Arthurian court as a centre of excellence and chivalric virtue. His stories focus on individual knights of the Round Table, following the wandering adventures of Erec, Cligès, Yvain, Perceval and Lancelot.1
1 A good translation of Chrétien’s works is: Arthurian Romances. Translated by W.W. Kibler and C.W. Caroll (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991)
[ISBN 014044218].
The new fashion for fictitious stories of Arthur and his knights coincides with the invention of ‘courtly love’ (a term which always requires scare quotes).
Activity
Look up this term in a good dictionary of literary terms, or use an online resource.
Be sure to grasp the fact that this is a relatively recent invention. The expression was coined in the nineteenth century by Gaston Paris, to formalise a set of conventions surrounding the treatment of secular love. The later Middle Ages did promote a concept of ‘fin’amors’ (refined love) developed from the lyric poetry of the troubadours of Provence and the more northerly trouvères. Various texts from the twelfth century onwards propagated certain conduct in love in which it was deemed ennobling for a knight to serve and worship a beloved lady. Texts such as Andreas Capellanus’s, De Amore (‘On Love’, c.1186) elaborated upon this ‘courtly love’ ethos, in a playful and ironic way, constituting what the historian Georges Duby dubbed ‘a man’s game’.2
2 Georges Duby develops a searching analysis of ‘courtly love’ in The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France. Translated by Barbara Bray (London: Penguin, 1983)
[ISBN 9780713915839].
Two female patrons in particular are associated with the cultivation of this literary phenomenon, Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter, Marie de Champagne. It was under Marie’s patronage that Chrétien de Troyes produced his French courtly romances.
Such romances specifically linked knightly prowess and achievement in arms with devotion to a beloved woman who inspired such feats, but their courtly audience comprised a tiny elite. When romances became fashionable in England, in imitation of French romance, this was not the case: late thirteenth-century and early fourteenth-century romances in English were not aimed at the courtly class, since that class still spoke, read and listened to romances in French. Such English romances were much less interested in love as an inspiration for knightly achievement than in martial and heroic exploits for their own sakes, and indeed never endorsed adultery. Instead, English romances dealing with Arthurian themes tended to focus, not unnaturally, on Arthur and his knights as great national heroes (not a perspective likely to appeal to the French), with the love interest usually a very minor optional extra. Such romances were not ‘courtly’ in content, themes or audience (so far as we can tell): although some may well have been read or listened to at court, they do not inherently belong to such a milieu in the way that Chrétien’s romances, for example, obviously did.
English romance, therefore, initially appealed to a lower social stratum than the class that was, at the same time, still reading and listening to French romances at court. By the late fourteenth century, with the work of Chaucer and the Gawain-poet, this had changed: French was ceasing to be the language of the court and educated circles when these poets wrote, and they produced romances in English as sophisticated as anything produced in France in the previous 200 years, and as clearly aimed at a sophisticated and hence presumably ‘courtly’ audience.
Activity
If you wish to gain familiarity with the general nature of Arthurian romance, you are advised to read some of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (c. 1469–70).3
3 The Winchester manuscript version is recommended, as Caxton considerably alters the text. Good recent editions are those by Helen Moore (London: Wordsworth, 1996) [ISBN 1853264636], and Helen Cooper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) [ISBN 9780199537341].
In particular, classic romance material is found in Books 3, 7 and 8.
This is perhaps the most well-known and influential Arthurian romance. It is a fairly late synthesis of Arthurian tales in circulation throughout the Middle Ages. William Caxton selected it as one of his earliest printed texts in 1485 and it remained continuously in print until the seventeenth century. In his Preface, Caxton sets out clearly the nature of the work’s edifying and entertaining appeal:
To th’entente that noble men may see and lerne the noble acts of chyvalrye, the jentyl and virtuous dedes that somme knyghtes used in tho dayes [ ... ] Doo after the good and leve the evyl and it shal brynge you to good fame and renommee [reputation]. And for to pass the tyme thys book shal be plesaunte to rede in.
