For what it's worth, this is such a good story! And it makes for such a good moral message about chivalry and honor while also discussing human weakness and how we all have our faults and misgivings too. It was such a creative, and magical story. The descriptions were lovely, and you can tell this was well written.

What would have made me enjoy it more: if I was reading a translation. However, as this was a read for uni, we had to translate it ourselves. And as this was my first encounter with medieval English, it was quite a trying process. It sucked the fun out of reading it a little, but that is a personal experience and not a criticising of the work.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Unknown, Burton Raffel (Translator), Neil D. Isaacs (Afterword)

‎Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl‬, ‎edited with an introduction by A. C. Cawley‬, ‎London‬: ‎J.M. Dent AND Son‬, ‎1962 = 1341‬. ‎Pages: 16, 150, xxv

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. It is one of the best known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs, the beheading game and the exchange of winnings.

Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important example of a chivalric romance, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his prowess.

In Camelot on New Year's Day, King Arthur's court is exchanging gifts and waiting for the feasting to start when the king asks to see or hear of an exciting adventure. A gigantic figure, entirely green in appearance and riding a green horse, rides unexpectedly into the hall. He wears no armour but bears an axe in one hand and a holly bough in the other. Refusing to fight anyone there on the grounds that they are all too weak to take him on, he insists he has come for a friendly christmas game: someone is to strike him once with his axe on the condition that the Green Knight may return the blow in a year and a day. The splendid axe will belong to whoever accepts this deal.

Arthur himself is prepared to accept the challenge when it appears no other knight will dare, but Sir Gawain, youngest of Arthur's knights and his nephew, asks for the honour instead. The giant bends and bares his neck before him and Gawain neatly beheads him in one stroke. However, the Green Knight neither falls nor falters, but instead reaches out, picks up his severed head and remounts, holding up his bleeding head to Queen Guinevere while its writhing lips remind Gawain that the two must meet again at the Green Chapel. He then rides away. Gawain and Arthur admire the axe, hang it up as a trophy and encourage Guinevere to treat the whole matter lightly.

تاریخ خوانش روز چهارم ماه جولای سال 2015 میلادی

عنوان فارسی: سر گاوین و شوالیه سبز؛ نویسنده ناشناس؛ شابک 0140440925؛ تعداد صفحه (نسخه چاپی - نسخه الکترونیکی) 187؛

سر گاوین و شوالیه سبز، «سر گاوین و شوالیه سبز» در سالهای میانی سده ی چهاردهم میلادی از ماجراجویی سر گاوین، که یکی از شوالیه های میزگرد شاه آرتور بودند، میگوید؛ در داستان، سر گاوین یک چالش را از یک جنگجوی مرموز که پوست آن سبز است، را میپذیرد. یکی از افسانه های بنیادی و بسیار با ارزش است. ا. شربیانی

Wha an absolutely eloquent poem! I chose Audi so I heard both modern English and old English. Poet had a strong grasp of alliteration, which made flow just beautiful. Description puts some modern poetry to shame: the sounds of the axe heads, the beauty of the lady's shoulders. It was so gory I read it twice.

Simon Armitage translation (Faber & Faber / Norton), and the Oxford edition's notes

I'd half forgotten about Gawain and the Green Knight - and I'd definitely forgotten it was set over Christmas and New Year, until I heard this mid-December episode of In Our Time. As I thought during the programme how bored I now was of Simon Armitage - he's become a very regular fixture on BBC arts shows in the last few years - I didn't expect to end up reading his translation of Gawain. But I looked at a couple of others and they seemed too formal and RP. The poem's northernness (or perhaps more precisely north-west-midlandness) is one of the most distinctive things about it, and is what makes it different from other 14th-century English works like The Canterbury Tales or Piers Plowman, and I wanted that to be evident in the translation. Although the beginning of Armitage version didn't have as many dialect words as I'd hoped (nor did it in the full poem), you can hear an accent in it if you're looking, the way you can't in the Penguin or Oxford translations.

However, he says about the translation, "the often-quoted notion that a poem can never be finished, only abandoned, has never felt more true. Even now, further permutations and possibilities keep suggesting themselves, as if the tweaking and fine-tuning could last a lifetime" - and a new revised edition was published in October 2018, so there may even be more dialect in it now.

