Laughter and Game in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Abstract

EVEN the casual reader cannot help noticing the holiday atmosphere, the joyous tone, and the laughter that prevails in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from beginning to end. Yet, despite this festive spirit, critics have all too often examined the poem's high seriousness and focused on its darker, more brooding details while allowing the bright and playful setting to recede to the blurry edges of their vision. Repeatedly in the critical literature, we are reminded of Gawain's heavy sin, of Arthur's debasement, Morgan's malignity, the Green Knight's churlishness, of beasts and heraldry, and of failed tests of courage, cleanness, and chastity. Amidst all this sobriety, a look at the playful nature may therefore not be entirely out of order. That is the task I have set for myself here. Any examination of the subject I propose for this paper must needs begin with an acknowledgement of debt to Johan Huizinga, whose Homo Ludens is the point of departure, even if one disagrees with many of his premises, for all analytical studies of the play element in Western culture.' I shall have occasion, more than once, to rely on Professor Huizinga's seminal book as well as a number of specific literary studies that were inspired by it. Among the latter, I wish to single out the essay by Robert G. Cook, which by the sound of its title, Play-Element in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,2 would seem to render my own study superfluous. The fact is, however, that Mr Cook and I, while employing essentially the same tools, build two entirely different critical frameworks. To make this point clear, I need to review a number of the premises, mostly from Huizinga, upon which Cook relies for his discussion. While all commentators concerned with the play element recognize its fundamentally serious function, Huizinga himself and a number of other theoreticians, including Cook, have expanded the play sphere to comprehend the whole orbit of man's social world and thus, in my mind, ultimately to deprive the play concept of its usefulness as an implement for critical analysis. Huizinga writes: We might, in a purely formal sense, call all society a game, if we bear in mind that this game is the living principle of all (pp. 100-101). In the words of another commentator, Eugen Fink, We play at being serious, we play work and struggle, we play love and death and we even play play itself.3 Aside from the baffling circularity of such statements, the concepts of play and game lose all significance when they are made synonyms for civilization or reality.4 In the