Even in this archetypal Arthurian romance, many elements intrude among the perfection. The virtuous deeds are everywhere moderated by less than virtuous behaviour. The central virtues of ideal knighthood are embodied in Lancelot. Yet, at the same time as he represents the highest aspirations of chivalry, Lancelot is fundamentally and fatally flawed. Lancelot’s love for Arthur’s queen, Guenever, constitutes a triple betrayal, of his King, lord and friend. The famous love triangle results in the destruction of the fellowship of the Round Table.
For the rest of this chapter, we shall be comparing closely Arthurian romances by two of the finest poets of the later fourteenth century. They were writing at a time of linguistic diversity, with a trilingual court fluent in Latin, French and English. We shall see how these very different writers handle the material of Arthurian legend, drawing attention to various tensions undercutting ideals. Both Chaucer and the anonymous Gawain-Poet exploit the genre of Arthurian romance in order to explore the complexities of love, honour and virtue.
Activity
Find out something of the background to Chaucer’s work by researching his life. Especially useful is the Introduction to the Riverside Chaucer pp.xi–xxii.
Chaucer was primarily a diplomat and civil servant. Poetry was not his main occupation, although it appears from images such as the famous frontispiece to a manuscript of his poem, Troilus and Criseyde, that he read his works aloud at court. Chaucer lived through successive regimes, experiencing such tumultuous events as the Peasants’ Revolt and the deposition and murder of Richard II. Chaucer found himself well placed under the Lancastrians, as King Henry IV’s father, John of Gaunt, had been a patron of his during his early career. Chaucer had composed The Book of the Duchess for him. Although Chaucer’s background was that of a city merchant family, he moved in court circles all his life: as a youth he served as page to the Countess of Ulster, wife of Prince Lionel, son of Edward III, and he followed Prince Lionel to war in France in 1359, the first of several journeys to France and Italy undertaken on royal business of various kinds. By 1366 Chaucer had married Philippa Roet, daughter of a Hainault knight in the service of Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III. The Canterbury Tales, of which ‘ The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’ forms part, was Chaucer’s last great work, and was left unfinished at his death.
Activity
Have a look at the form of the verse in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’.
This rhyming verse was newly fashionable at court, and Chaucer wrote most of The Canterbury Tales in this form, iambic pentameter rhyming couplets. He also experimented with a variety of stanzaic forms, most notably the ‘Chaucerian Stanza’ (also known as Rhyme Royale) in which he wrote some of The Canterbury Tales (e.g. ‘The Clerk’s Tale’) and Troilus and Criseyde.
Much less is known about this poet than is known about Chaucer. Generally assumed to be male in the absence of any definite identification, the poet is referred to as either the Gawain-Poet or the Pearl-Poet, after his two most famous poems, Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Two other poems are usually credited to this poet, Patience and Cleanness/Purity. All these titles are modern editorial attributions. Pearl, Patience and Cleanness/Purity all deal with Christian doctrine and with moral themes. Unlike the other three poems, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a romance, but it also has a strong moral theme.
The settings and vocabulary of the poet’s works show that he was familiar with courtly life in all its aspects, and that, like Chaucer, he was familiar with French romances as well as with English ones. However, the dialect in which the Gawain-Poet wrote is that of the north-west of England rather than the south-eastern dialect that Chaucer used and, since this northern dialect is not the ancestor of modern English, it is exceptionally difficult even for native English speakers to learn.
Whereas Chaucer chose to use French-influenced verse forms, the Gawain-Poet wrote all his works in the traditional native form, alliterative verse. This employs alliteration, not in the modern sense of initial letters being repeated for occasional ornament, but as its fundamental shaping principle. Each line has three or four strong stressed syllables that alliterate.
Activity
Have a look at the opening stanza of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and identify the alliterating syllables.