And - its other great advantage I only fully realised after starting to read it properly - Armitage's version uses alliteration like the original, rather than blank verse or a rhymed meter. One edition's introduction explains that Germanic languages frequently use alliteration as a poetic device, whereas romance languages use rhyme. I love alliteration, but it's kind of uncool: done to excess (and excess is easy to do with alliteration) it can seem like the dad-dancing of English wordplay. (Is that anything to do with its being an older, pre-Norman component of the language?) It was perhaps my favourite aspect of Armitage's Gawain, seeing, for the first time, alliteration used in such quantity and so well, and utterly *allowed*, and never once with a need to cringe.

On the appearance of the Green Knight at Camelot:

The guests looked on. They gaped and they gawked
and were mute with amazement: what did it mean
that human and horse could develop this hue,
should grow to be grass-green or greener still,
like green enamel emboldened by bright gold?
Some stood and stared then stepped a little closer,
drawn near to the knight to know his next move;

Gawain's adventures on the journey northwards in winter:

Where he bridges a brook or wades through a waterway
ill fortune brings him face-to-face with a foe
so foul or fierce he is bound to use force.
So momentous are his travels among the mountains
to tell just a tenth would be a tall order.
Here he scraps with serpents and snarling wolves,
here he tangles with wodwos causing trouble in the crags,
or with bulls and bears and the odd wild boar.
Hard on his heels through the highlands come giants.
Only diligence and faith in the face of death
will keep him from becoming a corpse or carrion.

It brings home how bloody cold a medieval winter felt, with so many fewer hopes of getting warm than we have.

And the wars were one thing, but winter was worse:
clouds shed their cargo of crystallized rain
which froze as it fell to the frost-glazed earth.
With nerves frozen numb he napped in his armour,…

So in peril and pain Sir Gawain made progress,
crisscrossing the countryside until Christmas
Eve…
---
Now night passes and New Year draws near,
drawing off darkness as our Deity decrees.
But wild-looking weather was about in the world:
clouds decanted their cold rain earthwards;
the nithering north needled man’s very nature;
creatures were scattered by the stinging sleet.
Then a whip-cracking wind comes whistling between hills
driving snow into deepening drifts in the dales.

It's clear how exhausting a journey through this was, with rest and recuperation much needed, and no shame in the knight lying abed while the lord went out hunting.

“You were weary and worn,
hollow with hunger, harrowed by tiredness,
yet you joined in my revelling right royally every night.

What a contrast Christmas was with the rest of winter under these conditions:
And with meals and mirth and minstrelsy
they made as much amusement as any mortal could,
and among those merry men and laughing ladies
Gawain and his host got giddy together;
only lunatics and drunkards could have looked more delirious.
Every person present performed party pieces
till the hour arrived when revellers must rest,

(Which may have been later than you'd think; A Tudor Christmas, which I read a couple of weeks earlier, stated that in 1494, Henry VII processed at 11pm after mass on Twelfth Night.)

As with all good long poems, there are a handful of lines that don't work, but those that do outweigh those that don't sufficiently to make the off-notes negligible.


Needless to say, all this left me with renewed respect for Armitage, and I enjoyed watching this documentary in which he visited the likely locations the Gawain-poet thought of as he was writing. Lud's Church in North Staffordshire, the probable site of the Green Chapel, really did look like somewhere a high-fantasy film hero would fight a pivotal battle with a monster (or maybe they just filmed it well to make it look that way). If you also remember Armitage from the 90s Mark Radcliffe Radio 1 show, you will probably enjoy the soundtrack too.


Armitage's edition has a short - and interesting - intro, but if you want the best historical background info, the Oxford edition is the place to look, at Helen Cooper's introduction and notes. (The Penguin Bernard O'Donoghue version doesn't have nearly as much.) Info like this was exciting (to me at least) after having heard several briefer, less detailed histories of the text:

the precise detail of this location may however represent the origin of the scribe who copied the poems into the manuscript rather than of the poet himself, who certainly came from the same region but may not be possible to locate with quite the same degree of exactness.

The Wirral was notorious as a refuge for outlaws though the comment here on the wildness of its inhabitants could also be a joke against the poem's first readers since Gawain is travelling into their own home territory. This is, however, the dangerous past, not the familiar present. (So the Liverpool jokes have an ancient history…)

Other highlights included various estimates of when wild boar became hunted to extinction in England; the ranked, and also gendered, classification of hunted beasts; when carpets were probably introduced by Eleanor of Castile; mini-biographies of candidates for the authorship and dedication; the influential coterie of Cheshiremen around Richard II in the 1390s; and that Gawain was part of an Alliterative Revival in poetry, all known works written "in the north or west of England or in southern Scotland".


