The Miller's Prologue and TaleThe Miller's Tale belongs to a genre known as the "fabliau": a short story in verse thatdeals satirically, often grossly and fantastically as well as hilariously, with intriguesand deceptions about sex or money (and often both these elements in the same story).These are the tales Chaucer is anticipating in The General Prologue when he warnshis presumably genteel audience that they must expect some rude speaking (see lines727—44). An even more pointed apology follows at the end of The Miller's Prologue.Fabliau tales exist everywhere in oral literature; as a literary form they flourished inFrance, especially in the thirteenth century. By having Robin the Miller tell a fabliauto "quit" (to requite or pay back) the Knight's aristocratic romance, Chaucer sets upa dialectic between classes, genres, and styles that he exploits throughout The CanterburyTales.

BEOWULFBeowulf, the oldest of the great long poems written in English, may have been composedmore than twelve hundred years ago, in the first half of the eighth century,although some scholars would place it as late as the tenth century. As is the case withmost Old English poems, the title has been assigned by modern editors, for the manuscriptsdo not normally give any indication of title or authorship. Linguistic evidenceshows that the poem was originally composed in the dialect of what was then Mercia,30 / BEOWULFthe Midlands of England today. But in the unique late-tenth-century manuscriptpreserving the poem, it has been converted into the West-Saxon dialect of the southwestin which most of Old English literature survives. In 1731, before any moderntranscript of the text had been made, the manuscript was seriously damaged in a firethat destroyed the building in London that housed the extraordinary collection ofmedieval English manuscripts made by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571 —1631). As aresult of the fire and subsequent deterioration, a number of lines and words havebeen lost from the poem.It is possible that Beowulf may be the lone survivor of a genre of Old English longepics, but it must have been a remarkable and difficult work even in its own day. Thepoet was reviving the heroic language, style, and pagan world of ancient Germanicoral poetry, a world that was already remote for his contemporaries and that is strangerto the modern reader, in many respects, than the epic world of Homer and Virgil.With the help of Beowulf itself, a few shorter heroic poems in Old English, and laterpoetry and prose in Old Saxon, Old Icelandic, and Middle High German, we can onlyconjecture what Germanic oral epic must have been like when performed by theGermanic scop, or bard. The Beowulf poet himself imagines such oral performancesby having King Hrothgar's court poet recite a heroic lay at a feast celebrating Beowulf'sdefeat of Grendel. Many of the words and formulaic expressions in Beowulfcan be found in other Old English poems, but there are also an extraordinary numberof what linguists call hapax legomena—that is, words recorded only once in a language.The poet may have found them elsewhere, but the high incidence of such

words suggests that he was an original wordsmith in his own right.Although the poem itself is English in language and origin, it deals not with nativeEnglishmen but with their Germanic forebears, especially with two south Scandinaviantribes, the Danes and the Geats, who lived on the Danish island of Zealand andin southern Sweden. Thus the historical period the poem concerns—insofar as it maybe said to refer to history at all—is some centuries before it was written—that is, atime after the initial invasion of England by Germanic tribes in the middle of the fifthcentury but before the Anglo-Saxon migration was completed. The one datable factof history mentioned in the poem is a raid on the Franks in which Hygelac, the kingof the Geats and Beowulf's lord, was killed, and this raid occurred in the year 520.Yet the poet's elliptical references to quasihistorical and legendary material show thathis audience was still familiar with many old stories, the outlines of which we canonly infer, sometimes with the help of later analogous tales in other Germanic languages.This knowledge was probably kept alive by other heroic poetry, of which littlehas been preserved in English, although much may once have existed.It is now widely believed that Beowulf is the work of a single poet who was aChristian and that his poem reflects well-established Christian tradition. The conversionof the Germanic settlers in England had been largely completed during theseventh century. The Danish king Hrothgar's poet sings a song about the Creation(lines 87—98) reminiscent of Caadmon's Hymn. The monster Grendel is said to be adescendant of Cain. There are allusions to God's judgment and to fate (wyrd) butnone to pagan deities. References to the New Testament are notably absent, butHrothgar and Beowulf often speak of God as though their religion is monotheistic.With sadness the poet relates that, made desperate by Grendel's attacks, the Danespray for help at heathen shrines—apparently backsliding as the children of Israel hadsometimes lapsed into idolatry.Although Hrothgar and Beowulf are portrayed as morally upright and enlightenedpagans, they fully espouse and frequently affirm the values of Germanic heroic poetry.In the poetry depicting this warrior society, the most important of human relationshipswas that which existed between the warrior—the thane—and his lord, a relationshipbased less on subordination of one man's will to another's than on mutualtrust and respect. When a warrior vowed loyalty to his lord, he became not so muchhis servant as his voluntary companion, one who would take pride in defending himBEOWULF / 31and fighting in his wars. In return, the lord was expected to take care of his thanesand to reward them richly for their valor; a good king, one like Hrothgar or Beowulf,is referred to by such poetic epithets as "ring-giver" and as the "helmet" and "shield"of his people.The relationship between kinsmen was also of deep significance to this society. Ifone of his kinsmen had been slain, a man had a moral obligation either to kill theslayer or to exact the payment of wergild (man-price) in compensation. Each rank ofsociety was evaluated at a definite price, which had to be paid to the dead man's kinby the killer if he wished to avoid their vengeance—even if the killing had been anaccident. In the absence of any legal code other than custom or any body of lawenforcement, it was the duty of the family (often with the lord's support) to executejustice. The payment itself had less significance as wealth than as proof that thekinsmen had done what was right. The failure to take revenge or to exact compensationwas considered shameful. Hrothgar's anguish over the murders committed by