The poet uses this traditional form in a highly innovative and flexible way. While the body of each stanza is written in long alliterative lines, there is also a two-syllable ‘bob’ and a four-line rhyming conclusion, called the ‘wheel’. This complex form is unique.
Activity
Examine every stanza in Fitt One of the poem, to spot the bobs and wheels. Notice the variety they impart to the rhythm.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight explicitly aligns itself with the native poetic tradition very early on in the poem, describing itself as:
With lel letters loken [loyal/true, locked together]
In londe so hatz ben longe. (35–36) [land]
The alliterative style can achieve vividly felt passages, such as Gawain’s severe suffering in freezing weather:
Ner slayn with þe slete he sleped in his yrnes [nearly, irons i.e. armour]
Mo nyghtez then innoghe, in naked rokkez [too many nights, rocks]
Theras claterande fro the crest the colde borne rennez [hilltop; river; runs]
And henged heghe over his hede in hard iisseikkles. (729–32)
One of the challenges of this text is its rich lexis. Alliterative poetry naturally requires an extensive vocabulary, in order to express ideas using a variety of initial letters. Alliterative poets consequently tend to use large vocabularies, with many synonymous terms. The Gawain-Poet, for example, uses numerous different words for horse: blonk, caple, fole, horse, stede; and for man: mon, knight, lord, prynce, burn, freke, gome, hathel, lede, renk, schalk, segge, tulk, wye, mayster. The poet commands a large range of linguistic resources, using archaic English, loan-words from French and words derived from his local northern dialect, which was heavily influenced by Scandinavian settlers. Some of these words were not current in fourteenth-century spoken English, and some of them derive from Old English, that is, pre-Norman Conquest, poetic vocabulary. For these reasons, the modern student of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight must expect to encounter a challenging text. With the help of a good modern translation, used alongside one of the recommended editions listed above, you should be able to engage with the rich and sophisticated poetry of the original. The effort will be well rewarded.
This chapter focuses primarily on the Tale rather than the Prologue, but you are expected to study both in relation to each other. It will be especially useful to consider how Chaucer uses the extended monologue of the Prologue to introduce and develop many themes which recur in the Tale.
Activity
Assess the issues of gender and power which are treated in the Prologue (carefully examining the Wife’s struggle for ‘maistrie’, and antagonism towards the Bible, scholars and Jankyn’s Book of Wicked Wives).
The two texts discussed here form an interesting contrast. Both are ostensibly similar in genre, yet each offers a distinctive variation on the norm, and treats complex issues. We shall compare their treatment and deployment of a variety of typical romance elements to see how these two poets adapt and experiment with the genre. The following features will be compared in detail:
Activity
Read the opening stanza of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and consider what expectations it arouses about the kind of story that is to follow.
Key details to note are the reference to the Trojan War (‘sege’ and ‘assaut’), the panoramic account of the descendants of Æneas as they found cities across Europe, culminating in the foundation of Britain by Brutus. (It is not the historical accuracy of this which concerns us, although this mistaken version of history was current at the time). The opening stanza announces grand themes of conquest and nation building in what could easily be regarded as an epic mode.
Activity
Now read the second stanza carefully, analysing how it effects a transition from the epic to the romance mode.
Arthur is pronounced the greatest king of all, but the superlative adjective applied to him, ‘hendest’ (most noble), is not one concerned with military prowess, but with courtliness. The tone shifts from authoritative declaration to opinion (‘I wot’, ‘as I haf herde telle’). Key words associated with the particular milieu of romance are casually slipped in, such as ‘ferlyes’, ‘aunter’, ‘selly’, ‘awenture’. By the third stanza, we are not surprised to be in Camelot, where the Arthurian court is depicted as splendid and youthful (‘in her first age’). It is Christmas and a time for merry-making.
Activity
Observe the lavish descriptions of the banquet and the enthusiastic appraisal of the narrator in stanzas 3–6.
