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Disorientation, Style, and Consciousness in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

John M. Ganim
John M. Ganim*
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Abstract

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight not only exhibits a profound control of structure and symmetry, but also includes a great many techniques that induce disorientation and confusion in the reader. Such techniques challenge and entertain the audience, and themes of decline, decadence, and dismemberment comment ironically on Sir Gawain’s late fourteenth-century audience’s place in the history that the narrative includes. This article concentrates on one particular technique; the poet divides certain stanzas so that the second half of the stanza causes the audience to revise or question their response to the first half. But such techniques mirror the effects of the narrative as a whole. This constant shift in perspective causes the-audience to question the meaning and value of earthly perception and existence. It also indicates a gently antagonistic—or at least ironic—relationship between poet and audience.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 91 , Issue 3 , May 1976 , pp. 376 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1976

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References

Notes

1 The Three Temptations : Medieval Man in Search of the World (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966). pp. 243–44. It is impossible to list all relevant criticism in these notes. For important reviews of criticism on the poem, see Morton Bloomfield. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: An Appraisal.” PMLA, 76 (1961), 7–19; and Howard. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,“ in Recent Middle English Scholarship and Criticism, ed. J. Burke Severs (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press, 1971). pp. 29–54.

2 The Gawain Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971), p. 236.

3 See Larry D. Benson. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press. 1965). pp. 151–58.

4 On formal rhetoric in the poem, see Derek Pearsall, “‘Rhetorical ‘Descriptio’ in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Modern Language Review. 50 (1955), 129–34.

5 See esp. Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (1951 ; rpt. New York: Meridian. 1955).

6 Described perhaps most eloquently in Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924: rpt. New York: St. Martin's, 1957).

7 Line references in my text are to the edition by J. R. R. Tolkien and ?. V. Gordon, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2nd ed., rev. Norman Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957).

8 For the convenience of the reader unfamiliar with the Gawain poet's dialect, 1 have appended to my quotations the excellent translation by Marie Borroff, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New York: Norton, 1957).

9 On the further resonances of this opening see Alfred David, “Gawain and Aeneas,” English Studies, 44 (1968), 402–09. Background material and analogues are marshaled in Theodore Silverstein. “Sir Gawain, Dear Brutus, and Britain's Fortunate Founding: A Study in Comedy and Convention,” Modern Philology, 62 (1965). 189–206.

10 I seem to have picked up this phrase from Charles Muscatine, who uses it to describe some aspects of the “courtly” style in Chaucer and the Trench Tradition (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1969), p. 15.

11 Alain Renoir, “Descriptive Technique in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Orbis Litterarum, 13 (1958). 126–32. Pertinent remarks on the poet's use of visual description can be found in Benson, pp. 167–206; Boroff. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. 1962). pp. 91–129; and George Kane, Middle English Literature (London: Methuen, 1951). pp. 73–76.

12 Charles Muscatine has recently described the Pearl poet's style as a “defense” against a sense of “crisis,” in his interesting book Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press. 1972). Muscatine does point out that compared to Pearl, Sir Gawain “gives greater emphasis to the notions of disorder and of the imperfectness of human arrangements” (p. 68).