Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ed. by Paul D. Battles (review)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was composed sometime in the last half of the fourteenth century in the West Midlands of England. Written in poetry, it tells the story of King Arthur’s most courteous knight and the fantastical quest he undertakes at the behest of the Green Knight, an uncanny visitor to Camelot who invites him to a bizarre beheading game related to sacrifice that also contains a hidden opportunity for self-development. By accepting, Gawain comes to intimately know both his human frailty and the fortitude of his heart. Paul Battles has produced a new academic edition of Sir Gawain. Written not just in Middle English, but with the added obscurity of a northern dialect, the book can seem opaque. Though it will never be easy for the average person to read this ancient version of English, it does contain fascinating echoes of familiarity that ring in the mind, links between the words of the present-day world and those of the Vikings and Saxons of centuries past. Some editions of the poem indulge current sensibilities by printing the text in both Modern and Middle English on facing pages, which can be helpful to a student either struggling with the older writing or trying to master it in language study. For this edition, the more challenging route has been chosen of presenting it only in the archaic dialect with explanatory notes for the most obscure words. This has the effect of tossing the reader in at the deep end and thus submerging him in the worldview of the Gawain poet. Battles comments in his introductory analysis how much this romance is a product “by and for its time,” a catalogue of late medieval interests compiled with a unique blend of realism and imagination that sets sumptuous consumer goods side-by-side with magic sashes. He also states how it manages to transcend its period details in order to achieve universal appeal. It’s truly an exquisite work offering valuable lessons in humility, the acceptance of mortality and the refinement of the soul.

The writer of the poem is unknown. Sir Gawain has survived only in a single manuscript, unsigned, known as the MS Cotton Nero A.x. in the collection of the British Library. The theory has been advanced that the poet was a member of the aristocratic de Massey family of Cheshire but that has never been proven conclusively. He was clearly of the nobility or close enough to it to be familiar with courtly ways, in respect to the specifics of castles, hunts and costly array. He also shows a sophisticated familiarity with previous Arthurian canon, utilizing plot points from sources such as Caradoc and the French Vul-gate Cycle. As with the name of its creator, the exact date of Sir Gawain’s composition is unknown. The year of its writing is a question intimately connected to that of its patronage and authorship and a great deal of scholarship has been undertaken to try to pin down the timeframe of the poem’s creation as the logical starting point to unravelling its enigmatic provenance. Battles takes an interesting approach in his analysis, comparing telling elements in Sir Gawain to real events in the reigns of Edward III and Richard II in an attempt to situate it in time, but he admits more work is needed in order to pinpoint the circumstances of its origin with real precision.

The structure of Sir Gawain is deservedly famous, with its bob and wheel construction that serves both as a transitional element between verses and an engine introducing an exhilarating sense of motion into its flow of words. Battles lays special stress on the numerological pattern of the recurring number five, employed in the stanzaic form of the poem and distilled in the symbol of the pentangle on Sir Gawain’s shield. He relates it especially to the medieval concept of five as the most human number, as people have five senses, five fingers...