This is an appropriate setting for Gawain to demonstrate his loyalty and bravery, by stepping forward to take up the challenge presented by the Green Knight, namely an exchange of axe blows to behead one another. But note that, as the story progresses, there are suggestions of an immature king and cowardly courtiers, which modify the general impressions and expectations of exemplary knighthood.
Activity
Make a list of these suggestive details (e.g. lines 224–25, 241–49, 280–82, 309–18, 427–28).
Clearly, the Green Knight comes to test and to challenge the reputation of the Round Table, and it is far from certain that his cynical view will be disproved. Gawain’s humility (‘I am the wakkest [...] and of wyt feblest’) also raises questions about his ability to succeed in his task. This is part of the tension set up by the poet to create suspense and some anxiety about the outcome.
Activity
Now compare the scene-setting at the beginning of ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ (lines 1–28).
The beginning of ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ initially announces itself as a typical Arthurian romance, set long ago (‘In th’olde dayes of the King Arthour’). But the tone soon shifts to one of irony, as the Wife describes the friars as having supplanted the elves of yore. Given the reputation of friars as lustful rogues (compare the portrait of the Friar in ‘The General Prologue’) Alison’s remarks on how safe women are under their protection can only be taken as satirical.4
4 Biedler, Peter G. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale: An Annotated Bibliography 1900–1996. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996) [ISBN 9870333657065] contains useful summaries of two contrasting interpretations of the opening section of the Tale, pp.171–88 and pp.205–20.
This is an altogether different mode to romance. ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ may be formally set in a fairytale past, when ‘Al was this land fulfild of fayerye’ but it clearly has a subtext rich in topical satire. Although the story superficially resembles Arthurian romance, it is in fact deeply subversive of generic expectation. Alison has already demonstrated in her Prologue her sharp critique of male-dominated literature. She may well be continuing her attack on the existing cultural order. Her romance is soon deviating from the norm and introducing key notes of antagonism.
Consider these lines in which the Lady tries to instruct Gawain in his expected role as a romance hero (1512–15):
And of alle cheualry to chose, the chif thing alosed [chivalrous exploits, praised]
Is the lel layk of luf, the lettrure of armes. [loyal sport of love, lore]
For to telle of this tevelyng of this trwe knyghtez, [deeds]
Hit is þe tytelet token and tyxt of her werkkez. [title, text, their, works]
Here she prescribes the chief characteristics of a knight: to be famous for chivalrous deeds, and to be an expert in love. She is deliberately teasing the reluctant Gawain, who is repudiating her advances. The comedy does not detract from the essential accuracy of her description of the ideal knight. Part of the joke, for the contemporary audience, was the fact that Gawain was a well-known figure who was far from chaste.5
5 A dozen or so romances survive featuring Gawain, testifying to his popularity. Most present him as an active wooer of ladies, far from the portrait in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Chaucer is likely to have read his friend Gower’s version of this story, the ‘Tale of Florent’ in Confessio Amantis. Two other close analogues of the tale exist, the anonymous Arthurian romances, The Marriage of Sir Gawain and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell.
Facing the Lady’s seductive advances, Gawain is confronted by the conflicting demands of moral virtue and courtesy. Far from being harmonious, as she asserts, the demands prove incompatible.
Although the story begins as a typical challenge and quest, in that a stranger arrives at court with a challenge, its real interests lie elsewhere. Deeds of daring are relegated to passing reference, a mere five lines dealing with the heroic feats Gawain achieves on his journey:
Sumwhyle wyth wormes he werres, and with wolves als, [sometimes]
Sumwhyle wyth wodwos that woned in the knarres, [wild men of the woods, lived, crags]
Bothe wyth bulles and beres, and bores otherqhyle, [boars]
And etayns […] (720–23). [giants]
The studied casualness of this description dismisses the usual fare of adventuring heroes in a perfunctory manner. Overall, the poem develops a new concept of heroism, involving more subtle and internal trials of personal integrity. Gawain here embodies chastity and devotion to the Virgin Mary, hardly his usual guise. His knightly device is the mystical symbol of the Pentangle, ‘a syngne […] In bytoknyng of trawthe’ whose fivefold significance is elaborated as comprising five interdependent virtues, ‘fraunchyse’ (generosity), fellowship, cleanness (chastity), courtesy and piety (625–65). Gawain’s flaw, as he accepts the lady’s protective talisman, and keeps it secret, may appear minor, but it destroys the emblem of perfect ‘truth’. Gawain is presented as an unusually self-conscious hero, finally beset by shame at his failure rather than sharing the rest of the court’s celebration of his success. Gawain’s moral virtue, like Galahad’s, serves to critique secular chivalry. The poem exploits the romance genre, but moves beyond its moral compass, ultimately elevating piety over prowess.
