Descriptive Technique in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Abstract

Literary scholars and critics are agreed that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight deserves a place of honor among the great works of mediaeval literature. Some seventy years ago, Gaston Paris labelled it “the jewel of English literature during the Middle Ages”; George Lyman Kittredge has called it “a very distinguished piece of work”; and Fernand Mossé has praised it as nothing less than “the masterpiece of alliterative poetry.” The opinion of our age is perhaps best summed up by Albert C. Baugh when he simply refers to the poem as “the finest Arthurian romance in English.” In general, modern critics agree with Bernhard ten Brink that its author “knows well how to hold our attention.”