For a long time I was not all that interested in reading Gawain because I'd never found chivalric culture very interesting and couldn't help but imagine it taking place in the sanitised scenes of Victorian Gothic revival paintings, even though they were obviously hundreds of years later. Not only did I enjoy the alliteration and the descriptions of the winter weather and its effects in the poem, but it helped me start to see chivalry in a different context: grittier, for want of a better word, and part of what seems to have been a confusing, demanding and perhaps sometimes contradictory set of social standards for medieval nobility which I'd actually like to know a bit more about (but paper-length rather than book-length).

The only reason for giving 4 stars rather than 5 is the known fault with the original, that the purported plot by Morgan Le Fay, as explanation for events, is unconvincing. Otherwise, the poem ends with a beautiful and unexpectedly moving final line, as if it were a prayer; although the story is playful and mythical, this reminds the reader of the religion at the heart of medieval life.

(read Dec 2018, review Jan 2019)

Contains the greatest "OH FUCK" moment in medieval literature!

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - listed here as written by Unknown, though I believe it may have been penned by that prolific Greek author Anonymous - is a classic tale from Arthurian legend in which the code of honor attributed to chivalry is heavily ensconced.

There are many interpretations of the poem's meaning, and historically speaking it's often dependent on the reader's bias. For instance, Christians latched on to the sex aspect and pagans saw a Green Man parallel. Me? I just see it as damn good fun, just as I'll wager the eagerly listening common folk heard it told by their smoky peat fires so many hundreds of years ago.

I mean the story is interesting enough, but God is Gawain annoying. For fuck's sake man, you said you were sorry and you gave back the damn girdle. Do you really have to hang your head in shame for the rest of your days? If you're gonna be ashamed of something, it should be that gross misogynistic rant at the end of the poem.

Re-read.

Originally, I read this alongside LotR for the connection to Tolkein (having been a translation of Tolkein, himself, from the original Middle English), but it was surprisingly great all on its own.

Allegory? Of course. But it was also a tale of Sir Gawain the most pure, going on his own little quest and getting seduced and bumping heads against mother nature.

Literally, in this case.

I loved the pride and the twist back then and enjoyed it just as much again. And I also have a great fondness for the Green Knight, regardless, so this story was a bit of a no-brainer for me.

The season if not of mellow fruitfulness than of frost and fog brings this back to me with the childhood memory of going to school in a proper pea souper, every familiar landmark lost, only the tarmac footpath remained solid beneath my childish feet, occasionally a hut would burst out of the milkiness to demonstrate that I was making progress. My little quest however did not take a year and a day, as all self respecting quests must.

Alas the language is beyond me, I am comfortable with Chaucer (though I suspect that's just the false friends fooling me), and I found Langland, with concentration, manageable, but this dialect of English, roughly contemporary to the other two a bit too much, maybe if I knew some Norse or Danish, or had been born and raised in that country where it had been written rather than close to the dark waters of the Thames I would find it easier. But this edition does have a fine cover illustration which takes you to the heart of the matter.

If you don't know it all, then it is a medieval English poem dealing with a knight of King Arthur's court, who gets into a beheading game with a wandering Green knight  these not too popular today, a kind of sport in which the participants take turns in chopping off each other's heads, the magical ability to stick your decapitated head back on your shoulders was not considered cheating and in order to take his turn at being beheaded Sir Gawain must first find the aforementioned Green knight, so the entire story is about being lost in the fog - a mysterious antagonist cannot be found, playing a game of which you don't know all the rules, mysterious temptations (as illustrated by the front cover), is the hero going to die, what does it all mean? Lost in the fog, wandering, but you reach the destination all the same.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Simon Armitage translation if the gentle reader is curious enough.
bonus fun

I did not enjoy the hunting scenes, but Sir Gawain made up for it. I love the guy.

