Frailty has many definitions, including: weakness (moral and physical), infirmity, fault, failing, flaw, susceptibility, defect, deficiency, fragility, and foible (Rodale 436). Given these many meanings and nuances behind the word "frailty" it is easy to see how human frailty can come in so many forms and why it is the topic of so many tales, novels, and poems. Two tales that outline the consequences of the many types of human frailty are The Song of Roland and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This paper will compare and discuss the concept of human frailty as depicted in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Song of Roland.
Before there is a comparison made between the two epics, there needs to be a look at the background and historical context of each work. According to Tolkien, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was probably written in the latter half of the fourteenth century, by an author who was from the West Midlands of England, and much more conservative and less cosmopolitan than his contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer in London (Tolkien 229-230). Merwin, however, places the author closer to Wales and states further that Sir Gawain and the other Arthurian legends were popular among the English knights and soldiers during the Hundred Years War between France and England (xiii, xxi). Additionally, Sir Gawain, used grammar and language that is called "alliterative," which is a form of writing that matches the beginning consonants of words, as in "wild and wooly," rather than the now standard format of rhyming the ends of words, such as "Cat in the Hat." The alliterative format is much older than the conventional meter-based rhyming format and dates back to English antiquity (Tolkien 230).
The Song of Roland, estimated to have been written around the eleventh century is based on an event from the eighth century in which the Frankish (French) army, on traveling back to France from Spain through the Pyrenees, was attacked in...