Question by mcmurphy: how does Sir Gawain and the Green Knight compare to history of later medieval England?
any ideas?
I am to use Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a source to write a paper on the culture and history of later medieval England.
Best answer:
Answer by Michael B
It is highly relevant as a primary source for the culture. It is only marginally relevant to the history.
It is an Arthurian fairy-tale with roots in myth (and possibly pagan religion) which reflects an aspiration about gentlemanly (knightly) behaviour and attitudes rather than a reality. In ‘Gawain’ the sense of honour is internalised; he inhabits a guilt culture, not a shame one. Gawain feels guilt for having accepted the green girdle even after he has been praised by Bercilak and by Arthur’s whole court. In an age when the only checks on many rulers’ behaviour were, quite simply, what they could get away with and their public reputation, the ethos of the poem shows cross-fertilisation of the knightly political and military ethic with a specifically Christian ideal. Sin, not failure, is the great wrong.
Again, the core function of a knightly caste is mythologised into a quest for pure virtue. The bond of service between knight and king is hardly even hinted at. Only a little reading of history shows how far from normal 14thC practice this was. What is interesting is that such a fiction could be popular and find an echo in the hearers’ own feelings – rather as hearts-and-flowers romances continue to be popular in our own age of sexual dissipation, AIDS, openly gay sex and divorce. Then as now, I suspect, fiction offered both a contrast to and a relief from the grubby details of day-to-day living.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Tags:compare, england, Gawain, Green, History|, ideas, Knight, later, Living, Medieval
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