This cover is very creepy but not indicative of how the Green Knight is described. An addition to the Arthurian legend. This is a quest story of a type told as an epic poem written in the 14th century, I'm sure it was related orally to entertain a gathering, and what a story it is! In part I, Arthur and his Knights are celebrating the Christmas/New Year's holidays and are intruded upon by this fabulous Green Knight who throws down a challenge. Sir Gawain accepts and what ensures IS quite creepy.
Part II begins the quest of Sir Gawain to complete the challenge with the Green Knight which takes him away from known parts. In the guise of hospitality at a castle in the woods, comes another challenge, although Sir Gawain does not recognize it as such. The story is wrapped up in the code of chivalry, faith, and a pinch or two of magic - it is Arthurian, so magic is always around.

I enjoyed this tale, although the preparing of the animals after the hunt was more than I needed to visualize for a "holiday" read. If you want an in depth look at this read, go to the Classic and Western Canon group for some very education & insightful commentary of this Dec group interim read

Sir Gawain of Camelot encounters, in this poem of the late 14th century, a most formidable antagonist – a giant green knight who displays supernatural powers and makes a deadly pact with Gawain at King Arthur’s court one New Year’s Day. And in the process of trying to fulfill that grim bargain, even at the cost of his life, Sir Gawain, as depicted by the unknown poet who composed this work of narrative verse, reveals much regarding the medieval world within which this poem was written.

While scholars of medieval literature have suggested a number of possible authors of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, all that can be said with reasonable certainty is that the unknown poet who composed this poem probably did so sometime between the years 1375 and 1400 – or, to put it another way, in the England of King Richard II or King Henry IV. Interesting to wonder if either of these kings – both of whose reigns were later dramatized by William Shakespeare – might have heard this poem recited at court.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight begins as King Arthur, his wife Queen Guinevere, and the knights of the Round Table sit down for a New Year’s feast. As it is a feast-day, King Arthur announces that he will not begin to dine until some marvellous event has occurred. And just then, the feast receives an unexpected visitor – an unknown knight of gigantic stature: “A fellow fiercely grim,/And all a glittering green” (p. 26).

It is not just that he is clad in green; his horse is green, and his skin and hair and beard and everything about him are green. Clearly, King Arthur has the marvel that he was seeking.

And the Green Knight, bearing a huge Viking-style battle-axe, has a challenge for the knights of the Round Table:

"I crave in this court a Christmas game,
For it is Yuletide and New Year, and young men abound here.
If any in this household is so hardy in spirit,
Of such mettlesome mind and so madly rash
As to strike a strong blow in return for another,
I shall offer to him this fine axe freely;
This axe, which is heavy enough, to handle as he please.
And I shall bide the first blow, as bare as I sit here….
Then shall I stand up to his stroke, quite still on this floor –
So long as I shall have leave to launch a return blow unchecked." (pp. 31-32)

Many of the Arthurian knights whose names are familiar to readers of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur – Agravaine and Ywain, Sir Bors and Sir Bedivere and Sir Lionel and even Sir Launcelot – are present at the feast; but of all the knights, the only one willing to take up the challenge is Sir Gawain.

It is worth mentioning here that the Sir Gawain of this poem is quite different from the Gawain of Malory’s epic. In Malory’s work, Gawain is selfish, judgemental, and not unfrequently treacherous – a foil to truer-hearted knights like Launcelot and Gareth. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by contrast, Gawain is brave and humble, always acting with goodwill and out of good intentions. Indeed, Gawain, sitting at Guinevere’s side, seems concerned to protect his queen from the horrifying sight of the Green Knight – and to keep King Arthur from impetuously taking up the challenge himself.

Accepting the Green Knight’s challenge, and binding himself to the grim bargain, Sir Gawain takes up the Norse battle-axe and strikes off the Green Knight’s head. But regular readers of Arthurian romance tales will not be surprised to hear that the story does not end there:

The fair head fell from the neck, struck the floor,
And people spurned it as it rolled around.
Blood spurted from the body, bright against the green.
Yet the fellow did not fall, nor falter one whit,
But stoutly sprang forward on legs still sturdy,
Roughly reached out among the ranks of nobles,
Seized his splendid head and straightway lifted it.
Then he strode to his steed, snatched the bridle,
Stepped into the stirrup and swung aloft,
Holding his head in his hand by the hair.
He settled himself in the saddle as steadily
As if nothing had happened to him, though he had no head. (p. 37)

The feast, I would imagine, goes uneaten. The Green Knight’s disembodied head meanwhile commands that Gawain keep his end of the bargain:

"Be prepared to perform what you promised, Gawain;
Seek faithfully till you find me, my fine fellow,
According to your oath in this hall in these knights’ hearing.
Go to the Green Chapel without gainsaying to get
Such a stroke as you have struck. Strictly you deserve
That due redemption on the day of New Year." (p. 37)

And Sir Gawain, believing that keeping to the bargain will mean his death, nonetheless is true to this word, leaving Camelot the following All Saints’ Day in order to make sure that he will have plenty of time to find the Green Chapel and fulfill his deadly bargain. His journey takes him from one vague and mythic landscape (Camelot) through some recognizably real locations of the border region between northern England and eastern Wales – Holy Head, the isles of Anglesey, the wilds of Wirral – before making his way back into the realm of the mythic.