Grendel is not only for the loss of his men but also for the shame of his inabilityeither to kill Grendel or to exact a "death-price" from the killer. "It is always better /to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning" (lines 1384—85), Beowulf says toHrothgar, who has been thrown back into despair by the revenge-slaying of his oldfriend Aeschere by Grendel's mother.Yet the young Beowulfs attempt to comfort the bereaved old king by invoking thecode of vengeance may be one of several instances of the poet's ironic treatment ofthe tragic futility of the never-ending blood feuds. The most graphic example in thepoem of that irony is the Finnsburg episode, the lay sung by Hrothgar's hall-poet.The Danish princess Hildeburh, married to the Frisian king Finn—probably to putan end to a feud between those peoples—loses both her brother and her son when abloody fight breaks out in the hall between a visiting party of Danes and her husband'smen. The bodies are cremated together on a huge funeral pyre: "The glutton elementflamed and consumed / the dead of both sides. Their great days were gone" (lines1124-25).Such feuds, the staple subject of Germanic epic and saga, have only a peripheralplace in the poem. Instead, the poem turns on Beowulf's three great fights againstpreternatural evil, which inhabits the dangerous and demonic space surroundinghuman society. He undertakes the fight against Grendel to save the Danes from themonster and to exact vengeance for the men Grendel has slain. Another motive is todemonstrate his strength and courage and thereby to enhance his personal glory.Hrothgar's magnificent gifts become the material emblems of that glory. Revenge andglory also motivate Beowulf's slaying of Grendel's mother. He undertakes his lastbattle against the dragon, however, only because there is no other way to save hisown people.A somber and dignified elegiac mood pervades Beowulf. The poem opens and closeswith the description of a funeral and is filled with laments for the dead. Our first viewof Beowulf is of an ambitious young hero. At the end, he has become an old king,facing the dragon and death. His people mourn him and praise him, as does the poet,for his nobility, generosity, courage, and, what is less common in Germanic heroes,kindness to his people. The poet's elegiac tone may be informed by something morethan the duty to "praise a prince whom he holds dear / and cherish his memory whenthat moment comes / when he has to be convoyed from his bodily home" (lines 3175—77). The entire poem could be viewed as the poet's lament for heroes like Beowulfwho went into the darkness without the light of the poet's own Christian faith.The present verse translation is by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who receivedthe Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHTca. 1375-1400Between the Ancrene Riwle and the later fourteenth century, writers deployedEnglish for many genres especially for saints' lives and romances. The finest Arthurianromance in English survives in only one manuscript, which also contains threereligious poems—Pearl, Patience, and Purity—generally believed to be by the samepoet. Nothing is known about the author except what can be inferred from theworks. The dialect of the poems locates them in a remote corner of the northwest

