Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Critique of Medieval ...

Master's thesis

NIKOLETA NEMEČKAYOVÁ

Brno 2021

FACULTY OF ARTS

Sir Gawain and the

Green Knight and the

Critique of Medieval

State of Knighthood

and Chivalry

Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT AND THE CRITIQUE OF MEDIEVAL STATE OF

KNIGHTHOOD AND CHIVALRY

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Bibliographic record

Author: Nikoleta Nemečkayová Faculty of Arts Masaryk University English and American Studies

Title of Thesis: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Critique of Medieval State of Knighthood and Chivalry

Degree Program: English Language and Literature

Field of Study: English Language and Literature

Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.

Year: 2021

Number of Pages: 80

Keywords: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Knighthood, Chivalry, Middle Ages, Arthurian Legend



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Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to examine whether Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most widely discussed medieval poems commonly known for its praise and celebration of courtly life, hides behind the admiration of the refinement of King Arthur and his court a critique of the knightly class and the chivalric code guiding its conduct. In order to achieve this objective, the thesis employs a three-stage analysis. At the first stage, an analysis of the other works of the Gawain-poet is carried out to determine whether he was inclined to engage in any form of criticism of the flaws and

weaknesses of society or its individual members. At the second stage, the thesis ex-plores the historical and social context of the era in which the poet lived and looks for contemporary accounts dealing with the medieval state of knighthood in order to dis-cern whether there had been any traces of criticism of the knightly class and the chiv-alric code in the poet's society, what was the potential critique aimed at, and whether there were any voices calling for a reform. And at the third and final stage, the poem itself is closely inspected for any signs of criticism of the knightly class and the chivalric code.



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Declaration

I hereby declare that this thesis with title Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Critique of Medieval State of Knighthood and Chivalry I submit for assessment is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save to the ex-

tent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my thesis.

Brno May 16, 2021 ....................................... Nikoleta Nemečkayová



Šablona DP 3.2.2-ARTS-dipl-obor-english (2021-04-29) © 2014, 2016, 2018–2021 Masarykova univerzita 7

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A., for the pa-tient guidance, encouragement, and advice she has provided throughout the compila-tion of this thesis. I have been extremely lucky to have a supervisor who cared so much about my work, and who responded to my questions and queries so promptly.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Table of Contents

Glossary 11

1 Introduction 12

1.1 Main Objectives of the Thesis ....................................................................................... 12

1.2 Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 13

2 The Gawain-Poet and His Works 16

2.1. The Cotton Nero Manuscript, its Poems, and their Author ............................... 16

2.2. The Works of the Gawain Poet as Social Critiques ............................................... 18

2.2.1. Pearl ............................................................................................................................. 19

2.2.2. Patience ...................................................................................................................... 20

2.2.3. Cleanness.................................................................................................................... 22

2.3. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ................................................................................ 25

3 Knighthood in the Times of the Gawain-Poet 29

3.1. Clerical Treatises on Knightly Behavior ................................................................... 30

3.2. Royal Chronicles and Legal Documents Related to Knights ............................. 35

3.3. Biographies of Famous Knights and Chivalric Manuals ..................................... 36

3.4. Epic Poems........................................................................................................................... 40

3.5. Romances ............................................................................................................................. 44

4 The Agents of Criticism of the Contemporary State of Knighthood in SGGK 47

4.1. The Green Knight .............................................................................................................. 47

4.2. King Arthur and His Court ............................................................................................. 56

4.3. Sir Gawain ............................................................................................................................ 61

5 Conclusion 71

Bibliography 75

Resumé 81

GLOSSARY

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Glossary

SGGK – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

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1 Introduction

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is commonly perceived as a nostalgic romance cel-ebrating courtly life with all its refinement and splendor. Opening with a grand hall decorated with fine tapestries full of knights and ladies in elegant clothes enjoying fes-tivities with dancing and courteous conversation, the poem truly evokes the poet's ad-oration of the knightly living. The knights of the Round Table with the famous King Arthur as their leader are described as the most courageous and noble knights in the land, their renown being known in every corner of the realm, and their feats glorified in many romances. This idyllic image thus far complies with other medieval romances

in its idealized rendition of characters and events. With the intrusion of the Green Knight, however, also enters the reality. The image

of supposedly flawless knights, bravest and most loyal in the country, is in a matter of minutes shattered, and we suddenly witness the true nature of the knights of the Round Table. The renowned knights immortalized by numerous tales are suddenly very aware of their mortality and struck with fear and overcome by cowardice at the sight of the Green Knight. No one thus answers his challenge at first. All remain in si-lence and exchange terrified glances with one another. The poet's description of the grand hall is suddenly starkly different. He does no longer speak of bravery but instead of the utter horror in the faces of these flowers of chivalry. In this moment, we become aware of the reason for the tale of Aeneas and Brutus and the fall of the great kingdoms

of Troy and Rome, with which the poem opens. The same as these two fabled kingdoms, Camelot hides behind the façade of perfection fractures in the character of its knights, which as we know from other romances, will in the future cause the downfall of the Round Table and King Arthur, which is, as this thesis argues, one of the main messages of the poem, a warning that nothing is as it looks like at first sight, that this romance is not unlike many of its contemporaries a romanticized account of the adventures of no-ble knights but instead a critique of the medieval state of knighthood and chivalry.

1.1 Main Objectives of the Thesis

Thus, the main objective of this thesis is to examine whether Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most widely discussed medieval poems commonly known for its praise and celebration of courtly life, hides behind the admiration of the splendor and refinement of King Arthur and his court a critique of the knightly class and the chivalric code guiding its conduct. This focus of the thesis was chosen not only because it remains to this day an insufficiently explored aspect of the poem but also due to the fact that the decline of knighthood and chivalry and the need for their reform were

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widely discussed topics in the times of the Gawain-poet and many of his famous con-temporaries, like Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and William Langland, as well as a number of clerics and royal dignitaries addressed them in their works. The topics, in fact, resonated even in chivalric manuals and biographies of famous knights, like that of Geoffrey de Charny and William Marshal. The other works of the Gawain-poet are, moreover, all centered around a critique of the flaws and weaknesses of individuals and societies; so, the poet is clearly inclined to speak in a critical voice about various issues in his works. Hence, the main research question of the thesis is whether the Gawain-poet voices in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight any criticism of the medieval state of knighthood and chivalry. In addition, the thesis also aims to examine the means and devices through which the poet expresses any potential criticism of these two sub-

jects in the poem and whether there are any similarities between the criticism of knighthood and chivalry articulated by the Gawain-poet and his contemporaries.

In order to find the answers to these questions, the thesis employs a three-stage

analysis. At the first stage, an analysis of the other works of the Gawain-poet is carried out to determine whether he was inclined to engage in any form of criticism of the flaws and weaknesses of society or its individual members. This stage is described in chapter 2 of the thesis. At the second stage, the thesis explores the historical and social context of the era in which the poet lived and looks for contemporary accounts dealing with the medieval state of knighthood in order to discern whether there had been any traces of criticism of the knightly class and the chivalric code in the poet's society, what

was the potential critique aimed at, and whether there were any voices calling for a reform of knighthood. This is discussed in chapter 3. And at the third stage, the poem itself is closely inspected for any signs of criticism of the knightly class and the chivalric code. This is the focus of chapter 4. The thesis can be framed as interdisciplinary re-search, combining elements from the field of literature, as it is based on literary analy-sis of the poem itself, and sociology, as knighthood and chivalry and inherently social and artificially created phenomena. This framework will be explained in more detail in the following subchapter dealing with the methodology of the thesis.

1.2 Methodology

While the institution of knighthood and the chivalric code guiding it are both inherently social phenomena that have developed out of the social structures of medi-eval Europe, the thesis opts for an interdisciplinary approach combining elements from the fields of both literature and sociology. This approach, known as the sociolog-ical approach to literature or sociological criticism, is founded on a literary analysis that focuses on "understanding literature in its larger social context" (Maryl, 204). It

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essentially "codifies the literary strategies employed to represent social constructs through a sociological methodology" (Maulani, 11). Sociological criticism thus analyzes both how the social functions in literature and how literature works in society.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the thesis' analysis, it is essential to dis-

cuss the nature and scope of both sociology and literature and their interconnection. Sociology is generally defined as the scientific study of society, specifically human so-ciety (Rao, 17). It tries to "determine the relationship between different elements of social life and discover the fundamental conditions of social stability and social change" (Handler, 16). Hence, it analyzes the influences of "economic, political, cultural, artistic, aesthetic, geographical, scientific and other forces and factors on man and his life and

throws more light on the various social problems like poverty, education, social class, religion, and others" (Kauffman, 21). All definitions of the field emphasize that it is the scientific study of man and his society, social actions and interactions, social institu-tions and processes, and the structure and system of society.

The same as sociology, literature is too pre-eminently concerned with man's so-

cial world, adaptation to it, and his desire to change it. It depicts life and life is a social reality. In fact, "man and his society is the material out of which literature is con-structed" (Handler, 20). So, literature is regarded as "the expression or representation of human life through the medium of social creation viz. language" (Wellek, 94). In the words of W. H. Hudson, "literature is a vital record of what men have seen in life, what

they have experienced of it, what they have thought and felt about those aspects of it which have the most immediate and enduring interest for all of us. It is thus fundamen-tally an expression of life through the medium of language" (Hudson, 10). In short, lit-erature grows out of life, reacts upon life, and is fed by life.

Although analyses of literary works from a sociological perspective appear at

various stages of human history, from Plato and Aristotle to Matthew Arnold, H. A. Taine, Lucien Goldman, Leo Lowenthal, Robert Escarpit, Alan Swingwood, Diana Lau-renson, and John Hall, sociological criticism has not been established as a distinct form of literary criticism until 20th century. Kenneth Burke first outlined the specification and significance of this form of critique in his article "Literature as Equipment for Liv-ing". Sociological criticism shows influences from New Criticism; however, it "adds a

sociological element as found with critical theory (Frankfurt School), and considers art as a manifestation of society, one that contains metaphors and references directly ap-plicable to the existing society at the time of its creation" (Lukács, 132). According to Burke, works of art, including literature, are "systematic reflections of society and so-cietal behavior" that allow the reader to "better understand, and gain a sort of control over societal happenings through the work of art" (Adams, 942). He believes that "art is inevitably full of references and commentaries on the society in which it was

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created" (Lukács, 139). Sociological critics are then to "look at exactly how such refer-ences and commentaries function within the work of art" (Adams, 945).

The overall focus is then on sociological issues in society, particularly with re-

spect to power relations, social classes, and structures prevalent at the time of the cre-ation of the given work. It often refers to "a mode of criticism that locates the reasons for such conditions in a society considered to be in a flawed social structure" (O'Brian, 54). Its objective is often also on "practical solutions offered in the works by way of specific measures either for consensual reform or powerful revolution" (O'Brian, 56). The focus of this approach is thus very similar to the one of this thesis which is directed at the medieval social class of knights, the social institution of knighthood as an inher-

ent part of the feudal society, and the socially constructed chivalric code aimed at reg-ulating the conduct of this knightly class. The thesis argues that by the time of the Gawain-poet, this class has experienced a profound change which is reflected in the various contemporary works of medieval clerics, royal dignitaries, poets, and knights themselves that are discussed in a separate chapter. Clerical treatises, royal docu-ments, epic poems, chivalric manuals, and biographies of famous knights all spoke about the decay of the knightly class and the decline of the institution and the chivalric code as its guide. In line with the focus of the sociological criticism on not only the flaws of social structures and constructs but also on practical solutions for their solving, the thesis directs its attention also to reform ideas voiced by the authors of medieval cri-tiques of knighthood, including the Gawain-poet.

As this approach combines both elements from sociological and literary analysis,

the research which preceded the writing of the thesis concerned both inquiries into the history of knighthood and chivalry, its roots, its development, and most im-portantly, its state in the times of the Gawain-poet and a literary analysis of the poet's works and their comparison to works of his contemporaries concerned with the same topic. The thesis thus worked with primary source, being the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as secondary sources, including other works of the Gawain-poet, works of his contemporaries dealing with knighthood, and scholarly books, studies, and articles from the fields of literature, sociology, history, and political science related to the topic of medieval knighthood and chivalry.

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2 The Gawain-Poet and His Works

2.1. The Cotton Nero Manuscript, its Poems, and their Author

All of the Gawain-poet’s works have survived throughout the ages in a single

manuscript labeled as the Cotton Nero A. x. which is currently stored at the British Mu-seum. The manuscript contains four poems that are by many scholars considered one of the finest works of the late Middle Ages: Pearl, Cleanness (or Purity), Patience, and

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK). None of these titles, in fact, accompanies the poems in the manuscript; they have been, nonetheless, in common use “since they were first printed by Sir Frederick Madden and Richard Morris in the 19th century” (Spearing, 3). Although the manuscript dates to the late 14th century, the poems them-selves would have been composed somewhat earlier, most likely between 1360 and 1390. They are thus contemporaneous with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Gower (Andrew and Waldron, 9).

The majority of scholars accept the theory that the poems were written by a

single author who remains until this day anonymous and commonly referred to as the “Gawain-poet” or alternatively the “Pearl-poet”. This theory of common authorship was originally based on two facts – that the poems survived together in the same man-

uscript and were written in the same verse and dialect. The latter indicates that the poet came originally from the North-West Midlands, perhaps from the area of Cheshire or Staffordshire (Savage, 211). Over the years, the theory has been elaborated and now includes the arguments that all of the poems are linked by:

An unusual skill in the shaping of narratives, a profound familiarity with the Bible and Christian doctrine, a willingness to retell or reflect on scriptural sto-ries with remarkable freedom and invention, a sympathetic interest in the struggles of human beings to deal with the divine and the mysterious, and a wryly engaging sense of humor. (Andrew and Waldron, 10)

There is a broad scholarly agreement that, based on the content and language

of his works, the Gawain-poet was familiar with the “chivalric tradition and courtly matter and well-acquainted with both life at court and with tales of Arthurian chivalry from Britain and France” (Foster, 403). Some scholars, like Henry Savage and Laura Hibbard Loomis, even argue that the poet was a member of some English court. In his book The Gawain-Poet, Savage, concludes that “the manuscript’s descriptions of cloth-ing, armor, and castles, and its dialect suggests that the author might have been a serv-ant in a baronial household such as that of John of Gaunt or Enguerrand de Coucy”

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(Savage, 11). It could have been this background that had equipped him with the inti-mate knowledge of the courtly life and the legends associated with it.

Since the 1980s, the critical understanding of the Gawain-úoet and his identity has, however, undergone a notable reassessment. The poems of the Cotton Nero A. x. manuscript were previously seen by the majority of academia as a work of some pro-vincial author writing from the obscurity of England’s backwater. But, in 1983, the his-torian Michael J. Bennett came with a groundbreaking study in which he argues that “the localized milieu of the poet’s native region could not have provided him with a suitable audience for cosmopolitan texts such as SGGK and Pearl” (Bennett, 276). The Gawain-poet thus may have come from the North-West Midlands, but, as Bennett sug-

gests, it was not the place from where he created his poems. With his study, Bennett elaborates not only on the previous research of Savage and Loomis mentioned earlier, but also on the book The Court of Richard II by George Mathew. Based on the arguments and evidence provided in Mathew’s book, Bennet proposes that the Gawain-poet could have been actually a member of the court of Richard II and the Cotton Nero A. x. man-uscript “was probably a copy of a de luxe manuscript that originated at the royal court” (Bennett, 278). This hypothesis was most recently further developed by Alfred Thomas who agrees with both Mathew and Bennett and argues that the works of the Gawain-poet are a “sophisticated creation of a cosmopolitan courtier-poet working for a Lon-don-based audience of Cheshire retainers attached to the glamorous court of Richard II” (Thomas, 85).

Yet, there is still some opposition against this hypothesis which draws mainly on “the anachronistic binary that implicitly equates a London-based author like Chau-cer with ‘nation’ and a provincial poet like the Gawain-Poet with ‘region’” (Thomas, 86). The Gawain-Poet although regional by origin (and dialect), was, however, far from regional in his tastes reading, and temperament. Moreover, as remarked by Thomas “the nation/region binary fails to take into account the mobile and itinerant nature of the international court [of Richard II and his wife Anne of Bohemia] that provides con-text for the poem’s composition and performance” (Thomas, 86). Richard’s aspirations to become an emperor of England entailed that the court must have been temporarily based in cities such as Chester, York, Lichfield, and Dublin, usually with an impressive entourage of nobles and bishops (Saul, 334).

According to historical records, the Ricardian court, in fact, traveled as far afield

as Ireland. There are hints that the Gawain-poet, who probably belonged to the entou-rage of Sir John Stanley - king’s lieutenant in Ireland in the 1380s, visited Ireland with his lord. Here, he may have heard some oral version of the beheading game that fea-tures so prominently in fit 1 of the poem that has an analogue in the Irish tale the Bricriu’s Feast (Brewer, 245). Thus, as concluded by Thomas:

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Given the peripatetic nature of the international court, there was no simple dis-tinction to be drawn in the later Middle Ages between national and regional cul-tures … Just as the court moved between the capital (the seat of the govern-ment) and the regions, so did literature for which it was intended to oscillate between the imagined, fanciful world of courtly romance and the precise typog-raphy of geographical space which is mirrored in Gawain’s journey from the splendor of the legendary Camelot through the wilderness of Wirral that existed not only in tales but also in real life. (Thomas, 86)

2.2. The Works of the Gawain Poet as Social Critiques

Despite the considerable differences in their subject matter, there are several parallels between the poems of the Cotton Nero A. x manuscript. One of them is the focus on the flaws of individuals and the ills of human society. In this aspect, the poems resemble the contemporaneous works of Chaucer, Langland, or Gower that, too, com-ment on human weaknesses. All authors, including the Gawain-poet, thus offer their audience a social commentary of sort. In the case of the works of the Gawain-poet, this commentary is shaped through the testing of central characters, be it an individual or community, which is followed by a judgment. The judgment is in all poems made by some divine or supernatural being: the Pearl-Maiden in Pearl, God in Patience and Cleanness, and the Green Knight in SGGK. All of them speak from a position of authority and all come up to an almost identical conclusion that humanity is fundamentally and

inherently imperfect and prone to failure.

The main reason behind the failure of all protagonists is the lack of loyalty to-wards either the divine Lord (Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness) or earthly lord (Cleanness and SGGK). Hence, the Dreamer in Pearl refuses to part with his Pearl and entrust her to God and doubts God’s words and intentions. Jonah in Patience rebels against God’s command to go to Nineveh. And in Cleanness, we see multiple disloyalties. The first is one of the barons against their lord when they do not come to his feast. The second appears in the tale of the Flood in which people betray God and his vision by their im-moral conduct. Similarly, the third comes in the tale about Sodom and Gomorrah in which the people of these two cities break Christian and moral codes. Additionally, in the same tale, Lot’s wife proves disloyal to request of her husband to avoid putting salt

in the broth and to the instructions of the angels that insist on Lot’s family not looking back at the burning cities. The last disloyalty in Cleanness is again towards God and is committed by Belshazzar and his guests who worship other gods, accompany them-selves by courtesans and during the feast indulge in excessive drinking which culmi-nates in the defilement of holy relics. Lastly, in SGGK, it is Sir Gawain who is disloyal to the lord at whose castle he has been staying. The disloyalty, in this case, takes the form

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of Gawain’s concealing of the green girdle that should have been handed over to his host as a part of their wager.

