Sir Gawain and the Green Knight edited by Paul Battles (review)

This new student edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has many things going for it, although it is not an edition that always meets the highest scholarly standards. The short introduction is generally useful, though students can now be directed to the online images of the manuscript (gawain.ucalgary.ca) rather than being “encouraged to consult the facsimile (London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A.X)” (p. 27). Students might feel even more encouraged to consult the facsimile edition if Battles had provided them with a reference to Gollancz 1923 rather than with one to the manuscript itself. Extracts from sources and analogues are provided in translation in an appendix. As far as the editorial principles are concerned, Battles makes the Middle English text more accessible by modernizing thorns and yoghs; he provides on-the-page side glosses of words; and he gives substantial explanatory and interpretative notes at the foot of the page. There is also a minimal glossary, usually without line references, though Battles does give the forms in which words are recorded in the Middle English Dictionary (MED): this allows anyone interested in a word to look it up in MED. Battles has thus sought to make the Middle English text genuinely accessible. Of course, some editions, such as the fifth revised edition of Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript (2007), have chosen to make the poem accessible by providing a modern English translation, but my own experience of teaching this poem to students is that editions with translations make students look less rather than more at the original text. Battles is to be commended for not driving a wedge between the modern English student and the Middle English text, and for attempting to put at our disposal all the tools that are necessary to access the original language.

There are, however, some serious problems with the way this concept has been executed. First of all, there are misunderstandings of what the poem actually says. A few of these mistakes are inherited from others, but most errors are new. For example:

• “Bot mon most I algate mynn hym to bene” (l. 141) means “But I nevertheless declare him to be the biggest man,” not “But I must nevertheless declare him to be a man,” as Battles seems to think (despite the fact that most is not a first-person form of Middle English moten).

• “As non unhap had hym ayled, thagh hedles he were / instedde” [sic] (ll. 438–39) is nonsense. The manuscript reading “in stedde” means “in place,” that is, “where he was standing,” not “instead.”

• “For I haf sen a selly I may not forsake” (l. 475) means “For I have seen marvel—I cannot deny it” (MED, s.v. forsaken, sense 7), not “For I have seen a marvel which I cannot reject.”

• “His cher ful oft con chaunge / That chapel er he myght sene” (ll. 711–12). Line 711 does not mean “His mood often changed” but “He often changed the direction of his gaze,” that is, “He looked this way and that way.” At l. 2169, “And oft chaunged his cher the chapel to seche,” Battles gets closer by glossing cher as “position.”

• “Ther kryst hit yow foryelde” (l. 839) is misglossed as “May Christ in heaven repay you for it.” The note makes matters worse: “On ther as a reference to heaven when used in conjunction with God or Christ, see MED, s.v. ther, adv. 1a.” In fact, ther is pleonastic, used to introduce a wish (see MED under the same word, sense 3c).

• “for Gode” (l. 965), not glossed at all by Battles, means “in truth” (gode should be lower case): see T. N. Smallwood, Notes and Queries, 55 (2008): 4–13. Ditto at line 1822.

• “Ye schal lenge in your lofte, and lyye in your ese, / Tomorn whyle the messewhyle” (ll. 1096–97). This is not an instruction for Gawain to sleep during Mass, as Battles...