Christina Rossetti and Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight

This essay reevaluates Christina Rossetti’s narrative poem “The Prince’s Progress” (1865) as a key text in the history of Victorian medievalism by identifying the medieval poem Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight: An Alliterative Romance-Poem (republished by the Early English Text Society in 1864) as a major source. While Victorian editors presented Sir Gawayne to the public as a heroic celebration of the chivalric knight, Rossetti aligns herself with the morally and symbolically complex vision of the Gawayne poet. In “The Prince’s Progress,” Rossetti reconceptualizes the medievalist quest epic as a narrative of spiritual discernment and a warning against moral thoughtlessness for the Victorian age.