Eventually, Sir Gawain finds himself at a castle whose lord, Sir Bertilak, offers Gawain a lavish welcome and suitably noble hospitality, saying that “God has given us of his grace good measure/In granting us such a guest as Gawain is” (p. 55). He further informs Gawain that the Green Chapel is just a short distance away – and that Gawain, with three days to spare before his New Year’s appointment, can spend those three days lodging comfortably at Bertilak’s castle.

Yet Sir Bertilak’s castle proves to be the site of further testing of Sir Gawain; for over the course of each of those three days, while Sir Bertilak is out hunting with his noble retainers, Sir Bertilak’s beautiful young wife comes to Sir Gawain’s bedchamber and offers herself to him.

As Sir Gawain struggles to resist this temptation, it is not just that Gawain is a healthy young man being invited to make love with a beautiful young woman who is alluringly dressed in “a ravishing robe that reached to the ground….Her fine-featured face and fair throat were unveiled” (p. 86). It is also that she appeals to him in terms of the conventions of courtly love that were so prevalent within the culture of medieval nobility – to wit, the idea that strong young knights and beautiful young ladies should be able to talk, in private, about matters of love, without that emotional intimacy ever leading to physical intimacy. Spoiler alert: It didn’t always work out that way.

Working from within that context, the Lady tries to tempt Gawain by appealing to his sense of knightly honour, playfully accusing him of “know[ing] nothing of noble conventions”, of being unaware that “the choicest thing in Chivalry, the chief thing praised, is the loyal sport of love” (pp. 77-78). Emphasizing that she is alone and unchaperoned, she states that “You ought to be eager to lay open to a young thing/Your discoveries in the craft of courtly love./What! Are you ignorant, with all your renown?/Or do you deem me too dull to drink in your dalliance?” (p. 78)

Truly, this temptation is multi-dimensional. If you were a real knight, you would love me. Do you even know what you’re doing as a knight? Or is it that you don’t think I’m pretty enough, or smart enough, to be worth your time?

And it creates a real moral dilemma for Gawain. On the one hand, he cannot simply reject her with harsh words; doing so would break the chivalrous code of courtly love. It would be “blackguardly”, and “his upbringing forbade him to rebuff her utterly” (pp. 83, 87). But on the other hand, if he were to succumb to her blandishments, then he would “plunge into sin,/And dishonour the owner of the house treacherously” (p. 87). For all of these reasons, the passages dealing with Gawain and the Lady are alive with sexual tension.

And as if the temptation of forbidden sensual delights is not enough, Sir Gawain faces one final test when New Year’s Day arrives and he is on his way to the Green Chapel, to face what he thinks is certain death at the hands of the Green Knight. Sir Bertilak’s servant, appointed to guide Gawain to the Green Chapel, instead emphasizes the Green Knight’s murderous cruelty, and encourages Gawain to flee:

“Therefore, good Sir Gawain, leave the grim man alone!
Ride by another route, to some region remote!
Go in the name of God, and Christ grace your fortune!
And I shall go home again and undertake
To swear solemnly by God and His saints as well…
Stoutly to keep your secret, not saying to a soul
That ever you tried to turn tail from any man I knew.” (p. 100)

Sir Gawain, “somewhat galled” at the suggestion, nonetheless replies courteously, telling the servant that “if I quit this place,/Fled from the fellow in the fashion you propose,/I should become a cowardly knight with no excuse whatever,/For I will go to the Green Chapel, to get what Fate sends” (p. 100). And thus the stage is set for Gawain’s final confrontation with the Green Knight – a Green Chapel visit that unveils a number of surprises, and that invokes familiar Arthurian characters like Merlin and Morgan le Fay.