midlands between Cheshire and Staffordshire, and details of Sir Gawain's journeynorth show that the author was familiar with the geography of that region. But ifauthor and audience were provincials, Sir Gawain and the other poems in the manuscriptreveal them to have been highly sophisticated and well acquainted bothwith the international culture of the high Middle Ages and with ancient insulartraditions.Sir Gawain belongs to the so-called Alliterative Revival. After the Norman Conquest,alliterative verse doubtless continued to be recited by oral poets. At the beginning,the Gawain poet pretends that this romance is an oral poem and asks theaudience to "listen" to a story, which he has "heard." Alliterative verse also continuedto appear in Early Middle English texts. Layamon's Brut (see pp. 125—27) is theoutstanding example. During the late fourteenth century there was a renewed floweringof alliterative poetry, especially in the north and west of Britain, which includesPiers Plowman and a splendid poem known as The Alliterative Morte Darthur.The Gawain poet's audience evidently valued the kind of alliterative verse thatChaucer's Parson caricatures as "Rum-Ram-Ruf by lettre" (see p. 314, line 43). Theywould also have understood archaic poetic diction surviving from Old English poetrysuch as athel (noble) and words of Scandinavian origin such as skete (quickly) andshifted, (alternated). They were well acquainted with French Arthurian romances andthe latest fashions in clothing, armor, and castle building. In making Sir Gawain,Arthur's sister's son, the preeminent knight of the Round Table, the poet was faithfulto an older tradition. The thirteenth-century French romances, which in the nextcentury became the main sources of Sir Thomas Malory, had made Sir Lancelot thebest of Arthur's knights and Lancelot's adultery with Queen Guinevere the centralevent on which the fate of Arthur's kingdom turns. In Sir Gawain Lancelot is onlyone name in a list of Arthur's knights. Arthur is still a youth, and the court is in itsspringtime. Sir Gawain epitomizes this first blooming of Arthurian chivalry, and thereputation of the court rests upon his shoulders.Ostensibly, Gawain's head is what is at stake. The main plot belongs to a typefolklorists classify as the "Beheading Game," in which a supernatural challenger offersto let his head be cut off in exchange for a return blow. The earliest written occurrenceof this motif is in the Middle Irish tale of Bricriu's Feast. The Gawain poet could haveencountered it in several French romances as well as in oral tradition. But the outcomeof the game here does not turn only on the champion's courage as it does in1 6 0S I R GAWAIN AND THE G R E E N KNIGHT / 161Bricriu's Feast. The Gawain poet has devised another series of tests for the hero thatlink the beheading with his truth, the emblem of which is the pentangle—a fivepointedstar—displayed on Gawain's coat of arms and shield. The word truth in MiddleEnglish, as in Chaucer's ballade of that name (see p. 317), and in Passus I of PiersPlowman (see p. 336), means not only what it still means now—a fact, belief, or ideaheld to be "true"—but what is conveyed by the old-fashioned variant from the sameroot: troth—that is, faith pledged by one's word and owed to a lord, a spouse, oranyone who puts someone else under an obligation. In this respect, Sir Gawain isbeing measured against a moral and Christian ideal of chivalry. Whether or not hesucceeds in that contest is a question carefully left unresolved—perhaps as a challengefor the reader.The poet has framed Gawain's adventure with references in the first and last stanzas

to what are called the "Brutus books," the foundation stories that trace the origins ofRome and Britain back to the destruction of Troy. See, for example, the selection fromGeoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (pp. 118—20). A cyclical senseof history as well as of the cycles of the seasons of the year, the generations of humankind,and of individual lives runs through Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.The poem is written in stanzas that contain a group of alliterative lines (the numberof lines in a stanza varies). The line is longer and does not contain a fixed number orpattern of stresses like the classical alliterative measure of Old English poetry. Eachstanza closes with five short lines rhyming ah ah a. The first of these rhyming linescontains just one stress and is called the "bob"; the four three-stress lines that followare called the "wheel." For details on alliterative verse, see "Old and Middle EnglishProsody" (pp. 19—21). The opening stanza is printed below in Middle English withan interlinear translation. The stressed alliterating sounds have been italicized.

DR. FAUSTUS

Themes

Sin, Redemption, and Damnation

Insofar as Doctor Faustus is a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of Christianity’s

understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary

to the will of God. In making a pact with Lucifer, Faustus commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin:

not only does he disobey God, but he consciously and even eagerly renounces obedience to him,

choosing instead to swear allegiance to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst

deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, God’s son, who, according to

Christian belief, died on the cross for humankind’s sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus’s pact with

Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him. All that he needs to do,

theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless moments in which Faustus

considers doing just that, urged on by the good angel on his shoulder or by the old man in scene 12

—both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustus’s conscience,

or both.

Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek heaven. In the Christian

framework, this turning away from God condemns him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of

his life does Faustus desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him.

But it is too late for him to repent. In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable

of being redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview in order to maximize the dramatic

power of the final scene. Having inhabited a Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his

final moments in a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible and where

certain sins cannot be forgiven.

The Conflict Between Medieval and Renaissance Values

Scholar R.M. Dawkins famously remarked that Doctor Faustus tells “the story of a Renaissance man

who had to pay the medieval price for being one.” While slightly simplistic, this quotation does get at

the heart of one of the play’s central themes: the clash between the medieval world and the world of

the emerging Renaissance. The medieval world placed God at the center of existence and shunted

aside man and the natural world. The Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in the

fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe, carrying with it a new emphasis on the

individual, on classical learning, and on scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. In the medieval

academy, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though, secular matters took

center stage.

Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist (a blurred distinction in the sixteenth

century), explicitly rejects the medieval model. In his opening speech in scene 1 , he goes through

every field of scholarship, beginning with logic and proceeding through medicine, law, and theology,

quoting an ancient authority for each: Aristotle on logic, Galen on medicine, the Byzantine emperor

Justinian on law, and the Bible on religion. In the medieval model, tradition and authority, not

individual inquiry, were key. But in this soliloquy, Faustus considers and rejects this medieval way of

thinking. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his

quest for knowledge, wealth, and power.

The play’s attitude toward the clash between medieval and Renaissance values is ambiguous.

Marlowe seems hostile toward the ambitions of Faustus, and, as Dawkins notes, he keeps his tragic

hero squarely in the medieval world, where eternal damnation is the price of human pride. Yet

Marlowe himself was no pious traditionalist, and it is tempting to see in Faustus—as many readers

have—a hero of the new modern world, a world free of God, religion, and the limits that these

imposed on humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price, this reading suggests, but his successors

will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in modern times. On the other hand, the

disappointment and mediocrity that follow Faustus’s pact with the devil, as he descends from grand

ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting interpretation. Marlowe may be

suggesting that the new, modern spirit, though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian

dead end.

Power as a Corrupting Influence

Early in the play, before he agrees to the pact with Lucifer, Faustus is full of ideas for how to use the

power that he seeks. He imagines piling up great wealth, but he also aspires to plumb the mysteries

of the universe and to remake the map of Europe. Though they may not be entirely admirable, these

plans are ambitious and inspire awe, if not sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustus’s schemes

and make his quest for personal power seem almost heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the

eloquence of his early soliloquies.

Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so desires, however, his horizons

seem to narrow. Everything is possible to him, but his ambition is somehow sapped. Instead of the

grand designs that he contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing conjuring tricks for

kings and noblemen and takes a strange delight in using his magic to play practical jokes on simple

folks. It is not that power has corrupted Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behavior after

he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true wickedness. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts

Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming his boundless ambition into a meaningless

delight in petty celebrity.

In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue that true greatness can be achieved only with

God’s blessing. By cutting himself off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is condemned to

mediocrity. He has gained the whole world, but he does not know what to do with it.

The Divided Nature of Man

Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should repent and return to God or continue to

follow his pact with Lucifer. His internal struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him of wants

to do good and serve God, but part of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts after the power that

Mephastophilis promises. The good angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustus’s

shoulder in order to urge him in different directions, symbolize this struggle. While these angels may

be intended as an actual pair of supernatural beings, they clearly represent Faustus’s divided will,

which compels Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to question this commitment

continually.

Motifs

Magic and the Supernatural

The supernatural pervades Doctor Faustus, appearing everywhere in the story. Angels and devils flit

about, magic spells are cast, dragons pull chariots (albeit offstage), and even fools like the two

ostlers, Robin and Rafe, can learn enough magic to summon demons. Still, it is worth noting that

nothing terribly significant is accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks on people, conjures

up grapes, and explores the cosmos on a dragon, but he does not fundamentally reshape the world.

The magic power that Mephastophilis grants him is more like a toy than an awesome, earth-shaking

ability. Furthermore, the real drama of the play, despite all the supernatural frills and pyrotechnics,

takes place within Faustus’s vacillating mind and soul, as he first sells his soul to Lucifer and then

considers repenting. In this sense, the magic is almost incidental to the real story of Faustus’s

struggle with himself, which Marlowe intended not as a fantastical battle but rather as a realistic

portrait of a human being with a will divided between good and evil.

Practical Jokes

Once he gains his awesome powers, Faustus does not use them to do great deeds. Instead, he

delights in playing tricks on people: he makes horns sprout from the knight’s head and sells the

horse-courser an enchanted horse. Such magical practical jokes seem to be Faustus’s chief

amusement, and Marlowe uses them to illustrate Faustus’s decline from a great, prideful scholar into

a bored, mediocre magician with no higher ambition than to have a laugh at the expense of a

collection of simpletons.

Symbols

Blood

Blood plays multiple symbolic roles in the play. When Faustus signs away his soul, he signs in blood,

symbolizing the permanent and supernatural nature of this pact. His blood congeals on the page,

however, symbolizing, perhaps, his own body’s revolt against what he intends to do. Meanwhile,

Christ’s blood, which Faustus says he sees running across the sky during his terrible last night,

symbolizes the sacrifice that Jesus, according to Christian belief, made on the cross; this sacrifice

opened the way for humankind to repent its sins and be saved. Faustus, of course, in his proud folly,

fails to take this path to salvation.

Faustus’s Rejection of the Ancient Authorities

In scene 1 , Faustus goes through a list of the major fields of human knowledge—logic, medicine,

law, and theology—and cites for each an ancient authority (Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and Jerome’s

Bible, respectively). He then rejects all of these figures in favor of magic. This rejection symbolizes

Faustus’s break with the medieval world, which prized authority above all else, in favor of a more

modern spirit of free inquiry, in which experimentation and innovation trump the assertions of Greek

philosophers and the Bible.

The Good Angel and the Evil Angel

The angels appear at Faustus’s shoulder early on in the play—the good angel urging him to repent

and serve God, the evil angel urging him to follow his lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two

symbolize his divided will, part of which wants to do good and part of which is sunk in sin.

FAUSTUS represents the spirit of the Renaissance, with its rejection of the medieval, God-centered universe, and its embrace of human possibility. Faustus, at least early on in his acquisition of magic, is the personification of possibility.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

ThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Nature of Chivalry

The world of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is governed by well-defined codes of behavior. The

code of chivalry, in particular, shapes the values and actions of Sir Gawain and other characters in

the poem. The ideals of chivalry derive from the Christian concept of morality, and the proponents of

chivalry seek to promote spiritual ideals in a spiritually fallen world.

The ideals of Christian morality and knightly chivalry are brought together in Gawain’s symbolic

shield. The pentangle represents the five virtues of knights: friendship, generosity, chastity, courtesy,

and piety. Gawain’s adherence to these virtues is tested throughout the poem, but the poem

examines more than Gawain’s personal virtue; it asks whether heavenly virtue can operate in a fallen

world. What is really being tested in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight might be the chivalric system

itself, symbolized by Camelot.

Arthur’s court depends heavily on the code of chivalry, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight gently

criticizes the fact that chivalry values appearance and symbols over truth. Arthur is introduced to us

as the “most courteous of all,” indicating that people are ranked in this court according to their

mastery of a certain code of behavior and good manners. When the Green Knight challenges the

court, he mocks them for being so afraid of mere words, suggesting that words and appearances

hold too much power over the company. The members of the court never reveal their true feelings,

instead choosing to seem beautiful, courteous, and fair-spoken.

On his quest for the Green Chapel, Gawain travels from Camelot into the wilderness. In the forest,

Gawain must abandon the codes of chivalry and admit that his animal nature requires him to seek

physical comfort in order to survive. Once he prays for help, he is rewarded by the appearance of a

castle. The inhabitants of Bertilak’s castle teach Gawain about a kind of chivalry that is more firmly

based in truth and reality than that of Arthur’s court. These people are connected to nature, as their

hunting and even the way the servants greet Gawain by kneeling on the “naked earth” symbolize

(818 ). As opposed to the courtiers at Camelot, who celebrate in Part 1  with no understanding of how

removed they are from the natural world, Bertilak’s courtiers joke self-consciously about how

excessively lavish their feast is (889–890 ).

The poem does not by any means suggest that the codes of chivalry be abandoned. Gawain’s

adherence to them is what keeps him from sleeping with his host’s wife. The lesson Gawain learns

as a result of the Green Knight’s challenge is that, at a basic level, he is just a physical being who is

concerned above all else with his own life. Chivalry provides a valuable set of ideals toward which to

strive, but a person must above all remain conscious of his or her own mortality and weakness.

Gawain’s time in the wilderness, his flinching at the Green Knight’s axe, and his acceptance of the

lady’s offering of the green girdle teach him that though he may be the most chivalrous knight in the

land, he is nevertheless human and capable of error.

The Letter of the Law

Though the Green Knight refers to his challenge as a “game,” he uses the language of the law to

bind Gawain into an agreement with him. He repeatedly uses the word “covenant,” meaning a set of

laws, a word that evokes the two covenants represented by the Old and the New Testaments. The

Old Testament details the covenant made between God and the people of Israel through Abraham,

but the New Testament replaces the old covenant with a new covenant between Christ and his

followers. In 2  Corinthians 3 :6 , Paul writes that Christ has “a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit;

for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The “letter” to which Paul refers here is the legal system of

the Old Testament. From this statement comes the Christian belief that the literal enforcement of the

law is less important than serving its spirit, a spirit tempered by mercy.

Throughout most of the poem, the covenant between Gawain and the Green Knight evokes the literal

kind of legal enforcement that medieval Europeans might have associated with the Old Testament.

The Green Knight at first seems concerned solely with the letter of the law. Even though he has

tricked Gawain into their covenant, he expects Gawain to follow through on the agreement. And

Gawain, though he knows that following the letter of the law means death, is determined to see his

agreement through to the end because he sees this as his knightly duty.

At the poem’s end, the covenant takes on a new meaning and resembles the less literal, more

merciful New Testament covenant between Christ and his Church. In a decidedly Christian gesture,

the Green Knight, who is actually Gawain’s host, Bertilak, absolves Gawain because Gawain has

confessed his faults. To remind Gawain of his weakness, the Green Knight gives him a penance, in

the form of the wound on his neck and the girdle. The Green Knight punishes Gawain for breaking

his covenant to share all his winnings with his host, but he does not follow to the letter his covenant

to decapitate Gawain. Instead of chopping Gawain’s head off, Bertilak calls it his right to spare

Gawain and only nicks his neck.

Ultimately, Gawain clings to the letter of the law. He cannot accept his sin and absolve himself of it

the way Bertilak has, and he continues to do penance by wearing the girdle for the rest of his life.

The Green Knight transforms his literal covenant by offering Gawain justice tempered with mercy, but

the letter of the law still threatens in the story’s background, and in Gawain’s own psyche.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the

text’s major themes.

The Seasons

At the beginning of Parts 2  and 4 , the poet describes the changing of the seasons. The seasonal

imagery in Part 2  precedes Gawain’s departure from Camelot, and in Part 4  his departure from the

host’s castle. In both cases, the changing seasons correspond to Gawain’s changing psychological

state, from cheerfulness (pleasant weather) to bleakness (the winter). But the five changing seasons

also correspond to the five ages of man (birth/infancy, youth, adulthood, middle age, and old

age/death), as well as to the cycles of fertility and decay that govern all creatures in the natural world.

The emphasis on the cyclical nature of the seasons contrasts with and provides a different

understanding of the passage of time from the more linear narrative of history that frames the poem.

Games

When the poem opens, Arthur’s court is engaged in feast-time customs, and Arthur almost seems to

elicit the Green Knight’s entrance by requesting that someone tell him a tale. When the Green Knight

first enters, the courtiers think that his appearance signals a game of some sort. The Green Knight’s

challenge, the host’s later challenge, and the wordplay that takes place between Gawain and the

lady are all presented as games. The relationship between games and tests is explored because

games are forms of social behavior, while tests provide a measure of an individual’s inner worth.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Pentangle

According to the Gawain-poet, King Solomon originally designed the five-pointed star as his own

magic seal. A symbol of truth, the star has five points that link and lock with each other, forming what

is called the endless knot. Each line of the pentangle passes over one line and under one line, and

joins the other two lines at its ends. The pentangle symbolizes the virtues to which Gawain aspires:

to be faultless in his five senses; never to fail in his five fingers; to be faithful to the five wounds that

Christ received on the cross; to be strengthened by the five joys that the Virgin Mary had in Jesus

(the Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension, and Assumption); and to possess brotherly

love, courtesy, piety, and chastity. The side of the shield facing Gawain contains an image of the

Virgin Mary to make sure that Gawain never loses heart.

The Green Girdle

The meaning of the host’s wife’s girdle changes over the course of the narrative. It is made out of

green silk and embroidered with gold thread, colors that link it to the Green Knight. She claims it

possesses the power to keep its wearer from harm, but we find out in Part 4  that the girdle has no

magical properties. After the Green Knight reveals his identity as the host, Gawain curses the girdle

as representing cowardice and an excessive love of mortal life. He wears it from then on as a badge

of his sinfulness. To show their support, Arthur and his followers wear green silk baldrics that look

just like Gawain’s girdle.