The ideals of chivalric conduct were later formulated by Malory, in the annual oath sworn by all Arthur’s knights:
Than the kynge stablysshed all the knyghts […] and charged them […] allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes sucour [help]: strengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them, uppon payne of dethe.
Activity
Consider the hero of ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’. How far is he from Malory’s ideal?
Whereas the ideal knight is sworn to defend women, this one is a rapist. Clearly, the conventions are being turned upside down from the outset. The sheer casualness of the violence is shocking, ‘on a day […] it happed that […] he saugh a mayde walking hym biforn’:
Of which mayde anon, maugree hir heed, [against her will]
By verray force, he rafte hire maydenhed. [strong, seized]
Intensifiers (anon, verray), the harsh tone and import of the verb (‘rafte’) all combine with the unsubtle punning rhyme to convey a brutal act of ‘oppressioun’. Around this act of violence the Tale presents a restorative process of educating the knight, which involves him being forced to experience what the Wife’s Prologue presented as a female hardship, ‘the wo that is in mariage’. In this nightmare vision of romance a knight’s sighs betoken despair over female domination:
Wo was this knight, and sorwefully he siketh; [sighs]
But what! He may nat do al as hym liketh.
Chaucer’s version of a widely-known folktale about the disenchantment of a ‘Loathly Lady’ transforms the story in many significant ways. Personal names are largely erased, giving the tale a distanced, generalised quality. The catalyst for the knight’s quest to find out ‘What thyng it is that wommen moost desire’ (1007) is not an accidental killing of a knight, but an altogether more directly relevant crime: the violent rape of a young girl. This transforms the story into one of poetic justice, as all expectations of gender are inverted. No chivalrous hero, but ‘a lusty bacheler’, this knight’s ‘success’ rests on submission to female authority as he is forced to occupy a subject position. Constrained to sexual intercourse against his will, the unheroic knight is mocked by the hag in a way which is reminiscent of the Green Knight’s mockery of the Arthurian court in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
Is this the lawe of kyng Arthures hous?
Is every knyght of his so dangerous? [grudging]
Everything about this tale is contrary to the generic norm. In place of a heroic quest, this knight undertakes a search to save his own life. He is thoroughly humiliated as he travels for a year and a day asking women what they most desire. This lack of admirable motive, coupled with enforced subjugation to the will of women, essentially demeans him twice over.
Typically the Arthurian knight travels in search of adventure, facing and overcoming a variety of challenges, often in the form of aggressive enemies, beasts and monsters such as giants and dragons. Supernatural forces frequently assail him, but his physical might prevails. It can be seen that this model is notably absent from the two poems in question.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the dangerous ‘Other’ proves elusive, difficult even to identify and recognise. Again, first impressions seem to match expectations: the challenger is a gigantic green man with miraculous powers of restoration. But the task he presents to Gawain is far from the usual type of armed combat. The Beheading Game is one of several elements incorporated within the romance from folklore and a contest which Gawain cannot possibly win. The narrative includes a number of familiar motifs from romance, which are reconfigured. One such motif is the elaborate arming of the knight in Fitt 2, the logic of which is dubious in this context, where a man is not going to fight but to submit to having his head cut off. The quest to find the Green Knight is a traditional one in certain respects but not in others. The Green Knight’s identity remains mysterious, his abode an unprepossessing mound and he surprisingly transforms into the figure of the genial host, Sir Bercilak. The Beheading Game, therefore, turns out to have been a distraction from the real danger presented by the Lady. Heroism in this world proves a more difficult task than usual. Danger presents itself in unexpected forms, as a subtle and deceptive presence. Further, when the long quest for the Green Knight is finally achieved, it proves anti-climactic. The Green Knight reveals the whole plot to have been a trick. The real villain is suddenly exposed as Morgan le Fay, Gawain’s aunt, and the deception a vindictive ploy aimed against Guenever. This revelation strikes many as belated and inadequate. Strangely, Gawain’s real test happens without the reader even knowing it.