Translator Brian Stone, a drama scholar at Great Britain’s Open University, includes with this Penguin Books edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight not only a helpful introduction but also six (!) critical essays that enhance the reader’s understanding of the poem, and of the world within which the poem was composed. I was struck, for example, by Stone’s suggestion that the Green Knight, with his non-human qualities, “wants and apparently needs…to bask in the light of a human virtue which he cannot himself have” (p. 125).

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a New Year’s tale, takes place at a time of endings and beginnings, and emphasizes the importance of remaining true to one’s principles, even when one may think that all hope is lost. Considering how tough Gawain is on himself for the few times that this sorely-tempted knight fails in even a small way, I find myself thinking that it is a particularly propitious book to read at a time of year when so many of us find ourselves looking back at our failings from the previous year, and resolving to do better in the New Year to come.

Y cierro mi 2024 lector por la puerta grande, con mi mejor lectura del mes de diciembre y con el rey Arturo y sus nobles caballeros de la Tabla Redonda. Hacía mucho que no traspasaba las puertas de Camelot, y el reencuentro ha sido por medio de una obra anónima del siglo XIV llena de encanto y color que no puede tener mejor presentación que esta: A J.R.R.Tolkien le encantaba. Ya desde el prólogo que acompaña la edición que he manejado nos advierten de ello, admitiendo que seguramente si se sigue leyendo a día de hoy “Sir Gawain y el Caballero Verde” es por su influencia y por el hecho de que la traducción y edición que el profesor trabajó y publicó en su momento es la que aún sigue leyéndose en el inglés moderno y de la que parten la mayoría de traducciones en otras lenguas de la que para muchos es la mejor obra del ciclo artúrico ha producido la tierra natal del Rey que Fue y Será, Gran Bretaña (con permiso de “ La Morte d’ Arthur” de Sir Thomas Malory).

Camelot está de fiesta por la llegada del Año Nuevo. Y como no podía ser de otra forma, durante la fastuosa celebración una nueva aventura aparece cuando un gigantesco caballero de piel, barba y vestimenta verde, a lomos de un no menos verde caballo, interrumpa en el gran salón del Castillo exigiendo que uno de los caballeros presentes le de un golpe con su hacha, con la condición de que dentro de un año dicho caballero se presente en la capilla verde y reciba el mismo trato. Sir Gawain, sobrino de Arturo, se convertirá así en el protagonista de una extraña aventura que, un año después de los hechos, le llevará a un viaje lleno de pruebas y misterios.

Nos encontramos ante un romance métrico fechado a finales del siglo XIV que ha llegado hasta nuestros días en un único manuscrito que en la actualidad se conserva en la British Library. En él también se encuentran otros tres poemas que se cree que puedan pertenecer al mismo autor. Las cuatro obras cuentan con alguna que otra ilustración de sus escenas más importantes, aunque de escasa calidad. La mayoría de los estudiosos consideran que “Pearl”, “Purity” (o “Cleaness” ) y “Patience” (ninguno de los poemas tenía título en el manuscrito original, los han recibido por parte de los historiadores y estudiosos a lo largo del tiempo) fueron escritos por la misma mano, pero se dividen sobre si este mismo autor anónimo también concibió el “Sir Gawain”. Este es el poema más largo de la recopilación, constando de más de 2500 versos agrupados de manera irregular en estrofas de entre 16 y 20 sílabas, la mayoría sin rima ni metro, pero regularmente altiterados. La edición en la que lo he leído nos presenta la obra en prosa, por eso a lo largo de la reseña voy a hablar indistintamente tanto de poema como de novela.

Lo que hay que entender cuando uno se adentra en el mundo de la literatura medieval es que la concepción que sus autores y lectores tenían de la ficción es completamente diferente a la que se pueda tener en la actualidad. Yo no soy experta en literatura medieval, ni mucho menos, pero en muchas de las obras que leo de esa época no puedo dejar de acordarme del género del realismo mágico. Y es que en las páginas medievales, lo fantástico y lo irreal siempre se ponían en el camino de los protagonistas durante su búsqueda de aventuras, honor y amor como lo más natural del mundo. Al igual que el género historiográfico, la literatura del momento no buscaba historias reales o exactas, sino ensalzar una serie de aventuras e ideas de esa época. Y, sobre todo, era un vehículo para solazarse en el mero disfrute del puro acto de leer. Porque como señala Luis Alberto de Cuenca en el prólogo de esta aventura, el sir Gawain no es“solo un relato de una moral, sino un relato en sí: fresca y bellísima literatura”. De esas que existen para entretener y para el divertimento de los lectores.

