Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

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Name: Sir Gawain and The Green Knight
Abbreviation(s): SGatGK
Creator: Anonymous
Date(s):
Medium: Poetry
Country of Origin: England
External Links:
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a Middle English chivalric romance by an anonymous author, popular within Arthuriana fandom, and has spawned a number of fanworks including fanfiction and art. The poem has also had a number of adaptations, with the most popular — The Green Knight (2021) — inspiring some fanworks.

Synopsis

A green knight arrives in King Arthur's hall and asks that he be given one blow from his axe in exchange for giving another a year later, threatening dishonor if no one takes up the challenge. Sir Gawain accepts it and beheads him. The knight puts his head back on and repeats that Gawain must seek him at the Green Chapel in a year.

The next fall, Gawain goes to seek him and arrives at the castle of Lord and Lady Bertilak. The lord proposes a game: he will give Gawain what he hunts in exchange for Gawain giving him all he receives in the house. Over the next three days, Bertilak kills various animals and Gawain receives kisses from Bertilak's wife, which he gives to Bertilak by kissing him. On the third day, the lady also gives him a green girdle which she says will prevent him from being cut and save his life. He hides it from Lord Bertilak, violating the game's terms.

When Gawain gets to the Green Chapel, the Green Knight only nicks Gawain's neck instead of killing him: he was really Lord Bertilak all along, and the game was partly Morgan Le Fay's attempt to scare Guinevere to death and partly Bertilak testing the Knights of the Round Table. Bertilak does not hold Gawain's slight failure to follow the rules of the game against him, since he only acted to preserve his life and not in a way which would harm another, but Gawain vows to wear the green girdle as a mark of his dishonor. He returns to the court and tells those there his story. The knights resolve to all wear green sashes, as a reminder.

Media Influence

It has been translated by numerous scholars, including J.R.R. Tolkien.

It has inspired multiple movies, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1973), Sword of the Valiant, Gawain and the Green Knight (1991), and The Green Knight (2021, starring Dev Patel), which ranked 26th in the movie category in Tumblr’s Year in Review 2021.

The School for Good and Evil series by Soman Chainani includes a loose reimagining of the plot in which King Arthur takes the place of Gawain, Kay is the Green Knight, and it results in Kay's death as part of the background lore.

Fandom

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is very popular in the Arthuriana fandom, due to a mix of factors, including its short legth, powerful imagery, aura of magic,[1] sophisticated writing, and homoerotic overtones. Many fan works have been inspired by it, and Gawain/Lord Bertilak and Gawain/Lady Bertilak/Lord Bertilak are both fairly popular ships. It tends to trend during the Winter holidays, when the main plot of the poem is set. Some have interpreted the beheading game and the kissing challenge through a BDSM lens,[2] though others focus more heavily on the themes of mortality[3] and chivalry. A lot of fan art features the Green Knight or Gawain beheaded, though Gawain is not beheaded in the poem; the two of them kissing; or both simultaneously.[4] Art of both Bertilaks with Gawain tends to be less graphic.[5] A lot of artwork takes the form of book cover designs and poster designs.[6] Some have commented on the difference between Gawain's concern with chastity in the poem as opposed to other works in which he "gets around" a lot more freely[7] and its connection with the themes of the poem, as well as Bertilak's connections to both wildness and Christianity.[8] Many have joked about Morgan le Fay's humorously convoluted scheme[9] to kill Guinevere, sometimes also through a "toxic exes" lens.

Its influence is felt beyond the Arthuriana fandom in fandoms whose sources do not include SGatGK, especially those which are inspired by Arthurian legend. For example, it is sometimes incorporated into fan works involving Gwaine from the BBC Merlin fandom, such as The Ivy Crown by dayari, The Ivy Crown by briar_pipe, The Five Kingdoms by misswinterhill, and Slipping the Jesses by lycoris. "The Green Knight" by Le Rouret won a 2004 Middle-Earth Fanfiction Award, and "The Green Knight and the Heir of Meduseld", by the same author, ranked in 2007.

Example Fanworks

Fic

Art

Miscellaneous

Archives and Links

Sir Gawayn and þe Grene Knyȝt | Gawain and the Green Knight - Anonymous | Gawain Poet fandom tag on Archive of Our Own.

  1. ^ while the green knight could definitely have been more homoerotic, it deeply satisfied that childhood desire to be immersed in a dream-like atmospheric quest @thunderandsage
  2. ^ The parallelism between the sexually charged atmosphere in Gawain's chamber and the extended description of butchering a doe @youzicha
  3. ^ the genre of like. horrifying christmas literature is so crazy @currentlycryingaboutlancelot
  4. ^ Oh Gawain <3 by @sissiarte
  5. ^ An Exchange of Winnings by @reidspng
  6. ^ “I Will Return What Was Given To Me, And Then, In Trust And Friendship, We Shall Part.” by @ruby-lith
  7. ^ i am just curious about the many references to gawain sleeping with so many people when, to my understanding, in sir gawain and the green knight he specifically breaks this promiscuous behaviour and makes sure he doesn’t sleep with the wife of the duke ask answered by @queer-ragnelle
  8. ^ Cutely thinking about how the Green Knight represents paganism and the untamed wild, yet he has a lot of connections to Christian imagery @relmint
  9. ^ It is once again time to celebrate my favourite assassination attempt in literature history. meme by @oldtvandcomics
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