Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a very interesting and stimulating narration, filled with mystical creatures and wonderful details, the author known as Gawain-poet did a wonderful job in portraying the characters throughout the story. During the story, The Green Knight challenges King Arthur to a game, which Sir Gawain accepts. Gawain participates in the game by chopping the head off of the green knight, who picks it up and leaves, Gawain is to meet the green knight in a year to receive his blow. The theme of the narration is simply youth compared to age, which is implied at the beginning of the story because of the New Year’s feast. “The youthfulness of Arthur and of Arthur's folk ... introduces the theme of youth in contrast to age which is an aspect of the spring-winter (or New Year-Old Year) theme” (Spiers 10).

The point of view is third person limited omniscient; Sir Gawain describes his tale in a third person voice limited to Gawain’s point of view, which is a great aspect of the story, especially for the tale’s surprising ending. The setting’s place and time change throughout the story, in the beginning it set in Camelot for a Christmas feast and the ending at the green chapel, both begin around the time of the New Year and Christmas and is also placed within the mythical period of King Arthur’s court. “The Gawain-poet thus focuses on the destruction of Troy, the establishment of ancient city states and realms (Rome, Tuscany, Lombardy, and Britain), and the rise of King Arthur” (Blanch 1).

The characters throughout the story are described with such detail and the author uses magnificent language to describe the different obstacles in which Gawain must overcome throughout the story....

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... 68.1 (Jan. 1971): p255-269. Rpt. in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988. Word Count:4243. From Literature Resource Center.

Romance and Anti-Romance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Sacvan Bercovitch. Critical Studies of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,". Ed. Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. p257-266. Rpt. in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism. Ed. Lynn M. Zott. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Word Count:3400. From Literature Resource Center.

Sir Gawain And the Green Knight: Overview. Robert J. Blanch. Reference Guide to English Literature. Ed. D. L. Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed. Chicago: St. James Press, 1991. Word Count:1411. From Literature Resource Center.