Sin embargo, para mí la belleza que ha tenido también radica en todo lo ficticio que tiene de realista, que no es poco. Reconozco que como lectora no me gustan mucho las descripciones que son muy amplias y que duran más de lo debido en las páginas de la novela o libro que tenga entre manos, y tampoco me gusta especialmente encontrarme con abundancia de ellas mientras leo. Reconozco que en muchos casos son importantes para la ambientación de escenarios y personajes y si tengo que pasar por ellas lo hago sabiendo que puede ser algo importante para la narración. Pero en general me cansan bastantes. Así que en ese sentido “Sir Gawain y el Caballero Verde” tenía todas las papeletas para resultarme una obra aburrida de leer. Hay muchos momentos en que uno siente que no se encuentra ante el desarrollo de una historia de aventuras o protagonizada por un personaje mítico, sino ante un mero catálogo de costumbres y escenas medievales. No sabemos quién compuso este poema , teorías hay varias, lo único que podemos deducir de esta persona es que debía de haber nacido en las Tierras Medias inglesas, o por lo menos conocer bien su habla, que sería muy difícil de entender para los habitantes de Londres. Este personaje tendría conocimientos, por lo menos mínimos, de francés y latín; estaba imbuido del espíritu religioso característico del siglo XIV, y tenía fuertes vínculos con las clases altas y la nobleza si es que no era parte de ese segmento de la población medieval. De esto no hay ninguna duda por el amplio conocimiento que demuestra de los usos y buenas costumbres nobles a lo largo y ancho del poema. En medio de toda esta vorágine que es el viaje de sir Gawain, trufado de enormes caballeros de color verde, cabezas rodantes que siguen hablando una vez separadas del cuerpo, hechizos y lugares misteriosos, nos encontramos también ante una obra profundamente costumbrista, que nos adentra en el día a día de las clases altas medievales en la Inglaterra del siglo XIV. Toda la narración está plagada de escenas de banquetes y cacerías donde se nos narran con todo lujo de detalles como eran en esa época; las descripciones de vestidos, armaduras, arreos para las monturas, adornos y enseres son profusas y detalladas. Se nota perfectamente que el autor conoce lo que escribe y por eso se explaya en eso. Mientras lee el lector moderno se siente como si hubiera viajado en el tiempo y no se encontrará solo en la corte de Camelot, también en la de cualquier noble inglés de la época o incluso en la del propio rey de Inglaterra. Y todo eso lo hace nuestro anónimo escritor con una gracia y un encanto imperecederos en el tiempo. La abundancia de descripciones de “Sir Gawain y el Caballero Verde” es una de las auténticas gracias de esta lectura, lo que hace que sumergirte en ella se parezca a meterte de lleno en algún tapiz o ilustración de un manuscrito o códice de la época, tal es la viveza con la que se habla de este mundo antiguo, y se logra representar todo su colorido y lujo de una manera plástica y viva. Como bien dicen en el prólogo “hay movimiento, color, viveza en los detalles: son las características esenciales del autor del Gawain”.

Y no solo se nos habla de una hermosa manera del mundo cotidiano medieval. “Sir Gawain y el Caballero Verde” es una novela profundamente invernal. La acción tiene lugar a lo largo de un año, empieza un día de Año Nuevo y termina en la siguiente vez que se celebra esta fecha. Las descripciones del paso de las estaciones tienen una belleza conmovedora y dulcemente melancólica que a mi me recuerda a los calendarios agrícolas pintados en las paredes de los templos románicos, como en el caso de San Isidoro de la ciudad de León. Si el anónimo escritor se las arreglaba para darle a los momentos en los que hablaba de caza, ropas y banquetes un aura poética, cuando le toca el momento de hablar del paso de las estaciones puede dar rienda suelta a esa vertiente de una forma preciosa y delicada. Especialmente en el invierno, que junto al caballero que da título a la obra
puede considerarse el otro gran protagonista de la lectura.