Similarly, in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, the hero is given an apparently futile quest. He is set the task of discovering what women want. This deceptively simple question proves arduous and impossible, as all the women he asks offer different responses.
Activity
Consider the variety of responses the knight receives, and the awkwardness of the final ‘correct’ answer, in the light of the Wife’s previous efforts to defend women from misogynistic attitudes.
Once again, we have an odd quest, configured in perplexing ways. While, on the one hand, it is an appropriate punishment, forcing the knight to consider female desire, on the other hand, the representation of women is hardly favourable. The idea of a whole sex being easily categorised would appear to be as absurd as the monovocal literary tradition deploring women which the Wife contested in the Prologue. Yet, a single solution is proposed: that woman desire dominance. This raises more questions than it answers. Creating debate, provoking disparate responses, is a key element in both texts. Using the storytelling device of a quest, both poets construct thought-provoking scenarios which deliberately offer contradictory perspectives, engaging the reader in consideration of important issues. In place of mere entertainment, these romances present moral cruxes and conundrums.
Medieval romance is generally characterised by a circular narrative structure. This tends to relate to the knight errant’s departure from and return to the court. Both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ conform to this essential shape. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight enacts a double departure within a larger circular structure, as Gawain leaves Arthur’s and Bercilak’s courts, finally returning to Camelot. The poem is an elaborately patterned piece, whose conclusion at line 2525 harks deliberately back to the beginning, ‘After the segge and the asaute was sesed at Troye’.6
6 Another of this poet’s works, Pearl, is even more carefully designed, with exactly 101 stanzas and numerous echoic patterns throughout.
Among the most celebrated passages in the poem is the triple sequence of hunts and wooing scenes in Fitt Three. These cleverly present simultaneous events which mirror one another, as Gawain is the ‘prey’ of the Lady while her husband pursues deer, boar and fox.
The Gawain-Poet resists the typical romance climax by ending with a distinct lack of resolution.
Activity
Read the final two stanzas of the poem, considering the variety of perspectives it presents regarding Gawain’s achievement.
The knight's homecoming is usually a straightforwardly victorious return. This is the manner in which Arthur and the court respond, laughing loudly and adopting a green sash as a sign of unity and honour:
That lordes and ladis that longed to the Table, [belonged]
Uche burne of the brotherhede, a bauderyk schulde have. (2515–16) [each man, baldric]
Gawain, however, is conspicuously chastened and bitter, castigating himself for ‘untrawthe’:
This is the bende of my blame I bere on my nek, [sign]
This is the lathe and the losse that I laught have [injury, suffered]
Of couardise and covetyse that I haf caght thare. (2506–08) [fell prey to]
The narrator remains resolutely silent on the matter, leaving such irreconcilable perspectives, so that the meaning of the tale remains elusive, an ‘endeless knot’ indeed. It seems as if Gawain’s experiences leave him at odds with the frivolities, indicating a development of insight on his part. The self-recrimination marks a major alteration in his self-image. From attempting to be the perfect knight, he becomes keenly aware of his failings. His is an interior journey towards enlightenment.
‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ is a much shorter text, although it shares the folklore timescale of a year and a day for the knight’s quest. Here too, the journey symbolically enacts an internal process of understanding and the resolution proves problematic.
Activity
What unresolved issues remain at the end of the Tale?
Many readers doubt whether the knight has received just punishment. Uniquely in this version of the story, he appears to be rewarded with a wife who is both virtuous and beautiful. Like Gawain, this knight concludes his adventure in despair. The magical transformation of the hag provides a fantasy, ‘happy ever after’ conclusion, in which they live together ‘in parfit joye’. The final accord mirrors the end of the Prologue, where the Wife and Jankyn kissed after their quarrel and established a happy union. Yet, the hag’s ambivalent promise is less reassuring than it seems:
I prey to God that I moote sterven wood, [die insane]
But I to yow be also good and trewe
As evere was wyf, sin that the world was newe.
A critical eye might detect here an ominous, if oblique, reference to Original Sin, a hollowness in her hyperbolic intention to be as virtuous as ‘any woman ever’, and an unpromising relativity (‘as good as…’). These hints are slight and easily missed, but the final shattering of the romance frame is brutally clear, as the Wife prays for bad husbands to die:
And olde and angry nigardes of dispence, [misers in spending]
God sende hem verray pestilence!
The hag’s prayer may be no less impious. It is worth noting that the ‘verray pestilence’ the Wife calls down upon miserly husbands was no empty metaphor then, when memories of the devastating effects of the Great Plague were fresh. This strikes a discordant note which destroys any reconciliatory mood at the climax of the Tale. We could hardly be further removed from the world of refined chivalry associated with the Arthurian romance. Chaucer’s only Arthurian romance is constituted as a highly irregular, parodic piece which may suggest reservations towards the genre, or a sophisticated reshaping of it.
Both texts feature Queen Guenever but in significantly contrasting ways.
Activity
Make notes comparing the representation and function of Guenever in each poem.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight she barely features, appearing only in Fitt One. The initial description of her presents her as a beautiful, static icon (lines 74–84). Apart from a brief reference to her at line 346, she attracts no attention at all, until the end of the Fitt when Arthur reassures her that there is nothing to worry about. When, towards the end, it is revealed that scaring her to death was Morgan’s aim in contriving the whole plot, it seems to accord her an altogether undeserved importance. In ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, by contrast, Guenever is posited as the highest authority, given the power to grant life or death, ‘To chese wheither she wolde him save or spille’. Later, when the knight submits his findings, she is ‘sittinge as a justise’. But this power is a special favour granted to her by Arthur, following her supplication appealing for clemency. When the knight in completion of his task declares that all women want ‘sovereynetee’ over men, it has a peculiar application to the Queen whom he addresses. When, just a few lines later, the hag claims the knight as her prize, appealing to Guenever as ‘My soverein lady queene’ the term resonates with additional implications of irony. Acknowledging the Queen’s authority in such a personal way suggests a close bond among women.
Women figure in romance primarily as objects of desire. This has its own ‘authority’ as a quintessential role accorded to women. They inspire and reward knights. In these poems, women fulfil this role in highly unusual ways. The Lady pinions Gawain in his bed, flirtatiously disputing his credentials as a courteous lover, literally reversing the expected roles of wooer and wooed. Gawain faces a testing battle of wits as she tries to seduce him, managing to extract nothing but kisses. His dilemma lies in the need to maintain a courteous willingness to serve her at the same time as defending his chastity. There is plenty of comic potential during the scenes of attempted seduction, where Gawain cowers in bed as she enters his bedchamber:
A corner of the cortyn he caght up a lyttel, [lifted]
And waytes warly thiderwarde quat hit be myght. [looks warily]
Hit was the ladi [ ... ]. (1185–87)
Activity
Read and analyse closely the three successive scenes of temptation.
