In Gawain and the Green Knight, the Gawain-poet employs a remarkable clarity of language and detailed imagery, giving the reader very precise, glowing pictures of the action. Yet a central tension of the plot is that things are not what they...

King Arthur’s Round table resonates with the medieval reader as an ideal of equality and order: there is no head of the table, so that each knight is depicted as equally worthy of renown and equally skilled in his capabilities. As this Round Table...

The supernatural is a literary device that has frequently been utilized in works of fiction. The purpose of this literary device have evolved alongside the evolution of literature and language. The function of the supernatural often varies based...

The medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight depicts two different medieval models of courtesy - courtesy towards men and courtesy towards women. Defined by different members of the community, the two types of courtesy also necessitate...

In the most general sense, the Green Knight is an anomaly to the story of " Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," the only supernatural element in what is otherwise a very believable and wholly real rendering of a specific length of time. Gawain is...

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the anonymous author offers the reader a protagonist infinitely aware of his place in society and of the potentially capricious nature of his acclaim. Popularly considered one of the most virtuous knights in...

"On Sir Gawain that girdle of green appeared fine!

It looked rich on that red cloth, and rightly adorned."

-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Lines 2036-2037

In the poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain's acceptance of the green girdle shows...

The mystery of love has stumped men and women for ages. Literature, drama, and art have and will always try to understand courting, romance, and passion. So too do they want to understand what happens after love is gone: where it went and how it...

The artful creator of the fourteenth- century poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" cleverly leads his reader with a trail of words through the mysterious world of "a castle cut of paper..."(Sir Gawain 802). Here, he puts his main character Sir...

"Everyman" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" are without doubt two of the best-known works of medieval English literature. The stories demonstrate the epitome of the Christian themes of salvation, mortality, and truth that resonate throughout...

In Stanza 74 of the epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the lady of the castle offers a magical green girdle to Sir Gawain and explains that the wearer of this corset "cannot be killed by any cunning on earth." Sir Gawain, amidst an ethical...

As is the case with almost every example of romantic epics, and certainly every story concerning King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the characters carefully observe a strict code of ethics, or chivalry. In Sir Gawain and the Green...

"King Arthur was counted most courteous of all." Line 26 of Part 1, one of the opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, reveals a society in which people are ranked in accordance with their adherence to a certain code of behavior: the...

'The whole things is allegorical from start to end, yet he never takes you by the neck and says "Get down to it, that's an allegory, you've got to interpret it", the way most allegorists do.' (Basil Bunting on Poetry, p.15.)

'The poem however does...

Perhaps William Shakespeare is right: all the world may very well be a stage, with all the men and women being but mere players. What happens when, despite their exits and entrances, these actors play but one part? For lack of a complete character...

Supernatural creatures play an important role in defining the hero in both the eighth century epic poem Beowulf, and the fourteenth century British Romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Though both tales involve the hero's journey to find and...

An exemplary knight of King Arthur's renowned court, Sir Gawain is guided by a complex set of ethos, a collection of principles symbolized by the mystical pentangle. A five-pointed star consisting of five interlocking lines, the figure represents...

Three codes of conduct suffuse "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight": chivalry, honor, and Christian faith. As his mystical pentangle attests, Gawain begins his quest under the auspicious perfection of all three; however, after endeavoring through...

Spenser's The Faerie Queene was written mainly to fulfil an allegorical purpose and to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." However, the moralistic tone is softened by the fact that the whole complex allegory is...

Although it could be contended that chivalry and courtesy are essentially aspects of the same code of restraint and responsibility, the romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight presents a distinction between the domestic test of the Gawain's...

Arthurian legends served as a means to centralize the Celtic culture and provide the Celtic people with their own myth in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries CE. One such Celtic myth of the late fourteenth century CE is Sir Gawain and the Green...

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” can be followed for entertainment value, but one passage in particular calls for deeper analysis. Before Sir Gawain begins to undertake his quest for the Green Chapel and dons his armor, the plot has been moving...

In "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Sir Gawain is King Arthur’s nephew and one of Camelot’s most famous knights. However, unlike other characters of medieval literature, Gawain is not ideal and static but human and real. Gawain is the epitome...

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the epitome of the Romantic genre in the Middle Ages, one that features both chivalry and courtly love and emphasizes that a knight’s most important duty is to serve God. While most chivalric tales focus on the...