Después de leer este libro, tengo muchas ganas de probar otros eternos pendientes sobre las historias de Arturo y sus caballeros. De momento me estoy conformando con echar un vistazo a diferentes capítulos y fragmentos de la obra “ El Reino Mágico de Arturo” de José Ignacio Gracia Noriega, que leí hace ya unos años. Más que un estudio del mundo Artúrico, es un catálogo de los personajes y elementos más característicos de este corpus, recopilados de una manera sencilla y amena que hace que esta obra resulte ideal para iniciarse en el estudio de este mundo. En la parte dedicada a Gawain, el autor señala que este personaje es uno de los que mejor ha conservado su herencia como héroe céltico y sus raíces paganas. Mientras que Lancelot es un caballero nacido para la grandeza pero incapacitado para alcanzarla por su amor adúltero con la reina Ginebra y Galahad es el héroe destinado a la perfección y a ser el único capaz de acceder al grial , profundamente imbuido por la concepción cristiana de la que surgió, Gawain siempre estará marcado por sus orígenes Célticos. Para muestra un botón: la descripción del escudo que suele llevar, que se supone que representa las virtudes cristianas que la virgen María, tiene sus orígenes en el emblema de Venus Ishtar (ya sabes, en realidad el cristianismo y muchas de sus celebraciones y símbolos ancestrales beben de otras religiones pretéritas) Será uno de los caballeros más importantes del mundo artúrico, pero su destino será siempre que nunca llegue a alcanzar sus objetivos y que solo logre quedar como un secundario sobresaliente e importante en la mayoría de los mitos. Se supone que representa el poder de la muerte y la renovación simbolizado en que su historia empiece y acabe en Año Nuevo, lo que recoge la relación que en tiempos pretéritos tuvo con el sol y a la que en el poema que nos ocupa apenas se le dedican unas lineas. Por lo tanto, se le puede considerar como un quiero y no puedo. Alguien que está destinado a vivir aventuras, y que dentro de la óptica francesa en la que entraron las historias artúricas desde que este corpus artúrico (nacido del mundo céltico y bretón) fue trabajado por los autores del amor cortés; es ideal para coquetear con las damas y ser un excelente corte sano. Pero que a la hora de la verdad siempre fracasa. En las páginas de la obra, Gawain se nos representa como la flor y nata de la caballería medieval obviando al afrancesaso Lancelot, admirado y conocido por todos los presentes que aparecen, envuelto en todas las virtudes cristianas que puedas imaginarte. Es tan perfecto que hay momentos en que te pone de los nervios y no puedes evitar refunfuñar contra él. Hasta los últimos compases de la historia. Cuando se demuestra que su periplo en la novela que protagoniza no deja de ser una broma que un caballero les ha gastado a él y al resto de la corte del rey Arturo. Y que demuestra que hasta el mejor de todos los caballeros puede errar de la forma más humana que uno se pueda imaginar. Pero no por ello, considero que “Sir Gawain y el Caballero Verde” sea una pérdida de tiempo o carezca de significado. Una vez más, tengo que volver prólogo de Luis Alberto de Cuenca, donde se nos habla de que Gawain vuelve a la corte de su tío, como un hombre nuevo, que ha aprendido unas cuantas lecciones sobre el mundo y sobre sí mismo, que“se purificar en valor y lealtad a lo largo de su aventura. La dama del castillo lo hará rico en templanza. Y al final, de regreso en la corte de Arturo, habrá vencido todos los riesgos, incluso el de extraviarse en el futuro”. Al fin de al cabo, en la vida real esos son los viajes que realmente importan, los que te enseñan muchas cosas. Y un personaje que se lleva esa lección sin haber ganado nada más tiene mi simpatía. Porque al final, se siente como si el autor del poema nos quisiera decir que la perfección solo existen los libros ylas ensoñaciones, en la vida real solo podemos coger lo que buenamente encontremos en el camino y sacar de ello el mejor provecho para nuestro crecimiento personal. Y qué queréis que os diga, prefiero a un héroe así que a cualquier Galahd (si habéis leído más obras sobre la búsqueda del grial creo que entenderéis el porqué), uno con el que en cierta forma me puedo sentir identificada y al que puedo entender, aunque sus aventuras y desventuras se hayan escrito muchos siglos antes de que yo naciera.

Como ya os he señalado al principio de esta reseña, que se me ha hecho más larga de lo que pretendía, no he podido cerrar mejor el 2024. Espero que el 2025 me dé la oportunidad de leer más literatura medieval y relacionada con el rey Arturo, que es algo que me gusta mucho. Y por supuesto todo tipo de lecturas que me hagan compañía, me llenen y me gusten. Y lo mismo os deseo a todos vosotros.