Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late-Fourteenth Century Middle English chivalric romance. It is one of the best known Arthurian stories with its plot combining two types of folklore motifs, the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. The Green Knight is interpreted by some as a representation of the Green Man of folklore and by others as an allusion to Christ. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each ending in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish, and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important poem in the romance genre, typically involving a hero who goes on a quest testing his prowess, and it remains popular to this day in modern English renderings from J.R.R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage, and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations.
The poem describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious “Green Knight” who challenges any knight to strike him with his ax if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head, and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honor is called into question by a test involving Lady Bertilak, the lady of the Green Knight’s castle.
The poem survives in a single manuscript including three religious narrative poems: Pearl, Purity, and Patience. All are thought written by the same unknown author, dubbed the “Pearl Poet” or “Gawain Poet,” since all three are written in a North West Midland dialect of Middle English.
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