Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Medieval English and Dutch Literature in its European Context and the Work of David F. Johnson
- 1 Reconstructing a Lost Manuscript of the Old English Gospels
- 2 The Reception of the Old English Version of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues between the Conquest and the Close of the Nineteenth Century
- 3 An Unrecorded Copy of Heinrich Krebs’s An Anglo-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Dialogues, Printer’s Proofs
- 4 The Body as Media in Early Medieval England
- 5 Who Snatched Grendel in Beowulf 852b?
- 6 ‘Mobile as Wishes’: Anchoritism, Intersubjectivity, and Disability in the Liber confortatorius
- 7 The Presence of the Hands: Sculpture and Script in the Eighth to Twelfth Centuries
- 8 Perceval’s Name and the Gifts of the Mother
- 9 A Relaxed Knight and an Impatient Heroine: Ironizing the Love Quest in the Second Part of the Middle Dutch Ferguut
- 10 Multilingualism in Van den vos Reynaerde and its Reception in Reynardus Vulpes
- 11 Three Characters as Narrator in the Roman van Walewein
- 12 As the Chess-Set Flies: Arthurian Marvels in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale and the Roman van Walewein
- 13 For a Performer’s Personal Use: The Corrector’s Lines in the Lower Margin of the Middle Dutch Lanceloet Manuscript
- 14 ‘Oft leudlez alone’: The Isolation of the Hero and its Consequences in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- 15 Shifting Skin: Passing as Human, Passing as Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- 16 The Lover Caught Between his Mother and his Maiden in Lanseloet van Denemerken
- 17 Afterlives: The Abbey at Amesbury and the ‘Rehabilitation’ of Guinevere in Malory and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur
- 18 The Importance of Being an Arthurian Mother
- Select Bibliography
- Bibliography of David F. Johnson’s Works
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
15 - Shifting Skin: Passing as Human, Passing as Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Medieval English and Dutch Literature in its European Context and the Work of David F. Johnson
- 1 Reconstructing a Lost Manuscript of the Old English Gospels
- 2 The Reception of the Old English Version of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues between the Conquest and the Close of the Nineteenth Century
- 3 An Unrecorded Copy of Heinrich Krebs’s An Anglo-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Dialogues, Printer’s Proofs
- 4 The Body as Media in Early Medieval England
- 5 Who Snatched Grendel in Beowulf 852b?
- 6 ‘Mobile as Wishes’: Anchoritism, Intersubjectivity, and Disability in the Liber confortatorius
- 7 The Presence of the Hands: Sculpture and Script in the Eighth to Twelfth Centuries
- 8 Perceval’s Name and the Gifts of the Mother
- 9 A Relaxed Knight and an Impatient Heroine: Ironizing the Love Quest in the Second Part of the Middle Dutch Ferguut
- 10 Multilingualism in Van den vos Reynaerde and its Reception in Reynardus Vulpes
- 11 Three Characters as Narrator in the Roman van Walewein
- 12 As the Chess-Set Flies: Arthurian Marvels in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale and the Roman van Walewein
- 13 For a Performer’s Personal Use: The Corrector’s Lines in the Lower Margin of the Middle Dutch Lanceloet Manuscript
- 14 ‘Oft leudlez alone’: The Isolation of the Hero and its Consequences in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- 15 Shifting Skin: Passing as Human, Passing as Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- 16 The Lover Caught Between his Mother and his Maiden in Lanseloet van Denemerken
- 17 Afterlives: The Abbey at Amesbury and the ‘Rehabilitation’ of Guinevere in Malory and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur
- 18 The Importance of Being an Arthurian Mother
- Select Bibliography
- Bibliography of David F. Johnson’s Works
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
Summary
AT THE BEGINNING of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1375–1400) a mysterious figure, an aghlich mayster ‘awesome figure’ (136) bursts into the hall, marked as monstrous not only by his immense size, ‘On þe most on þe molde on mesure hyghe’ [One of the greatest on ground in growth of his frame] (137), but by his hue, oueral enker-grene ‘green as green could be’ (150). This marvel of a man carries an ax and a holly bough and issues a challenge to the awe-struck members of King Arthur's youthful yuletide court: an exchange of blows to test the pride and reputation of these knights, puzzle their wits, and, perhaps, frighten Guinevere to death (2456–60). Traditionally the Green Knight has been read as a manifestation of ‘evil’ come to threaten, test, and tempt the Round Table. The poem engages directly with the question of his Otherness, and critics have devised ‘Other’ ways of interpreting him – devil, Green Man, nature God, even Saracen – and the woman he serves, Morgan le Fay. Less attention has been given to his human alter ego, Lord Bertilak, magically transformed by Morgan. While critics often fixate on the secondary aim of Morgan's plan – traumatizing Guinevere – as the Green Knight, Lord Bertilak instructs Arthur's court in humility, constancy, and mercy, appearing at first as a terrifying (but beautiful) entity; the tallest of men (only half a giant), whose challenge is to the very essence of Arthurian knighthood and chivalry. Rather than an Otherworldly specter sent by a supernatural enchantress to haunt Arthur's court and his wife, however, the Green Knight only passes as Other. He is an elaborate illusion woven by the very-mortal Morgan to test the renown of the Round Table, and without her magical intervention he is as human as Gawain himself. Bertilak embodies ideal courtesy and chivalry, tempered by humanity and the symbiotic relationship between the realms of fantasy and reality necessary for instructing the human world, specifically Gawain, in its failures in an attempt to save it.
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- Medieval English and Dutch Literatures: the European ContextEssays in Honour of David F. Johnson, pp. 271 - 290Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022