So, in each poem, we can see an individual or individuals who lack in loyalty for

which they are judged. This conclusion is in all works presented as a result of a trial of their protagonists and the reader can observe every step that has led these central fig-ures to their failure by which the stories gain a didactic aspect – they teach their audi-ence a moral lesson. Due to this nature, some scholars compare the poems to homilies, sermons, or exempla in which the poet provides his audience with a moral compass (Andrew, Moorman, Stone, Waldron). Thus, the Gawain-poet should be perceived not only as an ardent admirer of splendor and refinement of courtly life depicted in his

most well-known work Sir Gawain and the Green Knight but also as a critical voice con-cerned with the human nature prone to moral failings because the same as his contem-poraries, he, too, engages in a social commentary to remind his audience of their falli-bility and importance of loyalty to moral and Christian code.

2.2.1. Pearl

In Pearl, it is the main protagonist, the Dreamer, who is subjected to a test of loyalty to both his Lord and the Christian code. He is to be judged by and against the Pearl-Maiden who has been given such a name due to her perfection – the same as a rare pearl, she is “without a spot” (Andrew and Waldron, 1). The Pearl-Maiden and the

Dreamer meet in the dream of the latter who sees in the maiden his dead daughter. He thinks that she has been restored to him from the realm of the dead. Right from the beginning of the poem, we can see that the Dreamer is very possessive about his Pearl. This reflects on how he speaks of her. The Dreamer keeps calling her: “the spotless pearl of mine” (1), “my own spotless pearl” (1), “my precious pearl” (2), and “my pearl” (2, 6, 7, 9). He thinks that the Pearl-Maiden is “imprisoned” (2) in Heaven and wants her returned to the earthly realm of living so he can “possess” (4) her again which, however, entails taking her away from God.

As argued by Felicity Riddy, “the Dreamer’s ascribed vocation as a jeweler is

particularly efficacious because the way in which jewels pass through jewelers’ hands mirrors the temporariness of the relation between parent and dead child” (Riddy, 154).

Yet, the Dreamer is not able to relinquish his Pearl, not even to his Lord which incites Pearl-Maiden’s criticism. She says to the Dreamer that he is “no proper jeweller” (7) which Riddy explains as an attempt by the poet to:

Emphasize the Dreamer’s inadequacy, implying that just as a proper jeweler would recognize that possession of his jewels is only temporary, so should the

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Dreamer understand the transitory nature of earthly existence and realize that his extreme level of grief is unwarranted. (Riddy 155)

The Dreamer is, however, unable to recognize these facts and claims that his

Pearl was “annihilated” (7) and “taken away from [him]” (7). He even calls his Lord a “thief” (7) for which he is rebuked by the Pearl-Maiden who says:

Sir, you have spoken heedlessly, to say your pearl is entirely lost, which is en-closed in such a beautiful coffer as in this charmingly fair garden, to stay here for ever and rejoice, where neither loss nor sorrow ever come near. Here would be a casket for you, indeed, if you were a noble jeweller. (8)

Through the words of the Pearl-Maiden, the poet criticizes the human propen-

sity to preoccupy themselves with earthly life. He warns the audience that this fixation can easily lead to questioning of God’s intentions and consequent disloyalty to him. This message is emphasized by the Pearl-Maiden near the end of the story when she instructs the Dreamer how to behave if he is ever to cross the stream separating the earthly and heavenly realms: “Arrogant temper and great pride, I assure you, are bit-terly hated here. My Lord does not approve of complaining, for all who live near Him are meek; and when you are to appear in His domain, be deeply devout in complete humility” (9).

To further stress the moral lesson of this tale for his audience, the poet ends the poem with the Dreamer’s return to reality which is followed by the realization of his error. As the Dreamer concludes: “Then I woke in that fertile garden; my head was laid upon that hill where my pearl slipped away into the earth. I stretched, and fell into great dismay, and, sighing, said to myself: ‘Now may all be to that Prince’s satisfaction” (27).

2.2.2. Patience

The story of Patience focuses on the Biblical tale of Jonah. In this poem, he is the one criticized for lacking in loyalty to God who is this time the judge assessing Jonah’s conduct. In contrast to Pearl, the poet provides us in Patience with a more explicit set

of criteria against which Jonah will be judged. These are the eight Beatitudes men-tioned at the beginning of the tale which function similarly to the pentangle on Gawain’s shield in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These Beatitudes are personified in: Dame Poverty, Dame Pity, Dame Penance the third, Dame Meekness, Dame Mercy, Dame Purity most pleasant, and then Dame Peace and Dame Patience put in thereafter;

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(Andrew and Waldron, 71). As the poet says, “These blessings were preached us in the promise of bliss. If we would love these ladies and liken us to them” (71).

As such, the Beatitudes create a cyclical symbol of perfection against which Jo-

nah is to be measured, and the same as the “five points” of the pentangle in SGGK, they are intrinsically linked. Hence, when one is breached, all others are made susceptible to future breaches. The poet comments on this fact through the clothing metaphor in Patience. After Jonah is expelled from the whale’s stomach and his clothes are all soggy and destroyed, the poet remarks that “he who tears a hole in his clothes, will find him-self more deeply troubled when he attempts to sew them back together” (83). The holes here stand for sins, so the message of this symbolic passage reminds the audience

that “one sin begets further sin” (84).

Like the Dreamer in Pearl, Jonah lacks mainly in his loyalty to God. This disloy-alty is more open in Patience than in Pearl as Jonah directly refuses to obey the com-mand of his Lord. In this command, God tells Jonah to travel to Nineveh to save its res-idents from the impending divine wrath, but Jonah decides to defy God and instead boards a ship to Tarshish. Jonah even becomes angry at his Lord for assigning him such a task:

When that voice, which stunned [Jonah’s] spirit, had finished, he became very angry in his mind, and he thought rebelliously: ‘If I obey His command and bring

them this message, and I am taken in Nineveh, my troubles begin: He tells me those traitors are consummate villains; [if] I come with those tidings, they [will] seize me immediately, confine me in a prison, put me in the stocks, torture me in a foot-shackle, pluck out my eyes. This is a marvelous message for a man to preach among so many enemies and cursed fiends unless my gracious God should wish such suffering to befall me, that I should be killed in recompense for some offense. Come what may,’ said Jonah, ‘I shall approach no nearer to it. I will go some other way. (73)

Here we can find another parallel to SGGK as both Jonah and Sir Gawain prefer

saving their lives over loyalty to their lords (Lord as God in Patience and lord as Lord Bertilak hosting Gawain in SGGK). Moreover, the same as not only Sir Gawain but also

the Dreamer from Pearl, Jonah realizes his transgression. This realization comes to him when his ship to Tarnish is caught by a storm in the middle of the sea. At that moment, Jonah recognizes that the storm is driven by God’s wrath caused by his refusal to go to Nineveh. It is then that he becomes aware that: “All this misfortune is caused on ac-count of [him], for [he has] offended [his] God and found guilty” (75). The moral mes-sage of the story is again, the same as in Pearl, emphasized at the end of the poem which

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in Patience concludes with the word Amen thus faithfully resembling a homily or a ser-mon. The concluding words of the poet read:

Do not be so angry, but go forth on your way; be resolute and patient in sorrow and in joy … when poverty oppresses me and hardships in plenty, very meekly with sufferance it behoves me to become reconciled; therefore penance and sor-row prove it conclusively that patience is a noble virtue, though it may often displease. Amen. (83)

2.2.3. Cleanness

While in the previous two poems, the author commented primarily on the trans-gressions of individuals, the Dreamer and Jonah, in Cleanness, it is whole communities of people who are subjected to judgment for their moral failures and disloyalty to God. The societies under scrutiny have their antecedents in three Biblical tales: the Flood, the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Belshazzar’s Feast. All three tell stories of destruction reminiscent of the apocalypse, yet all three present an opportunity for salvation for the chosen few. In these stories, the people of the Flood generation, of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Belshazzar’s feast are judged by God. Each exemplum fo-cuses on sinners and the consequences of their sins concerning their purity of soul and loyalty to God. Again, the same as in Pearl and Patience it is loyalty to the moral code and God that are tested.

In addition to three Biblical parables, the introduction of the poem is accompa-

nied by a short tale commenting on the uncleanness prevailing in many human socie-ties. This uncleanness is described at first as relating to one’s clothes and unkempt ap-pearance, but later the author clarifies that this is supposed to be a metaphor for the cleanness of one’s soul. The poet warns his audience that “the Being who created all things is exceedingly angry with the man who follows after him in filth” (29). The theme of cleanness is in this opening tale combined with the theme of loyalty and the lack of it that will be further developed in the following stories with Biblical anteced-ents. It tells a story about a lord who is preparing a great feast to which he invites his barons. These barons, however, lack in loyalty to their lord, make excuses and decline to attend the feast. Out of disillusionment, the lord then commands his servants to in-

vite every man they meet in his realm to this feast. And truly, many people whether “sound or lame or one-eyed, even if they are both blind and stumbling cripples” get invited and come to the lord’s hall. The lord is pleased with only one exception. He finds a man in ragged clothes all filthy from dirty labor. This man’s uncleanness represents, as the poet explains, the sins of this man which resembles the metaphor of Jonah’s soaked and ragged clothes in Patience. So, the lord reprimands the man and sends him

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to the dark “dungeon where sorrow ever dwells – grieving and weeping and gnashing of teeth bitterly together – to teach him to be respectful” (32). As is revealed by the poet at the end of the story, the lord is, in fact, the Lord of all being, and the dungeon represents the dark pits of hell. The poet’s warning in this tale, although more ominous in tone, warns before the same human flaws as Pearl and Patience – before the moral failure and disloyalty to God.

The following tale about Flood opens with the “account of the corruption of the

earth as told at the beginning of Genesis” and ends with a “homily reflecting on the lessons of the Flood” (Stone, 49). The Flood is portrayed as a moral cleansing of the decaying society inhabiting the earth before God’s intervention which was motivated

by the fact that human “vileness and villainy had vanquished his patience” (33). The poet traces this decay of humanity since the times of Adam and Eve. At the time of the Flood generation, the moral decline reached its peak and God regretted that “He had set and sustained people on earth” (34). He had thus made his judgment and decided to cleanse the world of the corrupt men and let only a few pure survive. These few were Noah and his family.

Another sinful society disloyal to God and the principles of Christianity and mo-

rality is depicted in the tale about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God ex-plains the reason for his wrath at these cities to Abraham. He says that their inhabitants “have learned a practice that pleases him ill, that they have discovered in their flesh,

the worst of misdeeds: each male makes his mate a man like himself, and they join together foolishly in the manner of a female” (44). God has thus judged them for their misdeeds and decided to “smite them severely for that filth so that men will be warned by them, for ever and ever” (45). And he truly does so at the end of the story, but before the conclusion, the poet makes a diversion to another tale related to Sodom and Go-morrah which, too, has moral implications for his audience – the story about Lot and his wife.

In this sub-tale, two angels come to the house of Lot located near the two

doomed cities. And although Lot proves to be loyal to both Christian and moral code and protects the angels from angry townsmen that want to harm them, his wife does not show such loyalty and despite her husband’s warning, she puts salt in the broth

served to their two angelical guests. This transgression is, nevertheless, overlooked and it is only later when Lot’s family is granted a safe passage from the city before it is destroyed that Lot’s wife pays for her disloyalty. Despite instructions from both the angels and her husband, she looks back at the burning cities and turns in a stone statue “that tastes of salt” (47). As the poet concludes, she was judged and punished “for two misdeeds in which the fool was found unfaithful: one, she served salt before God at the supper, and afterward, she looked behind her, though she was forbidden; for the one,

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she stands a stone, and salt for the other, and all the beasts of the field like to lick her” (51).

The last tale of the poem, the Feast of Belshazzar, centers around the same

themes as the opening story about the grand feast of the Lord and his disloyal barons. In the main protagonist of this last tale, king Belshazzar, we can see epitomized the fall of men into moral decay. Belshazzar is the ruler of Babylon which he “believes the greatest, having no equal in heaven or on earth” (58). As the poet informs us, Belshaz-zar:

Rules his empire in pride and ostentation, in lust and in lechery and loathsome deeds; and [he] had a wife to enjoy, a noble queen, and many mistresses, who

were nevertheless called ladies. The mind of that man was entirely [fixed] on perverse things, on the beauty of his concubines and exquisite clothes, on trying out new foods and foolish fashions, until it pleased the Lord of the heavens to end it. (59)

As a display of his pride, Belshazzar decides to hold a grand feast. Hence, his

“summons spread throughout the land of Chaldea, that all the nobles on earth should gather together and assemble on a set day at the sultan’s feast” (60). This feast stands in a stark difference from the feast of the Lord at the beginning of Cleanness. It is, in fact, its antithesis as Belshazzar and his guests commit many disloyalties to the Lord and his creed:

These lords sipped these sweet liquors for a long time, and gloried in their false gods, and entreat their grace, though they were [made] of stumps and stones, dumb for ever – no sound ever stole forth from them, their tongues were so fastened. The wretches still call on all the good golden gods, Baalpeor and Belial, and Beelzebub also, praised them as highly as if heaven were theirs, but Him who gives all good things, that God they forgot. (63)

Their offenses to God culminate in the defilement of the “holy vessels that were

formerly used in the temple in the service of the Lord” (54). Belshazzar orders his serv-ant to bring these holy relics from his treasury so he and his guests can be served their drinks in them. As the poet describes the scene:

That which had before been blessed by the hands of bishops and carefully anointed with the blood of beasts, in the solemn sacrifice which had good aroma before the Lord of heaven in His praise, is now placed, to serve Satan the black, before the bold Belshazzar with arrogance and with pride; raised upon this altar were noble vessels that had been cleverly fashioned with such rare skill. (61)

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Although God is greatly “disgust” (62) by such behavior he withholds his wrath and decides to warn them. Hence, his hand appears in Belshazzar’s feasting hall and inscribes on the wall a warning. Although written in unintelligible language, the warn-ing is deciphered by David. Yet, Belshazzar does not heed it, for which he, after the invasion led by Persian prince Darius, pays with his life. Moreover, it is not only him who pays the price for disloyalty to the Lord, the lives of his sinful subjects are also collected as a price for the moral decay of Babylonian society.

Unlike in Pearl and Patience, the poet at the end of Cleanness speaks directly to

his audience which is strongly reminiscent of sermon or homily. This ending, nonethe-less, serves the same purpose as in the previous two poems – to warn the audience to

avoid disloyalty to the Lord and the moral code entailed by his creed. The concluding words of the poet read:

Thus in three ways I have thoroughly shown you that uncleanness cleaves asun-der the noble heart of that gracious Lord who dwells in heaven, provokes Him to be angry, arouses His vengeance; and purity is His comfort, and He loves de-cency, and those that are seemly and pure shall see His face. May He send us such grace that we may go brightly in our apparel, so that we may serve in His sight, where joy never ceases. Amen. (69)

Thus, as we have seen, from the subtle and almost unwitting unfaithfulness in

Pearl, through open disobedience in Patience, to grave infidelity in Cleanness, the Gawain-poet was no stranger to criticism aimed at human weaknesses and disloyalty to God. These three poems, religious in their themes and inspiration, provide their au-dience with a “moral compass” as Brian Stone called it (Stone, 48) so that they can learn from the failures of the poems’ protagonists and avoid repeating them in their own lives. However, what about the last poem of the Cotton Nero A. x. manuscript, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is far more secular in its themes and story? Does it despite being seemingly preoccupied with the adoration of the splendor and refine-ment of the Arthurian court offer some criticism of this society and a moral message for its audience? Is it an exception to the moralistic pattern of the rest of his works or is the poet’s criticism more subtle and hidden behind the shining armor of renowned knights of the legendary Round Table?

2.3. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, on which this thesis focuses, is one of the most widely read and discussed Medieval chivalric romances. Since it was first published in

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1839 by Sir Frederick Madden, it has attracted the attention of both academia and the general public. Its popularity stems mainly from its “complex narrative full of exciting fantastical elements, vivid descriptive language, compelling poetic structure, complex and interesting characters, and a moral depth rarely credited to romance” (Nitze, 351). The poem is written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel (Richards and Gibbons, 136). Along with the three other poems of the Cotton Nero A. x. manuscript, it is dated to the late 14th century when English poetry enjoyed one of its “periods of florescence” (Burrow, 1). The poem thus belongs some-where to the era between the reign of King Edward III (1327–1377) and that of King Richard II (1377–1399) (Burrow, 2).

The story of SGGK combines the themes of loyalty and sacrifice rooted in old Anglo-Saxon heroic epics with motifs drawn from Celtic folklore and mythology. How-ever, the sources on which the poet relied the most are English and French courtly ro-mances, like those of Chrétien de Troyes (Brewer, 243). They, for instance, provided the inspiration for the temptation and hunting scenes, the allusions to Troy and Rome, the seasonal passing of time, and Gawain’s armor. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as well as the other three works ascribed to the Gawain-poet demonstrate also his famil-iarity with contemporary devotional texts of English, French, Latin, and Italian origin, and extensive knowledge of the Vulgate Bible which the poet, as noted by Richard Newhauser, “preferred to adopt at its literal (rather than typological or allegorical) level, that is, for stories by which to explore human psychology” (Newhauser, 416).

The preoccupation with human psychology and judging of individuals as well

as groups of people is, as already discussed in previous subchapters, one of the main aspects that binds SGGK together with the other three poems of the Cottom Nero A. x. manuscript. The main difference between these works is that while Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience center around religious stories, SGGK is concerned predominantly with secular matters. Religion still plays a role in the poem, there are, however, relatively few “overt references to God, sin, salvation, or other theological subjects” (Blanch, 944). Characters are not inspired by Biblical tales but rather by Arthurian legends. Un-like the other works of the Gawain-poet, SGGK thus belongs to the genre of courtly ro-mance popular in the poet’s times throughout both the British Isles and the Continent.

Right from the beginning of the story, we are presented with a scene typical of the genre of courtly romances – a lavish feast held in a great hall of a castle. This castle is no other than the legendary Camelot and the people present are members of the renowned court of King Arthur, including his famous knights of the Round Table. They are all merry and enjoy the Christmas festivity. This idyllic scene is soon interrupted by a menacing green figure who resembles both a noble knight by his lavish attire and a terrifying faery giant by his height and unnatural color. The green intruder says that

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he is called the Green Knight and he came to Camelot to challenge the famous knights of the Round Table. His challenge has simple rules: one of Arthur’s men deals the Green Knight one strike with his ax, and this strike will be in a year’s time returned by the Green Knight. After moments of dead silence, Sir Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, answers the call and decapitates the Green Knight with one blow of the ax. To the surprise of all present, the Green Knight, however, picks up his decapitated head and as he is prepar-ing to ride away from the court, he reminds Gawain of his promise to suffer a blow in return and instructs Gawain to seek him at the Green Chapel in a year’s time.