Gawain’s apparent success in resisting the lady proves illusory, as she persuades him to accept the ‘luf-lace’, thereby compromising his integrity. When he discovers that he has been outwitted, Gawain’s fury makes him forget that he is the exemplar of chivalry. His furious tirade against women’s perennial evil would not be out of place in Jankyn’s Book of Wicked Wives (2413–28). This anti-feminist rant may be a momentary aberration, juvenile pique, or comic release, depending on one’s point of view. The ambivalence is typical of much of the poem. Ultimate power is ascribed to Morgan le Fay, the instigator of the whole contrivance, relegating both Bercilak and his Lady to the role of puppets. Yet the belated nature of this revelation weakens its impact, while the transparent failure of her magic to achieve its aim reduces her stature. She is a shadowy presence whose role is rather playfully implausible.
The magical hag in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ similarly possesses disturbing power. In many ways she occupies a position of authority. She inverts the usual roles by coming to the rescue of the knight. She enforces the conditions of their contract by insisting that he marry her. Her physical demands place him in the position of compliant sexual object, with obvious poetic justice. Her power resides not only in magic but also in intelligence and persuasive rhetoric. Where unquestioned male ‘authority’ was the Wife’s main bone of contention in her Prologue, the Tale devotes a hundred lines (a quarter of its total length) to the hag’s pillow lecture, in which she instructs her new husband as to his erroneous judgment, dealing with each of his objections to her:
Thou art so loothly, and so oold also, [hideous]
And therto comen of so lough a kynde. (1100–01) [lowborn origin]
Activity
Read and analyse closely the ‘pillow lecture’.
Tellingly, she rearranges the order of the topics for her own purposes, prioritising ‘gentillesse’, dismissing any idea of inherited nobility as ‘nat worth a hen’ (1112). Essentially she elaborates upon the proverb, ‘Noble is as noble does’, but delays making this explicit until line 1070, ‘He is gentil that dooth gentil dedes’. Her speech is forceful, as she declares that nobility is a gift to all from Christ not something bequeathed by ‘oure elders for hire olde richesse’ (1118). References to Dante and Classical authors soften the radical implications of her disdain for possessions and property, ‘temporel thyng, that man may hurte and mayme’ (1132). The most explicit social criticism comes towards the end of the section on nobility:
For, God it woot, men may wel often fynde
A lordes sone do shame and vileyne. (1150–51)
A short but pointed discussion of poverty (thirty lines long) is followed by a mere six lines on old age, comprising a few vague platitudes. The assured tone slips (‘as I gesse’) as her supportive authorities dwindle, to an imprecise ‘ye gentils of honour’ (1208). She strategically elides the topics of old age and ugliness, ‘foul and old’ chiming through this section. Her weak defence perversely endorses the knight’s repulsion, by praising old age and ugliness as guarantees of chastity. Overall, the lecture seems to diminish in force as it progresses. Her arguments are generally conservative as she urges the rich to behave nobly and the poor to be content with their lot. She appears to be a reformer rather than a rebel, much like the Wife, who seeks to invert gender power relations, not attain mutuality. Nevertheless, her discourse dominates the Tale and is fundamentally disruptive of patriarchal norms. A sermon delivered by a woman automatically opposes prevailing ideas about gender, which considered it inappropriate for a woman to speak of philosophy or to preach.7
7 St Paul’s doctrine forbad women to speak in church (I Corinthians 14:34). The exclusion of women from the priesthood remains a contentious issue today.
Allegorically, as in Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Melibee’, this Tale shows Reason (embodied in a woman) winning over (male) brute force.
The intersections of genre and gender in these two Arthurian romances are manifold. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ masculine and feminine roles are reconfigured, as are many key motifs and designs. Both poets extend the boundaries of the genre, in particular through their interrogation of gender roles. They deploy the traditional features of the genre in new ways, demonstrating the versatility and the malleability of romance. Both Chaucer and the Gawain-Poet are typically medieval in their ingenious reinterpretation of traditional materials to produce innovative, sophisticated works.
By the end of this chapter and having read the essential texts and any associated recommended reading, you should be able to: