HISTORY & FILM Poem to Film: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
For this issue’s History & Film, I’d ask you to cast your mind back to high school, possibly college. Do you find in its recesses the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? I don’t remember when I first read it; it seems likely it was my freshman year of university in an English Literature course. I do remember being intrigued by it, enjoying the bob and wheel. If your mind draws a blank, the tale goes something like this. Celebrating Christmas and the New Year, King Arthur holds a round of feasting and jousting, “right ripe revel and reckless mirth.” Everyone is happy, life is good, 'tis a joyous season. Arthur, his knights, lords, and ladies, sit down to a feast, and into the celebrations trots the Green Knight: there hales in at the hall door a dreadful man, the most in the world’s mould of measure high, from the nape to the waist so swart and so thick, and his loins and his limbs so long and so great half giant on earth I think now that he was; but the most of man anyway I mean him to be, and that the finest in his greatness that might ride, for of back and breast though his body was strong, both his belly and waist were worthily small, and his features all followed his form made and clean. Wonder at his hue men displayed, set in his semblance seen; he fared as a giant were made, and over all deepest green. I admit, the first time I read this and the further description of the knight's green clothes and shiny green locks, I pictured nothing so much as the Jolly Green Giant. Even the knight’s magnificent horse is green. It’s generally agreed that, interesting coloration aside, the material point is that “no man might his mighty blows survive.” What is it this green interloper wants, exactly? He craves a “Christmas gift” – a friendly “game.” (I don’t think his definition of this word and mine are the same.) He carries an enormous green axe; he will trade blows with any man “bold of blood and hot-brained in his head” enough to bear the challenge. The Green Knight will allow his opponent the first strike with the axe and take his in return a twelvemonth hence. Arthur leaps to his feet, ready to accept the contest himself. Before he can do so, Sir Gawain begs that the “mêlée be mine.”
6
COLUMNS | Issue 98, November 2021
Gawain is young and courageous, but he fears he has nothing to recommend him save that he’s Arthur’s nephew; his adventures up to this point have been practically nil, and Arthur does love a good tale of adventure. Gawain wishes to prove himself, and rather than strike a glancing blow as befits a “game,” he beheads the knight. Contest over…or not. The Green Knight nonchalantly picks up his head, lets Gawain know that he looks forward to meeting him again at his abode, the Green Chapel, in a year. Cheerful exit. Yikes. Gawain, being the embodiment of chivalry, honors his side of the bargain. Before the year is out, he sets off to find the Green Chapel and meet his fate. The quest is fraught with wolves, bears, giants, even dragons. He takes shelter at a castle along the way belonging to Lord Bertilak de Hautdesert, who shows him every courtesy and seems to delight in mirth and hijinks. He’s also quite helpful: he knows the location of the Green Chapel, and it’s only two miles away. He also proposes a game – whatever he acquires hunting in the wood will be Gawain’s; whatever Gawain acquires in the castle he must then exchange with Bertilak. It might be a good time to mention the lady of the castle, who surpasses even that high bar of Arthurian beauty, Guinevere. She offers her body to Gawain who, chivalrously, declines, but he does accept a kiss out of “courtesy” when Lady Bertilak insists. Gawain dutifully returns this kiss to the lord of the manor in exchange for the fruits of his hunt. The scene repeats itself the next day. The third day, Lady Bertilak visits him again, and he accepts a love-token from her – a green silk belt. She assures him this magical belt will protect him from all harm, which should come in handy, given what he’s about to face. Kisses he had no compunction about returning to the lord of the manor, but this belt goes unmentioned to his generous host. Thus attired, Gawain travels to the Green Chapel, and there he offers his neck to the Green Knight. The knight strikes two feinting blows, and finally a real one – yet he only nicks the noble Gawain’s neck. The first two feints were for the kisses Gawain honestly exchanged; the blood spilled was due to the magical belt withheld. The Green Knight is actually the enchanted Lord Bertilak, and his wife’s conduct was a test. Gawain is adjudged the “most faultless man that was ever afoot”...with the exception of his accepting the belt. Gawain burns with shame at this failure, but the Green Knight assures him that he has done penance at the point of a blade and is entirely absolved. In a somewhat abrupt twist, he lets Gawain know that the entire “game” was the work of the enchantress (and Gawain’s aunt) Morgan le Fay. Her goal: causing Guinevere to drop-dead from fright at the Green Knight’s appearance in Camelot. Gawain returns home, entirely honest with Arthur and the court about all events, even his shame. So this is the original. When I first saw the trailers for the recent film version of The Green Knight, I was intrigued. The knight himself (a CGIed Ralph Ineson) looked nothing like the description – more than anything, he reminded me of one of Tolkien’s Ents, not green, the trunk of a tree brought to life. Nature turns ambulatory, the sound effects provide even the cracking of bark as he moves. Not true to the poem, but fascinating. Arthur (Sean Harris) and even Guinevere (Kate Dickie) also bore little resemblance to their poetic selves who were “fair folk in their first age still,” and he “so joyous a youth, and somewhat boyish.” Arthur had been transformed into a sad, sickly old king who wishes to accept the Green Knight's challenge but is too frail. He and Guinevere are shown lying at opposite ends of the same bed, seemingly too drained even to stay upright. A court at its most exuberant peak thus morphs into one sliding headlong into the trough of decay. And what of Gawain (Dev Patel)? First glimpses