After All Saints’ Day, Gawain commences his journey which seemingly leads to

certain death. Despite the obstacles encountered during his travels, like dragons, ogres,

wild men, and the cruel winter, Gawain comes upon the castle of Sir Bertilak who re-veals to Gawain the exact location of the Green Chapel. In fact, Gawain stays for a couple of days at Bertilak’s castle as a guest. During his stay, he is unwittingly subjected to three challenges which are known as the three temptations. Gawain’s conduct in these tests is, in fact, the crucial criterion that will in the end determine whether Gawain will lose his head at the Green Chapel or not. After reaching the Green Chapel, Gawain is judged by the Green Knight who now reveals his true identity – he is Gawain’s host Sir Bertilak. He concludes that although Sir Gawain managed to resist the seduction of Lady Bertilak, he failed to resist the seduction of his earthly life. To avoid death, he concealed from sir Bertilak the magic, life-saving Green Girdle obtained from Bertilak’s wife which is, however, an act of disloyalty towards Gawain’s host for which Gawain

receives a nick on the neck from Green Knight’s ax to remind the knight always of this slight failure.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is thus not a mere adoration of the lustrous

courtly life but also, similarly to other works of the Gawain-poet, a poem about testing. In this case, about the testing of a knight and his loyalty to chivalric and moral code, instead of purely Christian one as in Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness. The testing in SGGK, moreover, culminates in not one but three judgments that are offered on Gawain’s chivalric conduct by the three central actors who are all members of the knightly class – the Green Knight, Sir Gawain, and King Arthur and his court. The first judgment made by the Green Knight, although not blind to it, is tolerant of Gawain’s “blunder” and con-cludes that in accepting the Green Girdle Gawain “lacked a little” (84), but still is “the

most faultless knight that e'er foot set on earth” (84). The second judgment is Gawain’s own, which is the most critical: he accuses himself of “throwing away all his knighthood in one weak moment” (84). And lastly, the third judgment is delivered by the court at Camelot where Gawain arrives after meeting the Green Knight at the Green Chapel. This judgment is diametrically different from Gawain’s as Arthur and the knights laugh at his self-accusations and do not agree with his perception of the quest as a failure. They even decide to wear green baldrics similar to the Green Girdle, not as a badge of

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shame as Gawain insists, but as a mark of honor. Each judge thus holds a different per-spective not only on Gawain’s conduct but also on the seriousness of Gawain’s breach of the knightly code.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight thus certainly complies with the overarching

theme of testing, judgment, and dis/loyalty present in other works of the Gawain-poet. However, unlike Pearl, Patience, or Cleanness, this poem does not center around any Biblical character but the figure of a knight, typical for the feudal Medieval society. In contrast to Jonah, Noah, Lot, or Belshazzar, many knights were living in England in the poet’s times and his audience could actually meet a living knight in the streets of their towns and cities. Many scholars, moreover, argue that his audience, in fact, consisted

mainly of knights and other court members.

This raises several questions: Could the poet have aimed the moral of the story about Sir Gawain directly at the knightly members of his audience? Could SSGK have served as an instrument for the poet’s commentary not only on the imperfections of humanity in general as in his other works but rather specifically on the flaws of the knightly segment of the society he lived in? Could the poet via this poem present his opinion on the contemporary state of knighthood? Such commentary would not be un-common in his times as several of his contemporaries like Chaucer, Langland, and Gower engaged in the same business and works aimed at reforming knighthood ex-tended beyond the purview of epic poems to sermons (Wycliff’s), diaries and bibliog-

raphies of famous knights (Geoffrey de Charny), and chivalric manuals (Book of the Ordre of Chyualry) as shall be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

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3 Knighthood in the Times of the Gawain-Poet

A knight in shining armor setting out upon a quest is one of the most iconographic images of the Middle Ages, an image embedded in the popular consciousness as the archetypical representation of the medieval era. This knight is in the minds of many imagined as the paragon of chivalry with an unerring moral compass always ready to save damsels in distress or even the entire kingdoms from the forces of evil. Such per-ception matches the image of a knight propagated by the majority of medieval ro-mances. In fact, the idea of a knight we have today has been influenced to a large extent by these romances. However, as the name of the genre suggests, romances present to

their audience a romanticized version of reality. Thus, the experience of medieval so-ciety, including the Gawain-poet and his contemporaries, with knighthood may have been completely different than what we know from chivalric literature.

As will be illustrated in this chapter, the chivalrous knights of romances remained mostly fantasy and the reality of medieval knighthood, as captured in the accounts of many contemporaries, was less refined and more violent. Knights were after all warri-ors and their profession demanded brute force rather than courteous speech. In the words of Richard Kaeuper, “despite its glorious and elegant image in literature, its ele-vated ideals, and its enduring link with Western ideas of gentlemanliness, knighthood was nourished on aggressive impulses and used its shining armor and sharp-edged weaponry in acts of showy and bloody violence” (Kaeuper, 22). Knights formed “a dis-

tinct segment of medieval society, which was composed of three classes: those who pray (the clergy), those who fight (knights), and those who work (the peasants)” (Duby, 51). Thus, while the ideals established by chivalric code have added the courtly aspect to knighthood, the primary role of knights in society remained the same – to fight. As remarked by Baldassare Castiglione in his Book of the Courtier, “the first and true profession of the ideal courtier must still be that of arms” (Castiglione, 67). The knight was thus still a warrior and not everyman. Hence, as noted by Maurice Keen “violence, often bloody and horrific, was at the heart of what knights did” (Keen, 102).

Moreover, violence did not constitute only an inherent part of knightly profession. From judicial duels, tournaments, raids on towns and villages, feuds, and tavern mur-

ders to seigneurial violence and private war, violence presented an intrinsic part of both the professional and private life of medieval knights. However, as medieval soci-ety moved into one of the most significant periods of growth and change in the late medieval period, its members increasingly found “the proud, heedless violence of knights, their praise for settling any dispute by force, for acquiring any desired goal by force on any scale attainable, an intolerable fact of social life,” (Kaeuper, 40) because

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“such violence and disorder were not easily compatible with other facets of the civili-zation they were forming” (Keen, 2).

This would lead many figures from the worlds of clergy, royalty, and even

knighthood itself to call for reforms that would bring knightly conduct into consonance with the ongoing civilizational progress. The excessive knightly violence and necessity for the reform of knighthood have thus become during the High Middle Ages widely discussed topics that have captivated the interest of many of Gawain-poet’s contempo-raries. Hence, we can see a widespread criticism of the decline of chivalry and calls for the reform of knighthood in many medieval texts – from clerical accounts, sermons, royal charters and chronicles, biographies of accomplished knights, chivalric manuals,

to epic poems and even romances. The following sub-chapters will address each of these categories in more detail.

3.1. Clerical Treatises on Knightly Behavior

Clerical opinion on the knightly class and the conduct of its members has throughout the Middle Ages oscillated between two endpoints. On the one end, we can find praise of knights and valorization of their deeds, seen especially during the era of crusades. This positive image of knights propagated in several clerical works stemmed mainly from the fact that no representative of the Church could officially engage in vi-

olent acts. Yet, the Church needed to use force to defend both its existence and inter-ests, so, it needed knights to enforce its will. Although the Church tried to set rules of conduct for these knights, they obeyed them only seldom and their campaigns did not shy away from pillage, arson, rape, robbery, and murder of innocents (Russell, 55). Hence, on the opposite end of the spectrum of clerical accounts, we see denunciation of the knightly conduct, criticism of unfounded violence, and calls for the reform of knighthood. Many clerics openly criticized the use of undue force against civilians, es-pecially the sick, elderly, women, and children (Chodorow, 234). St Bernard even went as far as calling knights “the servants of the devil not God” (Evans, 83).

Thus, two distinct clerical narratives emerged during the medieval period. In

the words of Georges Duby “with their bookish love of wordplay, the clerics perfectly

captured the stark endpoints on the scale of their thought by using two terms of oppo-site tenor, differing in only one letter. Was chivalry, they liked to ask, the ideal service of God – militia – or was it simply badness – malitia?” (Duby, 21). After the second crusade, the latter perspective on knights has gradually come to the fore which pro-vided the base for the emerging peace movement and appeals for the reform of knight-hood.

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In order to reveal how the knightly class has been perceived by the clergy dur-ing the High Middle Ages, this subchapter will present and discuss the accounts of three contemporaries: Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntingdon. All three were born in medieval England and devoted many pages to the knightly conduct. They lived in the era between the end of the first and beginning of the second crusade, in the times of ongoing territorial disputes between the English and French, and the period of domestic turmoil. The issue of knightly conduct and violence was thus very current at the time of their writing (Carlson, 8). Their accounts will be supplemented by ideas of several of their contemporaries from the other side of the Channel that ex-perienced the conduct of English knights during their campaigning in France: Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis, St. Benedict, Bernard de Clairvaux, and Alain de Lille.

Orderic Vitalis, although born in England, spent many years on the Continent as

a monk at Saint-Évroul. His chronicle, The Ecclesiastical History, discusses a broad spectrum of topics related to the contemporary state of knighthood, from crusades to situation in northwestern Europe. In the latter section of his work, Orderic reveals “an almost obsessive concern for order and the elusive goal of a more peaceful society” (Chibnall, 236). As a monk, he shows “a thoroughly professional distaste for violence in any form,” as we might expect; but at the same time, his work contains a more urgent leitmotiv – the need for “firm, authoritative action against the violence, disorder, and constant warfare that so characterized his world” (Carlson, 25).

Right at the beginning of his chronicle, Orderic contends that he is “personally aligned against knights, and their brutal actions, like burning religious houses or killing innocents” (Vitalis, 25). Later, he describes a raid of a band of knights on his village: “Some of them wished to knock the pious servants of God from their horses and ill-treat them. In the end, they attacked the village without reverence for God, violently entered and plundered it, and as I have said, burnt to ashes houses inside the gates” (Vitalis, 198). Orderic portrays the deplorable state of knighthood in his times also through the story about the villainous knight Robert of Bellême who “driven from Eng-land continued his career of disruption and devastation in Normandy” (Vitalis, 283). Orderic describes him as:

A renowned knight of great enterprise in the field . . . endowed with quick wits

and a ready tongue as well as courage; but everything was marred by his exces-sive pride and cruelty and he hid the talents with which Heaven had endowed him under a somber mass of evil deeds. He engaged in many wars against his neighbors and spared not one, even women and children had fallen victim to his rage. (Vitalis, 289)

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Orderic uses Bellême as a prototypical knight and thinks that “the violence is endemic within the knightly layers of society” (Vitalis, 73). Almost in passing, he mentions Rob-ert of Vitot and other knights with an equal taste for violence as Bellême.

As we learn from Orderic’s account, the fear of knights and violence they sow

entered the folk imagination too, and throughout both the Continent and the Isles sto-ries circulated about a nocturnal army or in its older version about a group of knights on a hunt. In England, the tale was commonly known under the name “Wild Hunt”. In Normandy, where Orderic first heard the story from a priest called Walchelin, people called it “La Mesnie Hellequin”. Walchelin claimed to “have witnessed the fearful pro-cession on the first night of January while returning from a visit to a sick parishioner”

(Jackson, 15). As Orderic describes the event:

Hearing them approach, Walchelin mistook the noise to mean a troublesome contemporary force, the household troops of Robert of Bellême, and feared be-ing ‘shamefully robbed’. His initial fear is useful evidence in itself. What hap-pened was yet more terrifying, however, for he saw pass before him in the clear moonlight not an army of mortals, but four troops of tormented spirits, a great army of knights, in which no color was visible save blackness and flickering fire. (Vitalis, 237)

Walchelin also notices that his dead brother is among these ghastly knights and

says to Orderic that he noticed what seemed to him “a mass of blood like a human head around his brother’s heels where his knightly spurs would attach” (Vitalis, 238). It is not blood, he learns, but fire, “burning and weighing down the knight as if he were carrying the Mont Saint-Michel” (Vitalis, 238). His brother explains to him that “Be-cause [he] used bright, sharp spurs in [his] eager haste to shed blood [he is] justly con-demned to carry this enormous load on [his] heels, which is such an intolerable burden that [he] cannot convey to anyone the extent of [his] sufferings” (Vitalis, 239). The knight’s message of this tale is quite clear – damnation and suffering await the knights who find pleasure in violence.

Two of Orderic’s contemporaries offer very similar accounts of knightly vio-

lence. St. Benedict in his books of miracle stories complains on many pages about “men

who appear to be knights but in fact are devil’s agents of violence” (Rollanson, 82). Knightly violence lies also at the center of the work of another monk, called Suger, Ab-bot of Saint-Denis. Suger terms the majority of knights “tyrants” as they “terrorize many local towns and villages, provoke wars, take pleasure in endless pillage, trouble the poor, and destroy churches” (Thorpe, 124). The chief villain in Suger’s story is Thomas of Marle who, “aided by the Devil, devoured the countryside in the region of Laon, Reims, and Amiens like a furious wolf, sparing neither clerics out of fear of

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ecclesiastical sanctions, nor the common folk out of any sentiment for humanity” (Laisse, 13).

William of Malmesbury, too, criticizes the decay of chivalric values and sinful-

ness of many knights of his times. He accuses one of the central figures of his chronicle Gesta Regum Anglorum, Duke Robert, of gluttony, laziness, and excessive desire for bloodshed. The chronicle also demonstrates that it would be “impossible to reconcile religious and moral values with the militaristic nature of medieval knighthood” (Malm-esbury, 723). William, too, perceived the knights as threats to the public order and ad-mitted that for him, as for many others, “the departure of the milites as crusaders meant that Christians at home could finally live in peace” (Malmesbury, 724).

The issue of the irreconcilability of chivalric code and martial character of

knightly occupation is further elaborated by another medieval chronicler, Fulcher of Chartres, who captures the words of Pope Urban who criticized “the materialistic na-ture of many conflicts among Christian knights” (Erdmann, 339) and during his speech on the ongoing Holy War he remarked that: “Now will those who once were robbers become Christi milites; those who once fought brothers and relatives will justly fight barbarians; those who once were mercenaries for a few farthings will obtain eternal reward” (Erdmann, 340). Baldric of Dol, who too served as cleric during the same era, documents an even more outspoken condemnation of knights in which the Pope says:

You are proud; you tear your brothers to pieces and fight among yourselves. The battle that rends the flock of the Redeemer is not the militia Christi. The holy church has reserved knighthood for itself, for the defense of its people, but you pervert it in wickedness . . . you oppressors of orphans and widows, you murderers, you temple defilers, you lawbreakers, who seek the rewards of ra-pacity from spilling Christian blood. (Flori, 199)

Bernard de Clairvaux, yet another monastic voice, is similarly critical of knights.

He even calls them “impious rogues, sacrilegious thieves, murderers, perjurers, and adulterers” (Garbois, 57). Convinced that most knights “fight for the devil rather than the God” (Garbois, 59), Bernard addresses to them words of warning:

If you happen to be killed while you are seeking only to kill another, you die a murderer. If you succeed, and by your will to overcome and to conquer you per-chance kill a man, you live a murderer … What an unhappy victory – to have conquered a man while yielding to vice, and to indulge in an empty glory at his fall when wrath and pride have gotten the better of you! (Greenia, 138)

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He also condemns the combination of vanity and violence in chivalry as it was prac-ticed by knights in his times:

What then, O knights, is this monstrous error and what this unbearable urge which bids you fight with such pomp and labor, and all to no purpose except death and sin. You cover your horses with silk and plume your armor with I know not what sort of rags; you paint your shields and your saddles; you adorn your bits and spurs with gold and silver and precious stones, and then in all this glory you rush to your ruin with fearful wrath and fearless folly. (Greenia, 141)

In a similar vein, Alain de Lille contends that:

Knighthood has become utterly empty, only a shell. Thus, what they practice is not true knightly service, but plundering; not militia, but rapina. In short, they become thieves, devastating the poor. They avoid fighting the enemies of Christ (out of sloth or fear) but make fellow Christians the victims of their swords” (d’Alverny, 16).

In his sermon addressed to knights of England and France, called Ad milites, he also confronts the knights on their own ground, on the level of “sheer professionalism: the knights of his day are simply not good enough at their tasks as warriors, not bold enough, not truly committed to their high and necessary vocation” (d’Alverny, 20).

Alain laments that “the Roman discipline is gone largely because of effeminacy and lux-ury” (d’Alverny, 30).

The gradual moral decay of the knightly class is also criticized by Henry of Hun-

tingdon. In his Historia Anglorum, he describes the deplorable conduct of English knights after a battle. He writes that: “The Lord gave a most famous victory to his peo-ple. But the next day, when the citizens had buried their dead, our men dug them up and taking the gold and silver, and the palls that were about them, hurled their heads into the city” (Huntingdon, 433). Writing roughly at the same time, Layamon warns about the dangers posed by this unpredictable group of armed men. In Brut, he re-counts that “One early king disliked his knights because they kept desiring war. An-other king lost his good fortune when all his knights and all his great barons fomented

unrest, they refused altogether to keep the king’s peace” (Allen, 22). To prevent disor-der sown by knights, Layamon proposes strong laws: “The succeeding ruler then set-tled the land, he worked for peacefulness. He established strong laws; he was stern with the foolish. He enforced peace and truce upon pain of limb and life” (Allen, 30). As will be illustrated in the following sub-chapter, English rulers actually heeded Laya-mon’s words and attempted to restrain the knightly violence through legal means.

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3.2. Royal Chronicles and Legal Documents Related to Knights

The same as clergy, the English royalty was, too, critical of the decline in chival-ric values evident throughout the Middle Ages and voiced the need for a reform of knighthood. Statements announcing the beginning of a king’s reign provide a rich source of evidence for royal concerns with peace and public order. At his accession to the throne in 1100, Henry I, for instance, proclaimed his intention in terms of royal peace. The document read: “I establish my firm peace through my entire realm and order it to be kept henceforth” (Stubbs, 119). Similarly, the administration of Edward III, at the time of his father’s supposed abdication in 1327, stated on behalf of the young

king:

We command and firmly enjoin each and every one, on pain of disherison and loss of life or members, not to break the peace of our said lord the king; for he is and shall be ready to enforce right for each and every one of the said kingdom in all matters and against all persons, both great and small. So, if anyone has some demand to make of another, let him make it by means of [legal] action, without resorting to force of violence. (Stubbs, 439)

Preambles to statutes show similar royal concerns for securing the public order.

For example, Henry III announced in the Statute of Marlborough in 1267 his intention to “provide for the better estate of his realm of England, and for the more speedy ad-

ministration of justice, as belongs to the office of a king”. His son, Edward I, likewise announced in his Statute of Gloucester in 1278 “a fuller administration of justice as the good of the kingly office demands” (Stephenson and Marcham, 205). The first Statute of Westminster of 1285 also “worried over the peace less kept and the laws less used, and the offenders less punished than they ought to be, so that the people feared the less to offend” (Stephenson and Marcham, 207). Clause 38 of this statute is more ex-plicit about private knightly quarrels. In it, the royal government asserts that “no knight will take private revenge on account of the disorders, nor will he procure or consent or tolerate that private revenge should be taken” (Johnson, 63).

English royalty has strived for a “working monopoly of the means of violence in

the realm” (Kaeuper, 38). The major obstacle to such monopoly was posed by knights.

The English crown thus “intensified its control over tournaments, required licenses for building castles, and outlawed any insular version of the continental practice of ‘pri-vate’ war” (Keen, 143). Similarly, the royal government issued a “policy against war within the realm, that is, open warlike violence or even carrying offensive arms and riding with unfurled banners in full and joyous expectation of combat” (Kaeuper, 225). The results were, however, limited and although English knighthood “could not claim a legal right of war within the realm, as in France, lords and knights turned to formally

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illegal acts of violence, on any scale they could manage, when the law did not serve or when the sense of urgency was simply too great” (Head and Landes, 8). This fact is evidenced, among others, in legal records that show us that knightly violence was still prevalent in medieval England and was continuously practiced in everyday life, with serious consequences for public order (Stubbs, 123).

The same as the clergy, the royalty, too, noticed the continuous decay of chival-

ric values among knights. Hence in the 14th century, King Edward III attempted to “na-tionalize” chivalry and established the Order of the Garter. Through this order, Edward tried to “revitalize the fading courtly traditions and to revive a perceived set of older martial chivalric values against perceptions that such chivalry was already in decline”

(Urbach, 105). The main focus of the order was on loyalty, fraternity, and battle prow-ess. The last being conditioned mainly by the increasing “decadence” and “softness” among knights due to aristocratic pretenses and luxurious living about which com-plained many chroniclers throughout medieval Europe (Ingledew, 16). Edward wanted to:

Invoke King Arthur’s Round Table brotherhood, which included the legend’s en-tire web of historic associations revered in England and abroad and with his new nobility built on proven merit and military service, he used the Order of the Garter to build a reputation of paramount chivalry of arms and moral upright-ness. (Urbach, 110)

3.3. Biographies of Famous Knights and Chivalric Manuals

Historical accounts of knights’ lives, like William Marshal’s biography, often pic-ture them “enjoying the privileged practice of violence which suggests that they found in their exhilarating and fulfilling fighting the key to identity” (Keen, 19). As Richard Kaeuper remarks, “it would otherwise be hard to explain the thousands of individual combats and mass engagements that fill page after page of vernacular manuals, chival-ric biographies, chronicles, and other works on the lives of medieval knights” (Kaeuper, 143). Marc Bloch even calls these interminable combats “eloquent psychological doc-uments” (Bloch, 294). He also argues that:

The personal capacity to beat and kill another man in battle appears time and again in knightly biographies as something like the ultimate human quality; it operates in men as a gift of God, it gives meaning to life, reveals the presence of the other desired qualities, wins the love of the most desirable women,

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determines status and worth, and binds the best males together in a fellowship of the elect. (Bloch, 295) Such attitude towards a knight’s prowess in battle, and the violence that accom-

panies it, can be, for instance, found in the biography of William Marshal. In The History of William Marshal, chivalry often becomes prowess pure and simple and violence be-comes inseparable from chivalric deeds. On the first pages, the biographer provides us with the description of the siege of Winchester during which “groups of knights sallied forth each day ‘to do chivalry’” (Bryant, 58). An account of William’s conduct on the battlefield immediately follows and informs us that he “regularly chops his enemies’ skulls down to the teeth” (Bryant, 64). According to the biographer, William’s second son, Richard Marshal, follows his father’s example and “with one mighty stroke cuts off

both hands of an enemy knight reaching for his helmet in a close encounter. With an even mightier blow he cut a knight down to the navel” (Bryant, 65).

Not only violence on the battlefield is excused by being labeled the proof of

prowess. The same applies also to violent acts done far from the combat zone. The bi-ography, for example, glorifies the deeds of William’s father, John Marshal, who “at times played as ruthless and unprincipled a robber baron as ever wore armor” (Bryant, 59). Despite that, he is “praised by the author as ‘a worthy man, courteous and wise’, who was ‘animated by prowess and loyalty’ (Bryant, 63). Similarly, William’s own transgressions are portrayed as noble acts. When he “loots merchants in glad war and steals money from a priest who is running off with a lady of good family” the biography

does not condemn his actions, on the contrary, it presents it as the right thing to do. The only dissatisfaction voiced is that “William failed to take the priest’s horses as well” (Bryant, 31).

In William’s life story, it is not violence that deserves criticism, but a lack of

prowess. As noted by Paul Meyer, the author complains in the text that “his world is being spoiled by the decay of chivalry, meaning the very reforms praised by Lawman; what worries him is a shift away from prowess and largesse and a commitment to mere courtroom litigation” (Meyer, 2686). He says that “alas, now the high lords have im-prisoned chivalry for us; by their lethargy and because of greed, largesse is thrown into prison. And the knights errant and the tourneyers have been transformed into court-room litigants” (Bryant, 44).

Although the Marshallian image of a knight dominates in many medieval chiv-

alric manuals and knightly biographies, some of them deviate from this trend and speak against rather than in favor of violence, be it during war or peace. The works of Geoffrey de Charny and Ramon Llull are two examples of the contemporary counter-current to glorification of violent acts. These two knights prove that voices calling for the reform of knighthood could be heard even among the knightly class itself. Their

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manuals present the knights as “the righteous armed force of Christendom, the practi-tioners of licit force, the fair judges in society, wise men motivated and restrained by high ideals, bravely avoiding shame” (Kennedy, 67). They are “courteous, generous, and always helping the weak against robbers and killers” (Caroll, 135). The authors, however, acknowledge that this ideal of knight they portray is prescriptive rather than descriptive and the knightly conduct in their times is often the exact opposite. Such conduct should, according to both de Charny and Llull, undergo a reform.

The Book of the Order of Chivalry by Ramon Llull is one of the most popular ver-

nacular handbooks on chivalry. Written at the end of the 13th century, it quickly reached a wide readership not only in the original Catalan version but also in its French

and English translations (Bonner, 1262). Llull works in the text with two opposing im-ages of knighthood – how it should ideally be and how it is in reality. Unlike reformists from clergy, he does not condemn the “earthly chivalry”. On the contrary, he praises the grandeur of jousts and tournaments, the war in defense of one’s lord, and the en-tertainments of hall and hunting. His criticism is instead aimed at the unfounded vio-lence enjoyed by many of his contemporaries. Llull even calls such knights “the Devil’s ministers”, and asks pointedly, “who is there in the world who does as much harm as knights?” (Llull, 43). Thus, as remarked by Jocelin Hillgarth, “in fact, Llull’s love for chivalry, as it might be, never eradicates his deep fear of chivalry as social ill” (Hillgarth, 40).

The aim of Llull’s book on chivalry was to reform this unfortunate state of knighthood. He announces this rationale clearly if indirectly at the beginning of the book through the conversation between a hermit and a knight. In this scene, the hermit asks the knight whether he understands the order of chivalry. The knight explains that “in the absence of a book on the subject he does not, in fact, understand chivalry”. Were there such a book, the knight adds, “many knights would be humble who are prideful, and just who are criminal, and chaste who are licentious, and brave who are cowardly, and rich who are poor, and honorable who are dishonorable” (Llull, 15). Here, Llull explicitly establishes the reforming nature of his book: “knights can and must be made better in basic categories of their lives” (Llull, 16). In contrast to clergy and royalty, Llull aims for reforming chivalry by enlightening individual knights, by changing the way they think and act, rather than by calling for some exterior force or institution that

would regulate the knightly conduct. Colin Morris calls his approach “a reform wrapped in gold leaf” (Morris, 96) meaning that the reform in Llull’s view must be con-sidered as tolerable by the majority of knights, otherwise the reform is doomed to fail. Geoffrey de Charny is in his chivalric manual called The Book of Chivalry even more critical of his fellow knights. He criticizes not only their inclination to violence, as Llull does, but also the preference of some knights for the comfortable life of courtiers

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instead of fighters. According to Charny, reform of knighthood is absolutely necessary because the institution has by the year 1350 when he was writing his book gone into a steep decline. Charny identifies as the chief problem the misuse of knightly gifts by many of his contemporaries. He calls these knights “unworthy of the great calling of bearing arms because of their very dishonest and disordered behavior under these arms” (Charny, 40).

Charny condemns them for abusing their prowess, he says that “it is these men

who want to wage war without good reason, who seize other people without prior warning and without any good cause and rob and steal from them, wound and kill them” (Charny, 42). In his eyes, these knights are “cowards and traitors” (Charny, 45).

Moreover, the misuse of prowess, as Charny adds, is followed by the fading of loyalty. He warns that “as prowess withers or mutates, loyalty likewise declines; faction and treachery seem to flourish in their place” (Charny, 67). By this conclusion, Charny hints at the contemporary socio-political climate on both sides of the Channel as ambition, regionalism, and anti-royal politics were already at work in the mid-14th century Eng-land and France; they ensured that “the Hundred Years War would become a veritable civil war” (Taylor, 73).

The second group Charny denounces are the “idle knights” (Charny, 80). He

fears that knights of his day “have lost their vital commitment to prowess; and with this center weakened the entire arch of chivalry threatens to fall about the heads of all”

(Charny, 83). At the time of writing of The Book of Chivalry, the Hundred Years War raged between England and France, and every knight’s help was needed. However, as Charny complains: “When they most needed to risk all and bear all hardships, the knights, incredible as it seems, appeared to prefer the soft life and the safe life, blind to the grand vision of an existence vested in vigorous deeds, come what may, a life of honor blessed by divine favor” (Charny, 85).

Charny calls these men cowards and criticizes their preference for comfort and safety. He says with contempt that:

As soon as they leave their abode, if they see a stone jutting out of the wall a little further than the others, they will never dare to pass beneath it, for it would

always seem to them that it would fall on their heads. If they come to a river which is a little big or too fast flowing, it always seems to them, so great is their fear of dying, that they will fall into it. If they cross a bridge which may seem a little too high or too low, they dismount and are still terrified lest the bridge collapse under them, so great is their fear of dying. (Charny, 87)

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The same as Llull, Charny finds the remedy to the decline of chivalry in reform-ing the conduct of individual knights. His solution is direct and uncomplicated “the chivalric code must simply be followed” (Taylor, 90). In fact, both Llull and Charny do not see an utterly bleak future for knighthood and besides criticism, offer also praise for those who live by the chivalric ideals and press forward the hope that “all will be well if only their fellow knights adhere to such ideals even more closely” (Kaeuper, 102) which can be achieved by reform not only aimed at knights but also accepted by them.

3.4. Epic Poems

The second group of knights criticized by Charny appears also in several late-medieval epic poems such as Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis by John Gower, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, and Piers Plowman by Wil-liam Langland. As the primary function of these works was to entertain their audience, and the didactic function came only second, their commentary on the state of knight-hood in medieval times is more subtle than in the previously discussed clerical cri-tiques and chivalric manuals and knightly biographies. Instead of open criticism, all five works serve as a mirror of the contemporary society, including the second estate – the knights. They portray a picture of knights dramatically different from the one commonly associated with this class of warriors for they are characterized by a lack of

interest in fighting or extraordinary feats of heroism. As noted by John Burrow and Anne Middleton, they instead “focus on interpersonal relations, the ethical obligations, and inner conflicts of their characters” (Burrow, 8). Although each of these works fea-tures characters belonging to the knightly class, almost all fight offstage which stands in contrast to the many romances of the period and the heroic poetry of the previous Anglo-Saxon period.

Of these three medieval authors and contemporaries of the Gawain-poet, John

Gower is the most vocal and open in his criticism of the contemporary state of knight-hood. In his Mirour de l'Omme, Gower accuses the knights of his time of “rampant prom-iscuity and lawlessness” (Gower, 15) and reminds the reader that King Edward III had to forbid his man during the Crécy campaign from “wanton ravaging, the destruction

of holy places, and the harming of women and children” (Gower, 17). Nevertheless, as Gower informs us, Edward’s words remained unheeded by the knights who committed many acts of violence not only against the enemy army but also civilians. In a similar vein, he states, in the “Book V” of Vox Clamantis, that “the honor of knighthood is empty because it is without responsibility and prone to senseless violence” (Gower, 22).

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In the Prologue to Confessio Amantis, Gower speaks about the general decline of the world and its empires. The Prologue concludes with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of “the golden image with feet of steel and earth” (Gower, 625). According to the dream, “the great empires of Babylon (gold), Persia (silver), Greece (brass) and Rome (steel) have given a place in modern times to the ignoble Holy Roman Empire (steel and earth)” (Gower, 627). In Gower’s words, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: “betokens the world so changed and overthrown that it is well-nigh upside down compared with days of long ago” (Gower, 628).

The Prologue introduces us to the unheroic contemporary world in which the

central character, Amans, lives. In his times, knights are no longer brave warriors, in-

stead “they want to spend their youth and use their time in pleasures, eating and drink-ing, paying badly and borrowing a lot, polishing themselves like white ivory, sleeping well and resting” (Gower, 13). Amans, too, admits his preference for courtly pleasures rather than fighting. His unheroism is later expressed in the Latin couplet: “Non ego Sampsonis vires, non Herculis arma/Vinco, sum sed ut hii victus amore pari” [I do not outdo Sampson’s powers or Hercules’ arms/but I am conquered as they were, by a love equal to theirs] (Gower, 8).

William Langland, too, complains in Piers Plowman about knights no longer per-

forming their traditional function. John Burrow even argues that “Langland showed little inclination either to justify the wealth of the knighthood or to find any function

for its members in society” (Burrow, 101). In Piers Plowman, Langland insists that knightly status depends on riches, not vice versa as was argued by the royalty, church, and the knights themselves. The narrator says that: “No king would accredit a knight that offers/No property or payment for his office/A knight without lands or lineage or laurels/Is a risible wretch” (Sutton, 131). He compares rich knights to the foul pea-cocks and the poor peasants to larks (Sutton, 144), and states that:

Knights should keep to that course, Riding to arrest in surrounding lands Offenders and felons and tying them fast Such pastimes are proper and appropriate for knights Not fasting on Fridays every five score winters,

But protecting the people who testify to Truth And letting neither love nor money delude them And knights who lapse should lose their knighthood. (Sutton, 31)

Similarly, he condemns soapers and their sons for buying knighthood while “poor gen-tile blood” is refused (Sutton, 133). According to Langland, this is the reason why the knighthood experiences the profound decline witnessed during his times; the knightly

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status is no longer determined by a man’s courage and prowess in battle, but instead by his wealth.

Due to gaining the knighthood not by being fit for the position but being able to

buy it, many knights were not able to fulfill the obligations entailed by their new status. Hence, in Piers Plowman, a significant doubt is cast upon the knights’ effectiveness as protectors. Piers must, for instance, remind the knights of their responsibility to pro-tect “the Holy Church” against “wasters and wicked men” (Sutton, 37) and to “hunt beasts and birds that destroy the crops” (Sutton, 38). Moreover, when wasters later threaten to harm Piers and he appeals to the knight to “protect him, as the covenant was” (Sutton, 39), all that the knight can do is to “remonstrate weakly”, and Piers “must

call upon Hunger for his real support” (Sutton, 39). Although the knight should be the defender of the Holy Church, he is largely absent from the fight against Antichrist. He-roic virtues of courage and battle prowess thus, the same as in the case of Gower, grad-ually lose their meaning.

Contrary to Gower and Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer opts in his Canterbury Tales

for a different strategy for commenting on the contemporary state of knighthood. In-stead of explicit criticism, he employs contrasts and satire. The Knight is actually the first pilgrim introduced in “The General Prologue” where he is described as an epitome of chivalry. He was “a worthy man who loved chivalry/Truth and honor, freedom and courtesy” (Coghill, 20). In accordance with the criticism of clergy and Church, the

Knight refuses to fight in “earthly” war in which Christians fight among themselves for the superficial objectives of the royalty, and instead of joining the Hundred Years War, he goes on a crusade to fight for a “higher good” in the holy war against the infidels. The Knight in his rusty mail always ready for a battle seems to represent the older generation of knights which has experienced chivalry in its spring when battle prowess was still one of the fundamental aspects of the knightly profession. In contrast, the Squire, who awaits to be promoted to the knightly status resembles the new generation of knights criticized by Gower and Langland for their preference for the comfortable life of a courtier. The Squire is unlike the Knight not dressed for a battle but rather for the hall, we read in the “General Prologue” that “short was his gown, with sleeves long and wide” (Coghill, 21). He also enjoys not jousting nor fighting, instead, he likes songs, poetry, and dancing (Coghill, 22).

The unheroic image of a courtier knight criticized by Chaucer’s contemporaries

is, however, best seen in The Tale of Sir Thopas which presents its audience with a par-ody of the heroic romances highly popular at that time. As Gordon Shedd explains, the tail-rhyme stanzas of Sir Thopas create “an amusing but essentially negative reaction to the repetitious plots and pedestrian verse so often found in medieval romance” (Shedd, 4). The protagonist of this tale, Sir Thopas, is described by the narrator as

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possessing feminine rather than masculine features. He is a man “With pale skin as white as a tooth,/And lips as red as a rose,/And a very handsome nose/His hair fell to his waist from his head” (Castro, 1). The same as the Squire, Sir Thopas is dressed as a courtier rather than a warrior. As we are informed: “His leather shoes were from Spain;/His brown socks from Belgium instead;/His robe made of very fine thread/Which was anything but mundane” (Castro, 2).

Hence, he is not ready for a battle when he encounters the giant, Sir Oliphant,

and he says that “I swear to God,/I’ll return tomorrow./Dressed in armor and with my lance,/I’ll slay you through your underpants” (Castro, 2). The heroic action is thus sus-pended, and we are again presented with a description of Sir Thopas’ attire: Then he

put on some pants so white,/And then a shirt that shone like light,/So that he looked suave and smart./And just in case he lost the fight,/He wore chain mail so very tight,/To protect his beating heart” (Castro, 3). When finally, he is about to engage in a fight with the giant, the narrator is interrupted by the Host and the story remains un-finished. So, the tale does not satisfy the expectations readers of conventional ro-mances have of a knight and Sir Thopas instead resembles the image of an unheroic knight criticized by many of Chaucer’s contemporaries.

In contrast to the Tale of Sir Thopas, the tale about Palamon and Arcite told by

the Knight shows the violent side of knighthood. In this story, Chaucer draws the at-tention of his audience to the unattainability of ideals propagated by chivalric code.

The real face of knighthood is often significantly different than its rosy image portrayed by courtly romances. The contrast between the ideal and reality can be seen right from the beginning of the tale when both knights fall in love with the same woman Emily. Before they meet her, Palamon and Arcite are faithful to the code of comradery and vow to “help each other in all exploits, including love, for as long as they live” (Coghill, 50). However, after both fall in love with Emily, they quickly reject their ties of kinship and become “mortal foes” (Coghill, 51). Upon hearing Arcite’s declaration of love for Emily, Palamon says “Arcite, false, wicked traitor,/ Now art thou taken, who loves my lady so,/ For whom that I have all this pain and woe” (Coghill, 52). As Liana Diamond notes: “Chaucer satirizes how easily the men abandon their commitment to the knightly ideals over a woman who neither of them has had any interaction with” (Dia-mond, 4).

The conflicting nature of knighthood also becomes apparent during their fight.

Before the battle, each knight helps the other with his armor. Yet, as the fighting begins, “all sense of propriety disappears” (Coghill, 63). Instead of courteous language used during the arming scene, during the fight Chaucer employs savage, animal imagery, comparing Palamon to a “vicious lion” and Arcite to a “cruel tiger” (Coghill, 64). Both men are also compared to “wild boars, which crazily foam at the mouth and desire for

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blood” (Diamond, 8). Here, we can see the contrast of the courteous and violent side of knighthood or in the words of Stanley Kahrl, “Chaucer’s unfavorable depiction high-lights the abandonment of the chivalrous approach to fighting that both men were so committed to uphold” (Kahrl, 195).

The violence inherent to the knightly occupation is also reflected in Chaucer’s

description of the temple of Mars, the god of war, built by Theseus. The temple is void of any refinement typically associated with knights in chivalric literature, instead, it is a “menacing structure, constructed of steel and enclosed in a vacant forest of gnarled trees and stumps” (Coghill, 70) thus representing the crude and violent face of knight-hood. The walls of the temple are “decorated with scenes of the horrors of war”

(Coghill, 71). They feature “paintings of villainous creatures, like murderers, slayers, and traitors” (Kahrl, 201). As the narrator informs us:

You could see all the emotions associated with war personified in the paintings in the temple of Mars. There was Treachery plotting and scheming, Anger glow-ing red, and Dread as well. There was the smiling character holding a knife un-derneath his cape, a barn burning with black smoke, murder, bloodshed, gaping wounds, misery, bloody knives, and piled bodies. (Coghill, 73)

Near the gate stands “the statue of the god dressed in a full suit of steel armor and ready for battle which makes him look quite frightening” (Coghill, 74). The north side

of the temple “was lit, but everything else was dark” (Coghill, 74).

The image of knighthood this temple portrays is certainly far from the one prop-agated by medieval romances. Its walls portray no noble and honorable attributes the knights should aspire to, but rather the barbaric and savage aspects of their profession. Chaucer thus does not glorify knighthood. Instead, he draws attention to its violent and grisly nature.

3.5. Romances

Although romances are commonly associated with appraisal of knights and

their deeds, many of them divert from the conventions of the genre and engage in crit-icism of the knightly class. In the words of Maurice Keen, romances are “a rich and contrapuntal play of praise and critique, hope and fear, emphasizing the powerful ten-sions as well as the harmonies at work” (Keen, 65). Similarly, Richard Kaeuper argues that “medieval romances are not purely celebratory or aesthetic works; they do not present merely the splendor of chivalric life as it was, or the diversions of an escapist

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literature of life as it never could be” (Keuper, 36); on the contrary “these texts often spoke to some of the most pressing issues of their day, especially to the issues of social order and knightly violence, to the serious need for chivalric reform in a world much troubled by warlike violence” (Kaeuper, 37).

Early in his Perceval, Chrétien de Troyes provides an apt example of the two

clashing views of knights that appear in medieval romances. While hunting alone in the forest, young Perceval sees for the first time in his life a knight. Clad in splendid shining armor he emerges from the “green curtain of trees” and Perceval, astonished by the sight, asks him: “Are you God?” (Hatuel, 4). Perceval’s view is, however, not shared by his mother, for when he tells her that he “has seen a shining angel in the forest,” she

replies: “I commend you to God, dear son, for I’m deeply afraid for you. I do believe you’ve seen the angels who cause people such grief, killing whoever they come across” (Hatuel, 10). Perceval tries to convince her that she is wrong, that the stranger told him he was a knight. Hearing this word, his mother faints as it revives terrifying memories of the knightly violence she had witnessed in the past (Hatuel, 12). A similar opinion is expressed by an old woman in The Marvels of Rigomer. When she meets Lancelot and he identifies himself as a knight, she declares that “for a thousand years [she has] heard that knights are the worst things in the world who kill just as they like” (Vesce, 34).

In the Post-Vulgate Merlin Continuation, the contrasting perspectives on knight-

hood are embodied in the two brothers-knights – Balain and Galahad. Although both

undoubtedly endowed with mighty prowess, each puts it to a very different use. Balain, who is described as a source of misery, is set opposite to Galahad, dubbed the bringer of joy and release. In the words of the narrator, “the Unfortunate Knight stands on one side, the Good Knight on the other” (Lacy, 10). As Galahad rode through the land searching for his brother, he witnesses the havoc wrought by Balain:

He found the trees down and broken and grain destroyed, and all things laid waste as if lightning had struck in each place, and unquestionably it had struck in many places, though not everywhere. He found half the people in the villages dead, both bourgeois and knights, and he found laborers dead in the fields. He found the kingdom of Listinois so totally destroyed that it was later called by everyone the Kingdom of Waste Land. (Lacy, 56)

Many authors of medieval romances, inspired by both folk legends, feature in

their works Black Knights as representations of violent knights defying both chivalric and Christian code. Knights of menacing height clad in black armor and carrying huge swords can be, for instance, found in the Roman de Fergus by William the Clerk, The Quest for the Holy Grail of the Vulgate Cycle, Prose Tristan, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion and Sir Perceval of Galles by Chrétien de Troyes, Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, and

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in Perlesvaus. In the last romance, Black Knights appear on several occasions through-out the story. The earliest of their appearances comes near the opening of the romance when “King Arthur fights a black knight with a flaming lance at the Chapel of St Augus-tine” (Bryant, 27). Black knights on black horses enter the scene again during the ad-venture of the Castle of the Black Hermit, later identified as Hell. They are later identi-fied as “spirits of those who died ‘without repentance’” or as “ungodly demons” (Bry-ant, 222). In the tale of the Perilous Chapel, Lancelot meets a maiden who warns him about the Black Knights “with burning, flaming lances” (Bryant 49). According to the maiden, the knights are “foul and terrible, no one knows where they come from, and they fight furiously with whoever they meet” (Bryant, 50). The use of such images re-sembles the legends of the “Wild Hunt” or its French version – the “Herlequin’s Hunt”

– and the passage from the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic that describes them, thus showing that fear of knightly violence epitomized in the tales about the Black Knights was well-rooted in the psyche of medieval people.

As illustrated in this chapter, the late medieval period, to which dates the origin

of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, has been ridden by fears about the erosion of chiv-alric values, intensified knightly violence, and the overall decline of the knightly class. Various texts ranging from clerical treatises and sermons, royal and judicial docu-ments, chronicles, biographies of famous knights, chivalric manuals, epic poems, and even some courtly romances engaged in parodying and criticizing the contemporary state of knighthood. Their authors voiced concerns for order, fears about unrestrained

violence, and hopes for some path to improvement and reform. Gradually, two diverg-ing currents of criticism emerged – the critique of the increasingly effeminate knights and of the increasingly violent knights.

With the critique and calls for reform permeating the medieval society, from roy-

alty and clergy to poets and even knights themselves, could the Gawain-poet remain untouched by these ideas? Or was he, too, concerned by the decline of chivalry and the knightly class? If so, in which aspects of his work could be a critique of knighthood found, and to which end of the spectrum does he belong? To the radical one, calling for a complete dismantling of the knightly class, like St. Bernard and Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis, or to the moderate one, arguing only for a modest reform of knighthood, like Ramon Lull and Geoffrey de Charny? These questions will be addressed in the follow-

ing chapter.

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4 The Agents of Criticism of the Contemporary State

of Knighthood in SGGK

Opening with a grand hall full of knights and ladies enjoying festivities and contin-uing with the vivid and detailed description of the splendor of both the court of King Arthur and Lord Bertilak and the fine attire and manners of their members, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight resembles a celebration and praise of the courtly life and glorifi-cation of the famous knightly fellowship of the Round Table rather than a critique. In many aspects, the introduction to this poem mirrors other works of the Gawain-poet

already discussed. Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness all start with a seemingly peaceful and idyllic setting which is then gradually transformed into a critique of an individual, a society, or humanity as such. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is no exception to this pattern of Gawain-poet's works, and the merriment at Camelot is abruptly disturbed by a green intruder that has come to reveal the weaknesses inherent to all human be-ings, even to the seemingly perfect knights of the Round Table.

As illustrated in the previous chapter, kinghood has become a widely discussed

topic by the times of the Gawain-poet, and the increasing knightly violence has turned into an urgent issue of the day. An idea of a reform of the declining knightly class has preoccupied the minds of different segments of medieval society, which could have been seen on the pages of clerical treatises, royal charters, chivalric manuals and biog-

raphies, and epic poems, including romances – a genre to which also SGGK belongs. As this thesis argues, the Gawain-poet has not remained untouched by this reform spirit and, the same as many of his contemporaries, conveyed his stance on the medieval state of kinghood and chivalry in his work. In SGGK, this stance is expressed primarily through the characters of the Green Knight, King Arthur and his knights, and the pro-

tagonist Sir Gawain who are all representatives of the knightly class.

4.1. The Green Knight

Throughout the years, scholars have come with a plethora of theories about the

role and origins of the Green Knight. For some, he is the embodiment of Death, the Devil, or on the contrary, God himself. No consensus has been reached yet, and the Green Knight remains an enigma. What is, however, clear from the words of the poet himself is that the Green Knight is first and foremost a knight, judging by his color and attributes a supernatural one, but knight nonetheless. Thus, he is a representative of the class about which there was a lively discussion during the poet's lifetime. In fact, after a closer inspection, we might find channeled through the Green Knight the poet's

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stance on several topics discussed by his contemporaries, namely on the dichotomy between the knight-warrior and knight-courtier, the issue of knightly violence, and the unrealistic demands of the chivalric code and in extension the society on members of the knightly class.

The poet introduces the Green Knight as an epitome of the dual face of knight-

hood right from the beginning of the story. At the same time, he represents the ferocity and refinement, the savage nature and high civilization, the life and death. As the Green Knight enters the great hall of Camelot and interrupts the ongoing festivities, the way the poet describes him seems to match the confusion of the members of Arthur's court. The intruder defies all categories; he is a puzzling paradox:

He is an awesome fellow Who in height outstripped all earthly men. From throat to thigh, he was so thickset and square, His loins and limbs were so long and so great, That he was half a giant on earth, I believe; Yet mainly and most of all a man he seemed, And the handsomest of horsemen, though huge, at that; For though at back and at breast his body was broad, His hips and haunches were elegant and small, And perfectly proportioned were all parts of the man,

As seen. (26)

He seems to be a perfect combination of a warrior and courtier. His height and strong body mean a significant advantage in battle and make him a mighty warrior. As the poet details, the Green Knight is "Swift to strike and stun/His dreadful blows, men deemed,/Once dealt, meant death was done" (28). Yet, at the same time, he is dubbed the "handsomest of horsemen" (26) with elegant and small hips and haunches, and all of his parts being "perfectly proportioned" (26) which makes him a knight ideal for conquering not only the enemies on battlefields but also the hearts of ladies within the castle's walls.

The passage then describes his attire and the trappings of his horse that reflect a taste

for finery:

And garments of green girt the fellow about A two-third length tunic, tight at the waist, A comely cloak on top, accomplished with lining Of the finest fur to be found, made of one piece, Marvelous fur-trimmed material, with matching hood

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Lying back from his locks and laid on his shoulders; Fitly held-up hose, in hue the same green, That was caught at the calf, with clinking spurs beneath Of bright gold on the bases of embroidered silk. So were the bars on his belt and the brilliants set In ravishing array on the rich accouterments About himself and his saddle on silken work. It would be tedious to tell a tithe of the trifles Embossed and embroidered, such as birds and flies, In gay green gauds, with gold everywhere. (27)

Moreover, the green and gold, mentioned several times in this passage, symbol-ize and further emphasize the contrast between the untamed forces of nature and the refinement of civilization that Green Knight combines. Despite the existence of a chiv-alric code regulating the knightly conduct on the battlefield, as was discussed in the previous chapter, this code had been rarely upheld in the heat of battle, and basic in-stincts had overcome all notions of propriety. In both fictional tales, like the one about Palamon and Arcite in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and biographic stories of knights, like the History of William Marshal, combating knights are portrayed as savage, and even animal-like fighters driven by natural instincts and the kill or be killed mentality. The green hue of Green Knight's skin and attire evokes the wild and primordial aspect of knighthood, the part of the knight's psyche from which stem the basic instincts that

help him survive a battle.

Besides being of green color, the Green Knight's "great bushy beard" (28), the holy bob in his hand, and the birds and butterflies embroidered on his mantle, too, connect him with the world of nature. Yet, his green skin "glistens like an enameled surface" (30), and his attire is adorned by silken tassels, the gold-studded nails, emer-ald gems, and golden embroidery which signals his connection with another and con-trasting way of life. Green has been, too, during the times of the Gawain-poet regarded as "the color of high fashion" (Thomas, 99). The Green Knight bears many associations with nature, to be sure. Still, he is as well "a representative of the high civilization, the sophistication, the man-made artificiality of the court" (Goldhurst, 62). He is not solely the harsh, primitive, uncivilized side of man's nature, but also its antithesis.

Unlike in many other contemporary works, the poet's emphasis is not restricted

to either of the two aspects of knighthood the Green Knight combines; they are, instead, presented as equal; one completes the other. This symbiosis is reflected in how the poet describes the Green Knight: the natural and courtly aspects of his character alter-nate in the stanzas, lines devoted to natural aspects of the Green Knight's appearance are followed by ones with courtly aspects and so on. This alternation applies both to

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more subtle representations of the green versus gold/natural versus civilized themes, such as the lines "And the hair of his head was the same hue as his horse,/And floated finely like a fan round his shoulders/ And a great bushy beard on his breast flowing down" (27) and their more explicit versions like "With twists of twining gold, twinkling in the green/First a green gossamer, a golden one next" (28).

Thus, although the Green Knight's appearance at Arthur's court breaks down

the boundaries between the wild and civilized space, he is not portrayed as an absolute Other. Instead, the "gallant rider" resembles, despite his green color, first and foremost a knight to which also attests the name he is given – the Green Knight. Still, he is a rare specimen of a knight, not only because of the hue of his skin but also because he man-

ages to combine both aspects of knighthood, the untamed and civilized, in harmony. In this, he is different from the knights of Arthur's court, including Gawain, as will be dis-cussed in the following subchapters.

The contrast between the harsh, uncivilized, and battle-oriented and refined,

civilized, and court-oriented side of knightly life is reflected not only in the Green Knight's appearance but also in the place he resides in. As Sir Gawain travels through the country of Wirral to meet the Green Knight at the mysterious Green Chapel to com-plete the beheading challenge, the Gawain-poet starts portraying the stark contrast be-tween the refined and welcoming castle of Gawain's host, Lord Bertilak, who is actually the Green Knight in disguise, and the harsh and inhospitable country that surrounds it.

This country is full of dangerous "marshes and swamps" (49), "sharp naked rocks" (49), raging wind and cold, and hostile creatures lurking in the shadows. Hence, Gawain's journey is interrupted by "death-struggles with dragons" (48), "battles with wolves and wild men" (48), and fights with "bulls, bears and boars, and ogres" (48). As the poet concludes, had Sir Gawain "not been doughty in endurance and dutiful to God/Doubtless he would have been done to death time and again" (49).

Yet, the court of the Hautdesert castle managed to not only survive but even

thrive in this deadly country and its brutal conditions. The castle appears in front of Gawain as an oasis in the middle of a desert. It is the complete opposite of the Wirral forest he had been journeying through. The poet describes the residence as "the come-liest castle that ever a knight owned" (49). It is portrayed as a beacon of civilization

and refinement that "simmers and shines through the oaks" (50). Even more splendor awaits inside the castle. When Gawain enters, he is courteously welcomed and offered lodgings and fresh clothes. He is brought to:

A beautiful room where the bedding was noble, The bed-curtains, of brilliant silk with bright gold hems, Had skillfully sewn coverlets with comely facings,

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And the fairest fur on the fringes was worked. Toulouse and Turkestan tapestries on the wall And fine carpets underfoot, on the floor, were fittingly matched. (53)

Then "amid merry talk Gawain was disrobed,/And retainers readily brought him rich robes/Of the choicest kind to choose from and change into" (53). The clothes he is of-fered are as fine as those worn by the Green Knight during his appearance at Camelot: "And then on Gawain a magnificent mantle was thrown./A gleaming garment gor-geously embroidered,/Fairly lined with fur, the finest skins/Of ermine on earth and his hood of the same" (54).

When Gawain meets his host, Sir Bertilak, the poet again presents the character as the embodiment of both the untamed and refined side of man's and, by extension, knight's nature. He resembles both a fierce warrior and a fine courtier. Gawain de-scribes Sir Bertilak as "a brave lord" (53), "a powerful man in his prime, of stupendous size" (53), "broad and bright was his beard, all beaver-hued;/strong and sturdy he stood on his stalwart legs;/His face was fierce as fire, free was his speech,/And he seemed in good sooth a suitable man/To be prince of a people with companions of mettle" (54). He is, at the same time, "Gentle and handsome knight/From wherever in the world he were,/At sight it seemed he might/Be a prince without a peer/In field where fell men fight" (54). The same as in the passage of Green Knight's arrival to Cam-elot, the poet portrays a character in which the warrior and courtier and the untamed

and refined, though opposites, blend seamlessly.

In fact, the outside of the castle, too, combines features that make the structure resilient against a raid during a battle with those that make it look aesthetically pleas-ing. The castle, also dubbed as "stronghold" by Gawain, is "Pitched on a plain, with a park all-round,/Impregnably palisaded with pointed stakes,/And containing many trees in its two-mile circumference" (50). The trees provide a natural barrier slowing a potential attack on the castle and allow it to blend more seamlessly into the surround-ing country. While Gawain stands on the bank, he continues in the description of the Hautdesert castle:

The deep double ditch that drove round the place.

The wall went into the water wonderfully deep, And then to a huge height upwards it reared In hard hewn stone, up to the cornice; Built under the battlements in the best style, courses jutted And turrets protruded between, constructed With loopholes in plenty with locking shutters. (51)

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The poet concludes that "No better barbican had ever been beheld by Gawain" (52).

The breakdown of boundaries between the untamed and civilized seen during both the arrival of the Green Knight at Camelot and Gawain's arrival at Lord Bertilak's castle finds further expression in the place where these men are to complete the be-heading challenge – the Green Chapel. Although both Gawain and the audience antici-pate a structure that resembles the Green Knight's magnificence, these expectations remain unfulfilled. The same as the Green Knight, the Chapel does not represent some-thing immediately recognizable. The place where the Green Chapel is supposed to be "seemed savage and wild" (86) to Gawain, "and no sign did he see of any sort of build-ing" (87). He cannot find anything resembling a Chapel, only "A hillock of sorts, a

smooth-surfaced barrow on a slope beside a stream/Which flowed forth fast there in its course,/Foaming and frothing as if feverishly boiling" (88). It seems almost like a gate to hell to Gawain, and he asks himself, "Is the Chapel Green/This mound?/At such might Satan be seen/Saying matins at midnight" (88). Again, the poet combines in his description two opposites when Gawain says that "It is the most evil holy place I ever entered" (89). The same as the Green Knight, the Chapel, at first sight, evokes certain death; however, it also symbolizes life and rebirth, which will be shortly addressed in more detail.

The character of the Green Knight thus combines aspects of a knight-fighter and knight-courtier. He is both crude and civilized and represents equally the forces of life

and death. His mighty figure and strong limbs make him a great warrior, and his hand-some face and fine clothes make him a noble courtier. The same duality applies to the castle of his alter ego, Sir Bertilak, which is described both as an invincible stronghold and a splendid place full of courtly luxuries and refinement. Sir Bertilak is, too, por-trayed as a mighty hunter able to kill even the fiercest animal of the surrounding forest – the wild boar. Yet, he is able to be restrained in killing.

At the same time, he is a noble courtier who gives Gawain a proper welcome, offers him fine room and fresh clothes, observes the Christian code, serves only fish during the fasting days, and attends the chapel in the castle. Moreover, unlike Gawain, the Green Knight/Sir Bertilak keeps his end of the compact fully: without flinching, he allows Gawain to decapitate him at the beginning of the story and during Gawain's stay

at the Hautdesert, exchanges with him all he gained throughout the day. Hence, the Green Knight could be termed the flower of chivalry, a designation that the poet affords instead to Gawain. However, it is the Green Knight rather than Sir Gawain who resem-bles a perfect knight, the combination of fierce warrior and noble and pious courtier as prescribed by the chivalric code. Why then is it not him who bears the pentangle, the symbol of perfection?

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The answer to this question can be found by analyzing the role the poet assigns to the Green Knight. The Gawain-poet does not, in fact, deny Green Knight's superior-ity; otherwise, the poet would not have ascribed him the role of a moral authority en-titled to test and judge the court of King Arthur and Sir Gawain. After appearing at Camelot at the beginning of the story, the Green Knights explicitly states that he comes to “test the renown" of the famous knights of the Round Table (32). Right from the start, we can see that questioning the reputation of Arthur's knights as the bravest in the realm might be substantiated as when the Green Knight challenges them all remain silent and exchange fearful glances (33). Their timid response contrasts with the Green Knight's confidence and fierceness. He is described as "man in his prime" (53), thus of mature age, while Arthur's knights are compared to "beardless boys" (31). This differ-

ence implies that Bertilak is more authoritative than these knights or even more than Arthur himself, which makes him appropriate for the role of the tester, judge, and moral guide.

The contrast between the mature and authoritative Green Knight and youthful

and imprudent Arthur and his knights is further amplified in the scenes taking part at the Hautdesert castle. The Green Knight's alter ego, Sir Bertilak is immediately recog-nized by Gawain as perfectly fitted to govern such a large court. In John Burrow's words, "Bertilak has a maturity, stability, and control which Arthur and his court lack" (Burrow, 78). Although Christmas festivities are as lively at Hautdesert as they are at Camelot, we can notice a difference in that Bertilak "pays more attention to rules and

procedures" (Anderson, 344). Hence, "he embodies the idea of chivalry as a set of forms" (Anderson, 345). While Arthur's "short temper" may "take him off at any mo-ment in an unpredictable direction," festivities at Hautdesert proceed in a well-ordered sequence. Moreover, Sir Bertilak adheres to the Christian teaching and serves no meat, only fish, during the fasting days. Similarly, the piety of Bertilak and his court is further reflected in their visits to the chapel to pray.

At Hautdesert, the spontaneity of youth is replaced by rationality and rules,

which creates a perfect environment for the testing and judging of Sir Gawain. Through the exchange of winning, Sir Bertilak/Green Knight tests Gawain on three consecutive days. His loyalty to moral, Christian and chivalric code are all tried in this test. Although Gawain manages to resist the temptations of Lady Bertilak and exchange all the win-

nings with her husband for the first two days, on the third day, he is lured by the prom-ise of the green girdle offered to him by Lady Bertilak that can save him from all deadly blows. Sir Gawain accepts this gift and, in the hope that it will keep him from Green Knight's ax, fails to turn it over to Sir Bertilak as a part of their compact. Gawain is thus disloyal to his host and the moral and chivalric code.

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However, despite his transgression, the Green Knight is not very harsh in his judgment of Gawain. Although he makes Gawain aware of his imperfections, he "does not punish him according to a strictly ideal sense of justice" (Martin, 320). The Green Knight does not deal Gawain with a deadly blow; he punishes him only with "a nick on the neck" (107). Instead of killing Gawain, the Green Knight wants to enlighten him and reform his perspective of the knighthood and the chivalric code as such, and the wound on Gawain's neck and the green girdle is supposed to remind him of the Green Knight's message. There are, essentially, two lessons the Green Knight wants to teach Gawain.

The first is that human life should be valued, and a knight should not rush to

take the lives of others, thus a similar message as had been at that time propagated by

previously discussed clerical treatises, royal and judicial documents, biographies of knights, chivalric manuals, and epic poems. Since his appearance at Camelot, the Green Knight acts as a proponent of restrained violence. Although he seemed to be the one bringing violence to the festivities of Arthurian court, Arthur has demanded some "marvel" before dinner, which would typically in medieval times mean either a tour-nament, jousting, or another form of combat (Keauper, 102). Despite their modern ro-manticized perception, such occasions were often very bloody and resulted in many deaths and injuries. For instance, in 1388, more than "sixty knights and squires died in the English town of Boston. Although the majority died from combat wounds, many of them also suffocated to death by the dust of the tournament field, and the sky was sup-posedly black with carrion hovering over the slaughter" (Barber and Barker, 50).

Roughly at the same time, another tournament in some other English town resulted in half the town being burned down by the combating knights (Barber and Barker, 31).

The Green Knight, on the other hand, explicitly states that "it is not combat he

craves" (31) but "a Christmas game" (31). In this game, only two lives will be at stake, his own and one of the knights who picks up the challenge. Moreover, although the Green Knight offers his ax as a potential weapon to be used in the game, "the holy bob which is also held by the knight might just as easily be used to complete the exchange of blows" (Clark and Wasserman, 11). Gawain, who agrees to the challenges, thus met-aphorically chooses between the ax of death and the holy of life. The Green Knight also did not say that the blow must be deadly; Gawain could have only scratched him in-stead of decapitating him with one blow. Gawain's choice reflects his inherent inclina-

tion to opt for violence and death. The following scene in which the court members kick the Green Knight's severed head like a ball too hints at the court's familiarity with violence and gruesome sights. Similarly, immediately after the Green Knight leaves Camelot, despite the gruesome scenes they have witnessed, the knights and ladies re-turn to festivities as nothing had ever happened.

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The same restraint and avoidance of mindless killing is also the reason why the Green Knight does not decapitate Gawain at the Green Chapel and instead leaves him only with a scratch. Rather than punishing Gawain for his disloyalty and failure in the test, the Green Knight wants him to realize the value of human life. Setting on the quest to find the Green Chapel, Gawain was convinced that he journeys towards certain death. Like all human beings, he fears such fate, which is why he accepts the green gir-dle and conceals it from Sir Bertilak. Thus, the Green Knight's challenge helped Gawain realize the value of human life and that it should not be taken rashly as he had done when he decided to sever the Green Knight's head. Gawain could have easily done the same thing as the Green Knight and leave only a tiny scratch on his neck.

The Green Chapel encounter helps Gawain realize not only the frailty and value of human life, including his but also his weaknesses and imperfections. As the Green Knight hints, no human knight can attain perfection, and the demands of chivalric code on knights are unrealistic. Despite the expectations of unflinching courage of knights, it is often impossible not to flinch while in danger, even if the chivalric code maintains doing otherwise. Hence, the Green Knight does not condemn Gawain for fearing death and tells Gawain that despite not being the perfect pentangle knight he had been thought to be, he is still "a pearl among white peas" (109), a shining example among his fellow knights because it was not for any trifling gain, he concealed the green girdle from Bertilak but for saving his life instead. The Green Knight assures Gawain that "only in faith you lacked, sir, a little, and of loyalty came short. But that was for no artful

wickedness, not for wooing either, but because you loved your own life: the less do I blame you" (110). Although the chivalric code maintained that love of life should not take precedence over virtue or courage, human experience "teaches us that situations of peril overwhelm us with the same unintelligible force that emanates from the figure of the Green Knight" (Martin, 321). Despite what is expected of a knight, to fear death is rational and human.

The fact that attaining perfection and complying fully with chivalric ideals can-

not be achieved by any human knight can, in fact, explain why it is not the Green Knight who bears the pentangle insignia despite being described as a perfect combination of warrior and courtier, fierce and noble and possessing the moral authority to judge other knights. The Green Knight is not as he is naturally, and he admits he has been

enchanted by Morgan, which resulted in this form of his (99). He can thus be perfect, but he is not so naturally.

Through the character of the Green Knight, the poet draws attention to how the

common expectations society has of a knight differ drastically from the reality and how the chivalric code that motivates these expectations propagates an unrealistic image of a perfect knight, which is, however, unattainable by any human being. Despite the

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code preaching for unflinching courage, hardly anyone can completely suppress fear-ing death. The limited concern for human life, either of the knight or his enemy, stands in contrast with not only human nature but also the Christian teaching, which was sup-posed to be a part of medieval chivalric code. The state of knighthood in the times of the Gawain-poet as governed by chivalric code and as pressured by the expectations of the society essentially irreconcilable both externally and internally. Externally, its de-mands on knights to prefer courage over their own lives oppose the basic instinct of all human beings to preserve their life and are thus defying human nature. And internally, although the chivalric code incorporates and promotes Christian teaching, its disre-gard for human life breaches this teaching.

In this respect, the Green Knight presents a kind of mentor to Gawain and, by extension, to the poem's audience. The same as the clerical treatises, chivalric manuals, and biographies, and various epic poems, the Green Knight expresses the need for a reform of knighthood and chivalric code, the expectations it creates about knights, and the demands it puts on them. As expressed through the Green Knight's character, knights should not engage in unrestrained and unheeded violence. They should not be expected to disregard the value of human life completely, be it theirs or their oppo-nent's. By Gawain's realization of his faults and the need for a personal reform which he tries to extend to other members of Arthur's court by telling the tale about his fail-ure, the poet shows that the reform is possible, but it will most likely be effective only if targeted at individual knights. This conclusion is very similar to the one of Ramon de

Llull mentioned previously, who too believes that for any reform of knighthood to be effective, it has to be accepted and desired by individual knights. Neither Llull nor the Gawain-poet thus condemns chivalry and knighthood completely; instead, there is hope for the knightly class if the faults will be realized and amended. The green color of the Green Knight, who is the voice of the reform in the poem, in fact, symbolized in the Middle Ages besides the already discussed aspects also hope, which in this case could have represented the hope for knighthood and chivalry.

4.2. King Arthur and His Court

The need for a reform of knighthood and chivalry is established right at the be-

ginning of the poem when the poet tells a tale about the destruction of Troy, a kingdom that seemed to be flourishing and invincible until the moment of its sudden fall. The smooth transition from Troy's ruins to Camelot's festivities, which is too described as in full bloom, subtly hints at how perception and expectations can deceive us. Although the poet presents us with a court full of bliss and merriment and famed for its valiant knights that have no equal in the realm, the precautionary tale of Troy looms in the air

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until the Green Knight arrives. With his arrival, the true face of the court is revealed, and their renown questioned, and their conduct criticized. The court, essentially, acts as a means for the Gawain-poet to illustrate the decay of the knightly class hidden un-der the façade of refinement.

Criticism of the knightly class and its decline underlies the poem from its very

beginning. Before telling the tale of Sir Gawain's Quest to the Green Chapel, the poet presents us with a story about the origins of England and the predecessors of King Ar-thur and his court. The story mixes the elements of "bliss and blunder" and shows that every coin has two sides. Every great figure of Britain's glorious past has a dark and less flattering side, and reminders of failure mar the greatness of the past. Britain's

ancient glory is marked by:

Its beginnings in Troy, by the heroic figure of Aeneas, and Brutus the founder of Britain; but Troy was burned to ashes, Aeneas the atheling, the truest on earth, was tainted with treason, and the history of Britain to the time of Arthur has been a succession of war and woe, of bliss and blunder. (2)

This story which serves as a frame for the following tale about Gawain's adven-

ture, hints that things are not always as they seem to be and that even great men famed for their noble deeds are inherently fallible and far from perfect. Some scholars even argue that the central message of the story is the inevitable decay of society in which

it is very reminiscent of both the introduction of Confessio Amantis, an epic poem by Gawain-poet's contemporary John Gower, and the poet's own works contained in the same manuscript as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. All civilizations mentioned in the story, be it Troy, Thebes, or Rome, are now mere ruins. Moreover, as the Gawain-poet and his medieval audience had been aware, King Arthur and his court too met the same fate. The Arthurian society has gradually decayed from within, resulting in the disso-lution of the Round Table, eventually in the fall of Arthur and the disintegration of his realm. Gawain's failure in the quest to the Green Chapel and maybe even the bleak fu-ture of King Arthur's court are thus foreshadowed here.

The same as Gower in Confessio and many other authors of contemporary chiv-

alric manuals, biographies, and epic poems discussed in the previous chapter, the

Gawain-poet portrays at the beginning of SGGK the contrast between the character of knighthood in the past and his days. The predecessors of Arthur and his knights are described as fierce men achieving great deeds. Aeneas is said to have "conquered king-doms and kept in his hand/Wellnigh all the wealth of the western lands" (2). Romulus "Set up the city in splendid pomp,/Then named her with his own name, which now she still has" (2). And Brutus "Far over the French flood/On many spacious slopes/Set Brit-ain with joy/And grace/Where war and feud and wonder/Have ruled the realm a

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space" (3). When the poet progresses to describe King Arthur, the focus shifts, and his court is defined through its refined appearance instead of heroic feats. The court is enjoying festivities, music, and dancing in the hall decorated with "precious hangings of splendid silk" (23) and with "Rich tapestry of Toulouse and Turkestan/Brilliantly embroidered with the best gems/Of warranted worth that wealth at any time/Could buy" (24).

The Gawain-poet thus points, like many of his contemporaries, to the ongoing

transition of knights from warriors and men of action to courtiers who are keener on courtly exploits, merriment, dancing, and talking. Some scholars, like Randy Schiff even go as far as speaking of "degeneration" as "the frame's militarist empires fade into de-

cidedly frivolous Camelot" and arguing that the poet stresses "how Britain's originally Trojan ethnie has devolved from an epic warrior culture to an overly sophisticated Camelot" (Shiff, 89). Others view as an echo of "the anti-war spirit of the alliterative The Destruction of Troy" authored by Gawain-poet's contemporary who also came from some of the northern regions "where Achilles condemns war as a waste of life in a fool-ish cause" (Putter, 655). In its time, this pacifist work presented a countercurrent tra-dition to Geoffrey of Monmouth's militaristic The History of the Kings of Britain (Thomas, 220).

Thus, it is fitting that it is the renown of Arthur's knights for their battle prowess

that the Green Knight comes to test. After he arrives at Camelot, the Green Knight ex-

plains that his "intention was not to tarry in this turreted hall" (30); instead, he says to King Arthur that:

As your reputation, royal sir, is raised up so high, And your castle and cavaliers are accounted the best, The mightiest of mail-dad men in mounted fighting, The most warlike, the worthiest the world has bred, Most valiant to vie with in virile contests, And as chivalry is shown here, so I am assured, At this time, I tell you, that has attracted me here. (31)

The image of Arthur's court presented by the poet has been thus far very differ-

ent from what the Green Knight claims to have heard about the knights of the Round Table. And the Green Knight, too, seems to quickly realize that the tales about the court could have been deceiving. As he looks about the hall, he contends that he sees only "beardless boys" (32), not fierce warriors undeserving of the fame they had been at-tributed. His doubts about the renown of Arthur's knights prove legitimate as no one answers his challenge. After offering an exchange of blows, dead silence overtakes the

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hall, and the knights exchange terrified glances. Not one knight comes forward, and the Green Knight scorns their cowardice:

What, is this Arthur's house, the honor of which Is bruited abroad so abundantly? Has your pride disappeared? Your prowess gone? Your victories, your valor, your vaunts, where are they? The revel and renown of the RoundTable Is now overwhelmed by a word from one man's voice, For all flinch for fear from a fight not begun!' (32)

The Green Knight thus had a good reason for questioning the tales of the "most war-like" and "most valiant" knights. Although criticized by the Green Knight, the reaction of Arthur's knights is natural as all human beings fear death despite the attempts of chivalric code and knightly training to suppress such fear.

The same as in the previous subchapter, we can see a discrepancy between ex-

pectations and reality. Knighthood in general and the knights of the Round Table, in particular, tend to be idealized. Both the chivalric code and the Arthurian lore promote an image of an ideal knight who is, however, disconnected from reality and human na-ture. Many scholars point to the fact that SGGK is full of references to the renown of Arthur's knights established prior to the story, but the poet tells the audience that the

court is young and in "its first age" (23). King Arthur is said to be of "young blood and wild brain" (24). His actions, too, are described as rash and stand in contrast to the maturity and calmness of the Green Knight. In these stanzas, the poet presents the neg-ative side "to the youthful exuberance of Arthur, and by implication, the court and the romantic ideals they represent is indicated: a potentially damaging carelessness, a lack of stability and responsibility" (Bakuuro, 23). Thus, the expectations stemming from the renown of the Round Table might be exaggerated and unrealistic to which attests to both the fearful reaction of the knights to the Green Knight's challenge and the result of Gawain's quest to the Green Chapel where he is found to be an excellent knight but not perfect as his reputation would suggest.

The reaction of Arthur's knights, in fact, reveals not only the distance between

the renown of the Round Table and the reality but also the lack of loyalty of these knights to their lord. As none of Arthur's knights answer the Green Knight's challenge, he has to pick it up himself, thus risking his life and the future of the realm that would be left without a ruler if Arthur had died. This behavior of Arthur's knights conflicts with both the chivalric code and the customs of a feudal society that depends on knights' loyalty to their lord. It is loyalty that has been, since ancient times, the basis of the English approach to government. The motive of loyalty and the lack of it introduced

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at the beginning of the poem in the tale about the origins of Britain resurfaces and brings with it the question of whether the poet implies that Camelot is aiming towards the same destiny as the fallen cities of Troy, Thebes, and the Roman Empire. This prem-onition is amplified further by the awareness of both modern and medieval audiences of the poem of the imminent fall of King Arthur and the Round Table besieged by di-vided loyalties and infidelities known from other Arthurian tales.

The Matters of Troy and Thebes have been during the time of the Gawain-poet,

in fact, commonly associated with the issue of dis/loyalty and the idea of fall of realms and empires and also used by his contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer. In both Troilus and Criseyde and the Knight's Tale, the fall of Troy and Thebes provide a background for the

central theme of loyalty, be it to one's lord or fellow knight, and the abandonment of this loyalty because of love for a woman. The topic of loyalty and the lack of it is also intertwined with the story of SGGK, as will be discussed shortly. Some scholars, like Richard Patterson, even argue that the decline and fall of the Trojan and Theban society could have been used as an allusion to the turmoil faced by Richard II at the hands of the Appellants and other political groups (Patterson, 306).

Lack of loyalty is also what Gawain is found guilty of by the Green Knight at the

Green Chapel, which will be discussed in more detail in the following subchapter. Gawain realizes this fault and decides to wear the green girdle as a reminder of his weaknesses to prevent future disloyalty. He tries to pass his experience to other court

members after his return and thus warn them against their own potential lack of loy-alty and other flaws. The court, however, does not agree with Gawain's version of the story and, instead of a sign of failure, interprets the girdle as a symbol of his success.

Moreover, they adopt the girdle as a baldric, and it becomes the insignia of the

court, which is very fitting as it will ultimately be the disloyalty, which the girdle sym-bolizes, that will be behind the fall of Arthur and the demise of the Round Table. In the words of Kevin Whetter, "the green lace tells a story of divided loyalties, the dangers of seduction, and familial strife, that is, the very qualities that bring about the infidelity of Guinevere and Lancelot, the death of Arthur and Gawain, and the end of a kingdom" (Whetter, 168). The reemerging Trojan theme further enforces the sense of the ap-proaching end of Arthur's reign and disintegration of both his fellowship of knights and

his realm as the poet ends the story with a reminder of the fate awaiting a society that cannot learn from its mistakes and reform its conduct.

The Gawain-poet illustrates on the example of Camelot with its knights of the

Round Table headed by King Arthur, a society which is, despite its apparent flourish-ing, moving towards its imminent fall. Like the kingdoms of Troy, Thebes, and Rome, Camelot will end up in ruins if not reformed. The poet shows us that despite their

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renown and apparent perfection and merriment, Arthur and his knights have many weaknesses that defy the expectations of both the audience and the Green Knight who comes to test them. Through his intervention, the court has a chance for redemption, a chance to realize their faults and be beware of them in the future. This chance, how-ever, remains unfulfilled as when Gawain returns from his quest enlightened by the Green Knight, Arthur and his knights fail to understand the need for reform and thus doom themselves to their coming fall, a fate the poet emphasizes by reviving the Trojan theme.

4.3. Sir Gawain

Although Sir Gawain is introduced by the poet as a part of Arthur's court, right from the beginning, we can sense that he is different from his fellow knights. He is set apart from the court from the moment he first speaks and remains so until the very end of the poem. As the only knight of the Round Table, he has enough courage and feeling for the honor to answer the Green Knight's challenge and relieve his lord, King Arthur, of the duty to take it upon himself. This decision may at first seem like a path to certain death, but as the ending of the story shows, it is instead a step towards en-lightenment, for by agreeing to the challenge and undertaking the journey to the Green Chapel, Gawain is offered an opportunity to discover his weaknesses, the value of hu-man life, and the foolishness in blindly following the unattainable and unrealistic ideal of a perfect Christian knight set by the chivalric code.

At first, it would seem that there is not much to reform on Gawain. He is the one

who answers the Green Knight's challenge and frees Arthur from the obligation to take it upon himself, and through his courteous response to the green challenger, he is pre-sented as the flower of chivalry and courtesy. This image of a perfect knight is then reinforced during the arming scene when Gawain prepares to commence his journey to the Green Chapel. Besides the gleaming armor, he is also equipped with a shield and coat featuring a pentangle which the poet calls a fitting sign for the princely knight Gawain. The emblem symbolizes that Gawain is "reputed good and, like gold well re-fined/devoid of all villainy, every virtue displaying in the field" (45) and that he pos-sesses all knightly virtues demanded by the chivalric code, including liberality, com-passion, continence, courtesy, and piety (46). Thus, as he embarks on his quest, Gawain

is portrayed as an ideal Christian knight, an epitome of chivalry that complies perfectly with the common perception of a medieval knight and the image propagated by most contemporary romances.

Gawain is not only compared to "gold well refined," but this color is also preva-

lent in his attire: the pentangle on his coat and shield, the trimming of and embroidery

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on his tunic, and the tassels on Gringolet's saddle are all gold. Several scholars argue that the poet employed these golden adornments to demonstrate Gawain's perceived perfection outwardly. Burrow, for instance, opines that "gold serves as a mark of ex-cellence, both to the exterior and interior man" (Burrow, 40). However, all that glitters is not gold, and although the poet seems to "link the pentangle to Gawain's golden ap-pearance in order to create a seemingly impenetrable vision of perfection," (Patrick, 35) upon closer examination of the arming scene, it is evident that "the pentangle's symbolic perfection is merely associated with Gawain and not necessarily indicative of the knight's character" (Patrick, 37).

Both are described as exterior to Gawain, as something that is put on him. More-

over, the poet admits that the pentangle is "a new sign" (45) for Gawain. In the words of Stephanie Hollis, "Gawain's distinct identity appears to have a separable existence. He appears to wear his identity which is equivalent to his reputation as an extraneous adornment, just as a knight wears on his armor the heraldic device which enables him to be distinguished from other knights" (Hollis, 273). His armor essentially gestures towards a reputation that he does not own. According to Louise Fradenburg, Gawain puts on both his armor and reputation "like the knight at play, constantly anterior to the name he bears" (Fradenburg, 38). The golden emblem on Gawain's shield thus serves as a guide rather than "an indication that he has achieved the inhuman level of perfection that he is attributed" (Hollis, 281). As we learn later, the pentangle and gold on Gawain's attire have a prescriptive rather than descriptive function in which they

resemble the medieval chivalric code.

Gawain's identity is throughout the story constructed and challenged by other characters. These characters have all a certain expectation of Gawain influenced by his reputation. They feel as though they have known the knight and voice their dissatisfac-tion when the real Gawain does not match their expectations. In narrative terms, "Gawain is an object about which others have fixed expectations, expectations based on a traditional image of who and what he is: yet he himself imports different frames of reference" (Batt, 126). This can be seen during at least three occasions throughout the story: upon Gawain's arrival at Hautdesert, during the Bedroom scenes, and after Gawain's coming to the Green Chapel.

First, as Gawain arrives at the Hautdesert castle and is seated to dine with Lord Bertilak and his court, he is praised as the knight "To whose person are proper all prowess and worth,/And pure and perfect manners, and praises unceasing./His repu-tation rates first in the ranks of men" (55). The members of the court even say that "'Now we shall see displayed the seemliest manners/Learn the converse of a courtly love/And the faultless figures of virtuous discourse./Since we have seized upon this scion of good breeding./God has given us of his grace good measure/In granting us

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such a guest as Gawain is" (56). Gawain, however, frustrates their expectations, and instead of words of courtly love, he enjoys his dinner and then goes to the chapel.

The second occasion which reveals the mismatch between Gawain's reputation

and real self comes the following day when Lady Bertilak enters his room as he is wak-ing up. Despite his reputation as a great paramour, Gawain feels "embarrassed" (66), feigns sleep, "crosses himself in dread" (67), and fears the intentions of the Lady. The same as other members of Bertilak's court, she treats Gawain according to his reputa-tion and says that "For I know well, my knight, that your name is Sir Gawain,/Whom all the world worships, wherever he ride;/For lords and their ladies, and all living folk,/Hold your honor in high esteem, and your courtesy" (67). Gawain, however, con-

fesses that he is "hardly the hero of whom [she] speak[s]" and that he feels "altogether unworthy" of her praise (68). This is, in fact, not the first time he has labeled himself unworthy; he already did so when he took over the beheading challenge from Arthur. He thus disavows the expectations other characters but also the audience have about him and disputes his reputation. On the second day that Lady comes to Gawain's cham-ber, she frames her expectations of Gawain not only through his reputation but also through the image promoted by the chivalric code and courtly romances that she reads. She reprimands Gawain for not being the courtly lover she has imagined him to be and says that:

The choicest thing in Chivalry, the chief thing praised,

Is the loyal sport of love, the very lore of arms. For the tale of the contentions of true knights Is told by the title and text of their feats, How lords for their true loves put their lives at hazard, Endured dreadful trials for their dear loves' sakes, And with valor avenged and made void their woes, Bringing home abundant bliss by their virtues. (77)

Lady then voices her discontent with Gawain, sighing that "You are the gentlest and most just of your generation/Everywhere your honor and high fame are known;/Yet I have sat at your side two separate times here/Without hearing you utter in any way/A single syllable of the saga of love" (78). The Lady's perceptions and expectations of

Gawain and knighthood in general are, as we see, limited to what she has read and heard, and Gawain admits that it is beyond his capabilities to fulfill her expectations.

As Elizabeth Scala noted, the Lady acts in these scenes as the communis opinio

(Scala, 76), as a metaphor for the often-unrealistic expectations that people hold about knights and that are enforced by the chivalric code and courtly romances. Hence, when Gawain proves to be reluctant to act on her wishes, she expresses not just her own

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disappointment but "accuses Gawain of shame, of having failed to live up to the norms of society at large" (Scala, 80). The same does the Green Knight when he is about to deal Gawain a blow with his ax at the Green Chapel, and Gawain flinches. The Green Knight questions whether it is before him truly Gawain of the stories he heard: "'You are not Gawain,' said the gallant, 'whose greatness is such/That by hill or hollow no army ever frightened him;/For now you flinch for fear before you feel harm./I never did know that knight to be a coward" (106).

Thus, the discrepancy between expectations and reality is again present, the

same as in the case of Arthur and the court discussed earlier. In this aspect, the poet diverges from most contemporary romances that avoid questioning the glorified and

romanticized image of knights they offer. Unlike the authors of these conventional ro-mances, the Gawain-poet opts for a sense of reality and draws attention to the unat-tainability of perfection propagated by other romances as well as by the chivalric code that simply fails to account for human nature and the inherent human capacity for er-ror. Clare R. Kinney argues that Gawain's shield, along with many other aspects of his character, "is described in such explicit detail in order to demonstrate Gawain as an example of superficial perfection" (Kinney, 49). She also asserts that the poet "con-structs this ideal of perfection only to dismantle it throughout the narrative in order to highlight the gap between the imperfections of the fallible human being and the seam-less moral geometry of the pure pentangle's endless knot of independent virtues" (Kin-ney, 50). Gawain's virtue is never presented in human terms, only in relation to the

symbol, which is "self-contained". However, the symbol is unchanging and is not de-signed to account for the complexity of human interactions and the malleable human psyche. Gawain's failure in the quest is the result of his humanity, which his glittering armor and the associated accomplishments simply cannot conceal.

Thus, the pentangle could be perceived as a metaphor for the medieval chivalric

code and the image of an ideal Christian knight promoted by many contemporary ro-mances. Both the pentangle and chivalric code have been constructed artificially, prop-agate similar knightly virtues, and disregard and try to suppress human nature and primal impulses. Although the poet insists that the symbol of pentangle is well-known and "the English call it,/In all the land the Endless Knot" (45), this name has not been recorded elsewhere than in his poem, and the pentangle itself had been known in the

Middle Ages primarily as a pagan symbol associated with protective magic and witch-craft in general, not as the "Symbol which Solomon conceived once/To betoken holy truth, by its intrinsic right" (46) as the poet claims nor as a heraldic device. The artifi-ciality of the poet's rendering of the pentangle's symbolism is often cited as the main reason behind the length of its description. Geraldine Heng for instance, argues that "the meaning of the symbol is itemized over forty-three lines in the poem means that the signification of pentangle is arbitrary rather than traditional" and that it "functions

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as a description of, a prescription for, an aspiration by, an inspiration to, or a flattering idealization of that knight" (Heng, 505). In the words of Ariel Patrick "in order to demonstrate Gawain's imperfection, the poet first establishes the fallacy of his perfec-tion" (Patrick, 31).

Through the pentangle, the poet constructs an ideal image of a knight that dis-

regards and suppresses human nature and the primal impulses of human beings. The ideal is thus inherently unattainable, a trait that it shares with the chivalric code. Gor-don Shedd notes this irony, stating that 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 behavior most productive of a fruitful life" (Shedd, 11).

Yet over time "through the process of codification," the code's intended purpose was lost, and the same as the pentangle it became "worshipped as an end in itself" (Shedd, 11). The chivalric code has become to signal "a dangerous digression that led both knights and laypersons to believe that perfection was attainable to those who blindly abided to its values" (Patrick, 37). The same as the pentangle, the chivalric code and its demands have become too rigid. In the words of Stephen Manning, "the code has turned into an incestuous cycle, the knight attempts to mold himself into an ideal that, because of this fallibility, is ultimately unobtainable" (Manning, 168). Even for Gawain, who is considered a "pearl" amongst other knights and who goes to greater lengths than the rest to uphold the pentangle and thus the code, his nature condemns him to failure.

As Gawain discovers during his quest, it is impossible for him to remain faithful

to the pentangle and, in extension, to the chivalric code. The pentangle serves as a con-stant reminder for Gawain of the expectations he must uphold. Emblazoned on his shield "that shone all red,/ With the pentangle portrayed in purest gold," Gawain car-ries the heavy weight of the symbol through the story. Piotr Sadowski comments on the irony of such symbolism, claiming, "In the Christian world absolute perfection, symbolized here by gold, is basically unobtainable to man," and the closest an individ-ual can become to this perfection is by "exploring one's innate sinfulness" (Sadowski, 104). As Mildred Lake Day contends, "Gawain's failing, in part, is due to his naivety and his inability to acknowledge his innate fallibility" (Day, 41). He is simply not able to acknowledge that the natural impulse of fearing death is stronger than his loyalty to

both the pentangle and chivalric code. Although the girdle, unlike the shield, is not a proven line of defense, Gawain accepts it and fastens it over the pentangle on his chest, thus "placing concern for his own life above the virtues of the pentangle" (Day, 50). As Burrow remarks, "The exemplary knight, the mirror of Christian chivalry, gives way here, for the first time, to human weakness" (Burrow, 104).

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The girdle, which is also called the "silk," is in its softness the antithesis of the rigid pentangle devoid of any strict meaning. It can be tied and untied and adapted to its wearer and his needs. It is not as artificial as the pentangle; hence the poet devotes only a few lines to its description. It is "a gay green silk, with gold overwrought/ And the borders all bound with embroidery fine" (89). The two juxtaposing colors are often viewed as symbols of the conflict between the rigid socially created codes of conduct, like the pentangle or the chivalric code and human nature. William Goldhurst suggests that the girdle "tells us of man's struggle against tendencies which would draw him back to the state of nature, and of his uncertain efforts to maintain a hold on the com-forts and codes of civilization" (Goldhurst, 64).

The adaptability of the meaning of the girdle is clearly visible during Gawain's encounter with the Green Knight at the Green Chapel. Gawain first perceives the girdle as a possible means to preserve his life, but after he is confronted by the Green Knight for concealing it from Lord Bertilak, Gawain ascribes the girdle a different meaning – that of a "token of untruth" (113). He keeps it as a reminder of his failure and disloyalty to knightly virtues promoted by the pentangle and chivalric code. As we see, for Gawain, placing his life before his chivalric identity is unforgivable. However, at the same time, Gawain "gains clarity on the ambivalence he has been battling throughout the poem and is distraught that his primitive desire for self-preservation overrides his chivalric oath" (Patrick, 45). The Green Knight, who is the initial owner of the girdle, acts in this situation as the opposite of Gawain. He understands that Gawain betrayed

knightly norms because he "loved his own life" (115), he does not blame Gawain for doing so. By widening the scope of judgment "beyond the confines of chivalric code, the Green Knight demonstrates the relative inconsequentiality of Gawain's actions" (Manning, 170). As Shedd argues, "the Green Knight puts the hero's behavior in a pos-itive light as a love of life to demonstrate the inevitable shortcomings of Gawain's at-tempt to rigidly adhere to the values of the pentangle" (Shedd, 10).

Gawain discovers during the quest to the Green Chapel, "human beings cannot

escape their nature, but instead must acknowledge it, allowing it to exist in unison with their codes of belief" (Stewart, 5). Gawain's turmoil and consequent failure result from a blind following of the ideal of perfection embodied by the pentangle and chivalric code and his inability to acknowledge that "his human impulses coexist with his dedi-

cation to the values of the Pentangle" (Stewart, 7). Using Gawain as representative of the Round Table but also of knighthood as such, the poet suggests that one's life should be a truce between natural impulses and allegiances to the virtues which civilized crea-tures are pledged to uphold. This truce is also epitomized in Gawain's adopting of the green girdle not as a replacement for the pentangle but as its complement. As he re-turns to Camelot, he still wears the tunic, carries the shield with the pentangle, and only adds the girdle to his insignia.

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Gawain thus returns enlightened from his quest and made aware of the fact that

to be human means to be flawed, regardless of one's allegiance to systems predicated on perfection. Any human being will inevitably, in some form or another, fail to uphold all of the values of any rigid system. As the Gawain poet hints, the danger is "the failure to acknowledge our own fallibility – a mistake human societies appear to be doomed to repeat" (Pearsall, 250). This mistake is also committed by the members of Arthur's court after Gawain returns from his quest. They all fail to realize the dangers posed by human fallibility, which will eventually lead to their doom as the fall of Arthur and his Round Table fellowship is caused by disloyalties in its ranks.

The juxtaposition of Gawain's shield and the green girdle can be perceived not only through the prism of rigid artificial construct promoting perfection versus the fluid and adaptable symbol reflecting human nature, but also as a juxtaposition of the knight-warrior versus the knight-courtier, which has been already discussed both in this and the previous chapter. Although decorated with a golden pentangle, the shield is no adornment but rather an inevitable part of the fighting gear. It is an instrument for a warrior, a means of defending oneself in combat. On the other hand, the girdle presents the splendid adornment of courtly life. The poet describes it as "Green silk with fine gold fashioned/And borders embroidered its beauty enhancing" (90) with "gold gleaming on glistening tassels" (91). Unlike the shield, it is not a proven means of defense against harm and is more fitting for a courtly setting than for a battlefield; it

is the accessory of a courtier rather than a warrior.

This dichotomy between the martial and courtly aspects of knighthood is, in fact, present in the poem right from its beginning. We first see it embodied in the char-acter of the Green Knight, which has been already discussed in the previous subchap-ter. The poet describes him as a figure seamlessly combining both aspects; he looks both as a mighty warrior and a noble courtier. As the story progresses, the poet begins to discuss the martial and courtly side of knighthood also in relation to Sir Gawain. At first, Gawain seems to be, too, a combination of warrior and courtier as both his prow-ess and courtesy are emphasized. Gradually, however, the poet tips the scale and starts drawing more attention to the courtly aspect of Gawain's character.

Gawain is presented as a great courtier first when he answers the Green Knight's challenge in a very refined manner. Similarly, after he arrives at the castle Hautdesert, he is recognized among the court members for his "virtuous discourse" and "perfect manners" (55). The court associates Gawain with "exquisite father of courtesy," "flawless expressions," and "displays of compartment" (56). Moreover, de-spite the accusations of Lady Bertilak concerning Gawain's renown for courtly love, he is ale during the Bedroom scenes to maintain his courtesy and elegantly steer the

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conversation away from topics that would endanger the chastity of the Lady or his own. The fact that instead of going hunting, like Lord Bertilak, Gawain remains in his chamber also points to his courtly inclinations.

Even though Gawain's renown for martial prowess is, too, mentioned by the

poet and Haudesert's residents, its displays are only brief. Although the poet informs the audience about Gawain's encounters with dragons, ogres, and wild men in the Wir-ral wilderness, he does not go into detail and devotes them only a few lines. As Schiff remarked, "the Gawain-poet's perfunctory recounting of Gawain's armed fights signals that he is interested primarily in the social dimension of knighthood" (Schiff, 92). Even during the arming scene, the poet emphasizes the aesthetics, refinement, and splendor,

not the practicality and martial aspects of Gawain's gear. The poet goes to significant lengths to describe in detail the elements of Gawain's armaments and to carefully frame their decorative and symbolic purpose, taking up nearly a hundred lines in the description. The language strongly emphasizes the brightness of the armor: "gleamed" (43), "brightly polished" (43), "bright steel rings" (43), "well burnished arm-pieces" (44), "gleamed with gold" (44), "bright gold" (44), "which glittered and shone like the radiance of the sun" (45), "perfect diamonds bright" (45). The tunic is decorated with embroidered birds, and Gringolet's saddle is adorned with golden tassels (46). Even the pentangle on his shield is "emblazoned in gold" (45).

The same as the armor is praised mainly for its visual appeal, not sturdiness in

combat, the crucial battle of the story takes place not on the battlefield but in the con-fines of the Hautdesert castle where Gawain is stripped of both his armor and shield. In fact, no test to which Gawain is subjected throughout the poem concerns his fighting prowess but instead, all assess the virtuous of his character, not prowess. The Behead-ing game tests his honor in keeping his word, the Exchange of winnings tests his loyalty to his host, and the Bedroom scenes test his courtesy and faith. None involves any phys-ical fighting. As Clare Kinney notes, it is not physical action that drives the plot; instead, "discourse is the primary venue for knightly identity in the poem, both initiating Mor-gan's challenge and becoming the medium in which Gawain is tested" (Kinney, 51).

It is, in fact, Gawain's discoursive skill which is central to his being and which

constitutes his first line of defense not only of his own life but also of the lives of his

fellow knights and lord. By his pivotal speech, he ends the silence in the hall after Green Knight's challenge and saves Arthur and other knights at the court from facing the deadly game themselves. During the Bedroom scene, again, his conversational skill saves him from the advances of the Lady without damaging the reputation of either of them. The poet, in fact, reminds his audience about the transition of battle from muddy fields of foreign lands to a bedchamber. In the Bedroom scenes, the Gawain-poet dis-places the language of combat to describe Gawain's dealings with the Lady Bertilak:

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"She takes him prisoner" (67); "He surrenders himself and asks for mercy" (67); Gawain "defends himself well" (68), while the Lady tries to "subjugate him" (68). In the words of Ad Putter, "the Gawain-poet does not restrict the relevant habitat of the knight to the battlefield but transports his hero into the domain of human relationships with pitfalls and conflicts of its own" (Putter, 97).

The emphasis on discourse and virtues of one's character rather than on physi-

cal prowess and fighting contributes to the pacifist tone of the poem. As was already discussed in previous subchapters, the violence in the poem is not open nor glorified. Gawain's battles with dragons, ogres, and wild men are, unlike in many other ro-mances, not described in any vivid detail. The Green Knight, too, seeks "not battle" but

a "game," which, although includes his beheading but even that scene is devoid of sav-agery. Both the Green Knight and later Gawain subduedly bare their neck and wait for the opponent to strike. Each demonstrates impeccable courtesy even when they await their beheading. As remarked by Also Scaglione, they display "self-control, entailing humanity and consideration toward others" (Scaglione, 75). Moreover, the Green Knight and Gawain go even further and suppress their desire for martial dominance by actively empowering their opponents. As Jill Mann notes about Gawain, "the narrative images that express his heroism are not images of aggressive action, but of passive suf-fering, the courage to abandon the self to danger without resistance or evasion" (Mann, 213).

Sir Gawain is thus another unheroic hero of what John Burrow calls the Ricard-ian period. According to Burrow, the protagonists of the contemporary works Troilus and Criseyde, Canterbury Tales, Confession Amantis, Piers Plowman, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight "lack 'heroic suggestiveness'" (Burrow, 94). He suggests that:

Troilus, Theseus, Aman, Knight, and Gawain are warriors, but they fight off-stage, and their prowess contributes little to the story and our interest in them. Instead, we see them chiefly in their weeds of peace – Troilus within the walls of Troy, Gawain at Camelot and Hautdesert, Theseus in Athens – living the civil-ian phase of their lives and much in the company of women, and they exercise their authority in the chamber, not on the battlefield. (Burrow, 95)

Hence the Gawain-poet, like his contemporaries Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, diverts from the tradition of cultivating the "matter of Mars" in tales about knights and their exploits. Some critics have seen similar diversion at the court of Richard II who made fashion, elegance, and refined manners a hallmark of his court. Thomas of Walsingham, for example, criticized "the huge numbers of clerics and chamber-knights with which Richard II had surrounded himself" (Thomas, 134). He even said that "these were more knights of Venus than knights of Bellona, more valiant in the bedchamber than on the

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field, armed with words rather than weapons, prompt in speaking but slow in perform-ing acts of war" (Lord, 204). King Richard also preferred peace over war. As Alfred Thomas notes, "Richard was uninterested in pursuing military glory and actively sought peace in the face of opposition from Lords Appellant" (Thomas, 107).

The Gawain-poet, thus through the emphasis on courtesy and discourse rather than on prowess and combat, through his attention to refinement and splendor of Gawain's attire, and the nature of his tests creates an image of a knight-courtier. As was explained in the previous chapter, medieval clerical treatises, chivalric manuals, and biographies, and epic poems often discussed the ongoing transition from a knight-war-rior to a knight-courtier. Some authors viewed it in a positive light as a means of re-

stricting knightly violence; others criticized it and labeled the transition a "decay of the knightly class." The Gawain-poet seems to belong to the former category, and Ad Putter even suggests that the poet could have been a part of the late medieval clerical move-ment pursuing reform of knighthood and chivalry.

As this subchapter illustrated, it is through Gawain's character that the poet's views

on knighthood resonate most strongly. The same as the Dreamer, Jonas, and David from other works of the Gawain-poet, he is the chosen one who is granted the oppor-tunity to set upon a journey at which end awaits the knowledge about not only his weaknesses but also about the weaknesses of the society that surrounds him and is given a chance to reform this society and thus save it from the imminent doom. More-

over, through Gawain's character, the poet develops the themes that have already ap-peared in the cases of Green Knight and Arthur and the court into the most depth, ex-tent, and detail. These are the themes reoccurring also in chivalric manuals, biog-raphies, clerical treatises, and epic poems discussed in the previous chapter, namely discrepancy between the ideal and the reality, the idea of warrior-knight being trans-formed into a courtier-knight, the unattainability of the chivalric ideal, and in extension the chivalric code being detached from the reality.

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5 Conclusion

The main objective of this thesis was to examine whether Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most widely discussed medieval poems commonly known for its praise and celebration of courtly life, hides behind the façade of admiration of the re-finement of King Arthur and his court a critique of the knightly class and the chivalric code. In order to find the answer, the thesis employed a three-stage analysis. At the first stage, an analysis of the other works of the Gawain-poet was carried out to deter-mine whether he had been inclined to engage in any form of criticism of the flaws and weaknesses of society or its individual members. At the second stage, the thesis ex-

plored the historical and social context of the era in which the poet lived and looked for contemporary accounts dealing with the medieval state of knighthood in order to discern whether there had been any traces of criticism of the knightly class and the chivalric code in the poet's society, what was the potential critique aimed at, and whether there were any voices calling for a reform. And at the third stage, the poem itself was closely inspected for any signs of criticism of the knightly class and the chiv-alric code.

As illustrated in the second chapter, critique of human flaws is at the center of all

of the other works of the Gawain-poet contained alongside Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the Cotton Nero A. x. manuscript. In Pearl, Purity, and Cleanness, the poet draws our attention to the inherently imperfect human nature prone to failure and the

inability of human beings to adhere faithfully to moral and Christian code. The inability to adhere to a certain code is also a prevalent theme of SGGK, so the poet remains con-sistent throughout all of his work. From the subtle and almost unwitting unfaithfulness in Pearl, through open disobedience in Patience, to grave infidelity in Cleanness, the poet voices his criticism of human weaknesses and disloyalty to God. These three po-ems, religious in their themes and inspiration, provide their audience with a moral compass so that they can learn from the failures of the poems' protagonists and avoid repeating them in their own lives. The Gawain-poet was thus certainly inclined to voice his critical opinion on the state of society, be it fictional or the one he lived in, so any potential critique of the knightly segment of the medieval society in SGGK would be no deviation but instead an expected feature of his work.

The likelihood of the poet taking a critical stance towards the knightly class in SGGK

is further amplified by the general preoccupation with the decline of knighthood and chivalry in his times. The decay of the knightly institution and the chivalric code was criticized by many of Gawain-poet's contemporaries. It permeates medieval clerical treatises, royal documents, chivalric manuals, biographies of famous knights, and epic poems, including romances. Gradually, two diverging currents of criticism emerged –

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the critique of the increasingly effeminate knights and the increasingly violent knights. The authors who condemned the knightly violence most often came from the ranks of medieval clergy and voiced concerns for order, fears about unrestrained violence, and hopes for some path to improvement and reform. The most vocal critiques of the me-dieval state of knighthood were compiled by Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, St. Benedict, Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis, Bernard de Clairvaux, Allain de Lille, and Layamon.

The criticism of effeminate knights came mostly from practicing knights and their

biographies and chivalric manuals they authored, like The History of William Marshal and The Book of Chivalry by Geoffrey de Charny. These authors voiced strong opposi-

tion to the ongoing transformation of the knightly class from knights-warriors to knights-courtiers. The latter group was often criticized as idle cowards preferring courtly occupations reserved for women instead of the traditional martial duties of knights. Besides chivalric manuals and knightly biographies, this transition from fierce fighter to refined courtier was also addressed by several medieval epic poems, such as Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis by John Gower, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, and Piers Plowman by William Langland.

The analysis of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight itself reveals that the Gawain-poet

indeed remained faithful to his inclination to employ a critical tone in his works as well as that he was, in fact, influenced by the reform spirit of his times as the concerns about

knightly violence and the transition from knight-warriors to knight-courtiers also ap-pear in SGGK. In a slight diversion from the main current of criticism of knighthood in his era, the main target at which the poet directs his critique seems to be not the insti-tution of knighthood as such but rather the chivalric code guiding it. Through the char-acters of the Green Knight, King Arthur and his court, and Sir Gawain, the poet criticizes the unrealistic expectations the chivalric code puts on knights. Not only are the de-mands of the code in conflict with each other but also with human nature. The chivalric code asked the knights to be at the same time loyal to God and their secular lord, which was problematic, especially with regard to killing the enemies of the latter, who were often other Christian knights or even innocent civilians. The baseless killing is in the poem addressed mainly through the character of the Green Knight, who teaches Gawain about the value and frailty of human life and warns him against rushing to kill

another man.

The conflict between the values promoted by the chivalric code and human nature is featured more prominently in the poem. It is epitomized in Gawain's failed attempt to uphold the virtues of the pentangle. As argued by the thesis, the pentangle stands for the chivalric code, both being overly rigid sets of expectations detached from the reality of human nature. Through Gawain, the poet shows that even the most virtuous

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knight cannot suppress his natural impulses in favor of artificially created code, the ideal propagated by both the pentangle and the chivalric code is simply unattainable to any human being. The poet does not, however, speak for a complete dismantling of chivalry and knighthood, but rather for its reform so it is not oblivious to the character of individual knights and it is more fitted to their needs and nature; a message that is very reminiscent of the ideas of Ramon de Llull who advocated for a reform of knight-hood tailored to individual knights because only then, he argued, would the reform be accepted and thus successful. Using Gawain as representative of the Round Table but also of knighthood as such, the poet suggests that one's life should be a truce between natural impulses and allegiances to the virtues which civilized creatures are pledged to uphold. This truce is also epitomized in Gawain's adopting of the green girdle not as

a replacement for the pentangle but as its complement. As he returns to Camelot, he still wears the tunic and carries the shield with the pentangle, and only adds the girdle to his insignia.

Gawain returns enlightened and reformed from his quest and made aware of the

fact that to be human means to be flawed, regardless of one's allegiance to systems predicated on perfection. Any human being will inevitably, in some form or another, fail to uphold all of the values of any rigid system. As the Gawain poet hints, the danger is the failure to acknowledge our own fallibility – a mistake human societies appear to be doomed to repeat. The members of Arthur's court also commit this mistake after Gawain returns from his quest. They all fail to realize the dangers posed by human

fallibility, which will eventually lead to their doom as the fall of Arthur and his Round Table fellowship is caused by disloyalties in its ranks.

The juxtaposition of Gawain's shield and the green girdle can be perceived not only

through the prism of rigid artificial construct promoting perfection versus the fluid and adaptable symbol reflecting human nature, but also as a juxtaposition of the knight-warrior versus the knight-courtier, which has been a topic widely discussed in the times of the Gawain-poet. Unlike many of his contemporaries, the poet does not con-demn this transformation of the knightly class. On the contrary, the emphasis on dis-course and virtues of one's character rather than on physical prowess and fighting ties in with the pacifist tone of the poem. This tone is reflected in the fact that the violence in the poem is not open nor glorified. Unlike in many other romances, Gawain's battles

with dragons, ogres, and wild men are not described in any detail. The Green Knight, too, seeks "not battle" but a "game," which, although including his beheading, is devoid of savagery. Both the Green Knight and later Gawain subduedly bare their neck and wait for the opponent to strike. Each demonstrates impeccable courtesy even when they await their beheading. Moreover, the Green Knight and Gawain go even further and suppress their desire for martial dominance by actively empowering their oppo-nents. The narrative images that express Gawain's heroism are not images of

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aggressive action but passive suffering, the courage to abandon the self to danger with-out resistance or evasion. Sir Gawain is an unheroic hero who fights offstage, whose prowess contributes little to the story and who is seen chiefly in their weeds of peace.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight thus shows not only preoccupation with criticism

of flawed societies the same as the other works of the poet but also attention to topics related to the decline of knighthood and chivalry that were widely discussed by many of his contemporaries. One group of medieval authors, composed of clerics, royal dig-nitaries, and even a few knights, perceived the increasing knightly violence as the main evidence of this decline. The other group, with mainly knights and poets among its rank, on the contrary, cited the transformation of a knight from a fierce and combat-

seeking warrior to effeminate and peace-loving courtier as the indication of the decay of the institution of knighthood. The Gawain-poet leaned towards the former group and criticized baseless violence and emphasized the value of human life. However, at the center of his critique lies the chivalric code that was supposed to guide the knightly conduct, not the institution of knighthood as such. Neither did he speak for a complete dismantling of knighthood or the code, only for its reform, so it is more fitted to the needs of the knights and more considerate about human nature.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight thus proves that even courtly romances, com-

monly associated with glorification of knights in shining armors, can be used as a me-dium for criticism of the state of knighthood and chivalry, which is certainly an inter-

esting paradox worth further research. Such research could investigate how many me-dieval romances voiced criticism of knights or even promoted a pacifist message. As the thesis illustrated, many proponents of reform of knighthood as well as pacifist ideas came from the ranks of the clergy. At the same time, clerics authored many ro-mances in the Middle Ages, so the two areas could be seen as intersecting here. Hence, the clergy could have used romances as a convenient device to spread reform and pac-ifist ideas to not only knights but also medieval society in general.

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Resumé

Diplomová práce se zaměřuje na středověkou báseň Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, která je dobře známá svou chválou krásy a ušlechtilosti dvora krále Artuše. Cílem práce je prozkoumat, zda se za pozlátkem této chvály neskrývá kritika rytířství a kodexu, kterým se řídilo. Toto zaměření práce bylo zvoleno nejen proto, že dodnes zůstává ne-dostatečně prozkoumaným aspektem básně, ale také proto, že úpadek rytířství a jeho kodexu a potřeba jejich reformy byly v dobách básníka široce diskutovanými tématy. Autor básně a mnoho z jeho významných současníků, jako Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower a William Langland, stejně jako řada duchovních a královských hodnostářů se

ve svých dílech těmto tématům věnovali. Ty ve skutečnosti rezonovala i v rytířských příručkách a biografiích slavných rytířů, jako jsou Geoffrey de Charny a William Mar-shal. Ostatní díla básníka jsou navíc soustředěna na kritiku nedostatků a slabostí jed-notlivců a lidské společnosti; takže básník byl zjevně nakloněn mluvit ve svých dílech kritickým hlasem o různých otázkách. Hlavní výzkumnou otázkou této práce tedy je, zda básník v Sir Gawain and the Green Knight kritizuje podobu rytířství a jeho kodexu v středověku. Kromě toho si tato práce klade za cíl prozkoumat způsoby a prostředky, kterými básník vyjadřuje v básni potenciální kritiku těchto dvou témat, a zda existují nějaké podobnosti mezi kritikou rytířství vyjádřenou tímto básníkem a jeho součas-níky. K dosažení stanoveného cíle využívá diplomová práce třístupňovou analýzu. Nejdříve

zkoumá další díla autora této básně, čímž se snaží zjistit, zda ve své tvorbě zvykl uplat-ňovat jakoukoliv kritiku nedostatků a slabostí lidské společnosti nebo jejích jednotli-vých členů. Dále práce zkoumá historický a sociální kontext éry, v níž básník žil, a hledá práce jeho současníků, které se zabývaly tehdejší podobou rytířství. Tím se snaží zjistit, zda se v básníkovy době objevovaly kritické práce odsuzující úpadek rytířů jako spole-čenské vrstvy a kodexu, kterým se řídili, na co byla tato potenciální kritika zaměřena, a zda se ozývaly hlasy volající po reformě rytířství. V neposlední řadě je detailně ana-lyzována i samotná báseň. Cílem této analýzy je identifikovat jakékoliv známky kritiky středověkého rytířství a s ním spojeného kodexu.

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Resumé

The main objective of this thesis is to examine whether Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most widely discussed medieval poems commonly known for its praise and celebration of courtly life, hides behind the admiration of the splendor and refinement of King Arthur and his court a critique of the knightly class and the chivalric code guiding its conduct. This focus of the thesis was chosen not only because it re-mains to this day an insufficiently explored aspect of the poem but also due to the fact that the decline of knighthood and chivalry and the need for their reform were widely discussed topics in the times of the Gawain-poet and many of his famous contemporar-

ies, like Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and William Langland, as well as a number of clerics and royal dignitaries addressed them in their works. The topics, in fact, reso-nated even in chivalric manuals and biographies of famous knights, like that of Geoffrey de Charny and William Marshal. The other works of the Gawain-poet are, moreover, all centered around a critique of the flaws and weaknesses of individuals and societies; so, the poet is clearly inclined to speak in a critical voice about various issues in his works. Hence, the main research question of the thesis is whether the Gawain-poet voices in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight any criticism of the medieval state of knight-hood and chivalry. In addition, the thesis also aims to examine the means and devices through which the poet ex-presses any potential criticism of these two subjects in the poem and whether there are any similarities between the criticism of knighthood and chivalry articulated by the Gawain-poet and his contemporaries.

In order to find the answers to these questions, the thesis employs a three-stage anal-ysis. At the first stage, an analysis of the other works of the Gawain-poet is carried out to determine whether he was inclined to engage in any form of criticism of the flaws and weaknesses of society or its individual members. This stage is described in chapter 2 of the thesis. At the second stage, the thesis explores the historical and social context of the era in which the poet lived and looks for contemporary accounts dealing with the medieval state of knighthood in order to discern whether there had been any traces of criticism of the knightly class and the chivalric code in the poet's society, what was the potential critique aimed at, and whether there were any voices calling for a reform of knighthood. This is discussed in chapter 3. And at the third stage, the poem itself is closely inspected for any signs of criticism of the knightly class and the chivalric code.

This is the focus of chapter 4. The thesis can be framed as interdisciplinary research, combining elements from the field of literature, as it is based on literary analysis of the poem itself, and sociology, as knighthood and chivalry and inherently social and artifi-cially created phenomena. This framework will be explained in more detail in the fol-lowing subchapter dealing with the methodology of the thesis.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Critique of Medieval ...

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