Sir Gawain

Quennell compares the treatment of knighthood and the chivalric code in Chaucer and in the author of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Quennell says that while Chaucer and his era were able to laugh at the code, having lost their sense of awe. And the creator of Sir Gawain "was . . . steeped in the chivalric spirit of the Middle Ages, for whom the court of King Arthur, and the moral code it symbolized, must have seemed very much more real than the existing court at Westminster" (Quennell 17-18). The author of the poem gave his work this sense of belief in the code, in the qualities of knighthood and chivalry. Sir Gawain in the poem does not consciously or philosophically waver from the code. For to him and his creator the question i

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very. This passage, then, is an excellent example of the unification of the Christian and knightly which is personified by Gawain. As Tolkien writes in his Introduction to a translation of the poem, the poet "has re-drawn according to his own faith his ideal of knighthood, making it Christian knighthood, showing that the grace and beauty of its courtesy . . . derive from the Divine generosity and grace, Heavenly Courtesy, of which Mary is the supreme creation . . . In Sir Gawain . . . we see a man trying to work the ideal (of Divine generosity) out . . . " (Tolkien 15). What we see, then, is a character in which what might be expected to be conflicting forces instead come together to provide a remarkably virtuous and at the same time very humanized personality. Had the poet not shown Gawain to have been truly tempted, truly tested both in love as well as in physical battle, had he not had the knight remain with the woman of the Green Knight through his desire to be kind and generous and understanding of her lady-likeness, then the knight's ultimate demonstration of virtue (both Christian and knightly) would not have meant much. The various personifications of the character of Gawain in other works varies according to the er
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Approximate Word count = 1635
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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