I remembered the essentials of this from high school English, but rereading it, I was struck by the beauty of the language and the structure of the poem - the longer lines accentuated by the “bob and wheel” as my edition calls the short lines and the end - it works so well. Example:

Lines 107-124 talk about the feast of King Arthur and his Round Table knights.

...
With a flaring crack of trumpets the feast
Began, trumpets all hung with bright banners,
And drums beat, and glorious bagpipes
Rumbled and shrilled their quick-step tunes,
And hearts beat quick with the music. At the signal
Rare and delicate dishes were served,
And venison in great slabs, and so many platters
That there was almost no place to set them in front of
The guests, broths and stews in overflowing
Abundance.
All ate as they pleased
And as much as they wanted,
A dozen dishes apiece,
And beer and wine flowed free.

I’m not so concerned with any allegorical meaning; I just enjoy the poem for the language and the setting and the story - and a cracking good story it is, too!

Sir Gawain is the thin line incarnate between devout Christian and chaotic bisexual. And unfortunately this long distance relationship with the Green Knight won't work out for him.

That's it. That's the review.

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.

As a big fan of Arthurian legends this is one of those stories it seems Iike I should have known. It’s not that I didn’t know anything about it - I just hadn’t read it. Maybe it’s because I knew it was a 14th century poem, over a hundred pages long, and written in Middle English. And no... I didn’t even attempt the original Sir Gawayn and þe Grene Knyȝt version... this was one of many translations.

Me and poetry generally don’t mix very well. Even as much as I adore Lord of the Rings I often get lost in the many poems and songs. I’m not sure I’m cultured enough- or something like that.

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

From the moment the hulking Green Knight rides into King Arthur’s Christmas banquet hall, axe in one hand, holly bough in the other, this tale has an eldritch, fey feeling — a haunting sense of otherworldliness. That haunted atmosphere is perfectly captured in Simon Armitage’s brilliant translation (from the original Middle English) of this late 14th century English poem. Armitage’s beautiful, descriptive poetry weaves a trance-like spell around this weird wonder tale that is far more powerful and evocative than the scholarly Tolkien translation that I read some forty years ago.

As for the tale, you could analyze it, attempt to delve its meaning and moral to its original 14th century audience. You could try to unweave its separate elements — Christian mythology, Welsh, Irish, and English folktales, pagan roots, French chivalric tradition. You could break it down using a modern feminist perspective, critiquing the trope of woman as temptress and the conniving Morgan le Fay as femme fatale villain. Or, like me, you could immerse yourself in this wonderfully weird and strange tale of quests, magic and illusion.

if you want to understand the definition of an anticlimactic ending, read this book. (2.5)

It was Christmas at Camelot

This is a beautiful book. I love the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Not too sure of the intended age range of this particular version as it's written by a children's author and the illustrations are child orientated, but as an adult and a reader of the normal paperback version, there are 'adult' scenes.

surprisingly into this funky little poem! yes reading multiple stanzas of middle english poetry about a boar hunt tested me as a person but parts of it are so fun and intriguing. sometimes culturally iconic texts are good. i understand the hype.

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.

In the ten years since I first read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight I’ve thought about it a lot. It was the first Arthurian work I read, long before I knew there was an enormous world of prior writings about Arthurian subjects. Reading it again, I have a new appreciation for some of its qualities I didn’t fully grasp on my first reading. I can place it in a broader context and understand its significance geographically and chronologically. My overall enjoyment was mostly unchanged, but I see things in it now I did not before.

It is preserved in only a single vellum manuscript from the late fourteenth century, in North Midland Middle English. Unlike the French and German Arthurian epic poems that came before, this one is close enough to modern English for an attempt to be made to translate it into verse. The translation by Brian Stone in the Penguin Classics version preserves the alliterative character of the original. Presenting it this way retains an appreciable amount of its traditional style.

It is a late medieval rendition of the beheading game, seen before in Celtic mythology with Cuchulain as the hero, and in the thirteenth century continuations of Perceval. At King Arthur’s Camelot Chrismastide celebration a hulking knight in green appears, requesting the boon of good sport be granted, that sport being a decapitation that puzzles and mystifies all of Arthur’s court. He challenges one to step forward, deliver the fiercest blow they can upon the knight, and to then await his repayment of that blow with one of his own in one year.

Gawain eventually accepts the challenge and decapitates the Green Knight. The knight’s head rolls away from his standing body, which then walks over to it and picks it up, and tells Gawain where to find him on one year, at his Green Chapel in a distant land, to receive his redemption. He leaves, and Arthur’s court resumes their celebration, albeit in a different mood than before, while Gawain contemplates his new obligation.

We see that this Knight of the Green Chapel is a supernatural figure of some sort, but more than that we do not know. Gawain is given fanfare and the finest of armors and weaponry to aid him on his adventure. Seen here and only here is Gawain bearing the pentangle on his shield, and a glorious tapestry of flashy decorations that show the grandeur with which legend has always associated him. Throughout the poem, Gawain’s trek across the lands receives detailed attention, as does his stay at a castle in a location thought by many to be a version of the Celtic Otherworld, indicated by the passage through water required to find it.

The poet glosses over many of the more daunting tribulations Gawain encounters, like his battles with wolves, dragons, wild men, ogres, but tells of his fights against starvation and the winter cold, and his difficulty with the extreme cliffs and crags and mountainous landscapes. Before his arrival at the castle, his adventure is perilous and one that might surely be his end.

It is at the castle that things take on a different tone. He and his horse Gringolet are taken in and given the finest of shelter and food and hospitality possible. The lord of the castle spares no expense for Gawain’s comfort. While the lord is out on his daily hunts, his wife makes advances toward Gawain that resemble the temptation motif encountered in past Arthurian literature. Gawain maintains his peerless character and integrity in repeated encounters with the lord’s wife, which will be a boon to him in the end.

The relevance of this castle, the lord, his wife, everything that Gawain encounters, and the Green Knight himself, are revealed in the striking final leg of the adventure. A tale of symbolism, legend, supernatural deception and trials, and courage ends up being more than it appears. It is a trial of character and spirit, an allusion to many possible ideas, and a work steeped in the lore and religious significance of obscure things.

Although the middle section seems to crawl in circles for a time, and the recurring scenes of the lord’s hunt seem an odd thing to focus on so eagerly for so long, the poem is a grand story. It is both visually and mystically powerful, a sort of puzzle one can appreciate at only the surface if they wish, or at layers further down, exploring a well of peculiarity. The Green Knight is an entity who is characterized in such a dynamic and unusual way that I can’t describe it any better than the translator does in his analysis:

“On his first appearance he is described successively as a terrifying giant, a handsome and well-built knight, a weirdly green and implicitly supernatural person, as excessively hairy like that common creature of popular mythology, the wild man of the woods, and as a mocking enchanter. And on his last appearance, besides these, he appears as a warm and sympathetic human being, an omniscient confessor who judges with accuracy and compassion, and above all with authority, and finally as a human, subtly diminished by the termination of his supernatural function.”

Gawain’s character is equally compelling, although here he is but a shadow of the Gawain we know from the longer works of French or German Arthurian tradition. In character he is unchanged, a paragon of the most highly valued knightly virtues, an unspoiled, steadfast hero who undertakes and accomplishes that which is set before him, no matter its risks. He is virtuous, patient, collected, gifted with moral clarity and higher purpose, but not immune to the passions and base human instincts. Where he excels and where he is wanting, the Knight of the Green Chapel seems to understand better than anyone.