Abstract
Abstract In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, supernatural testers disrupt both Arthur’s court and the interlocked perfections of the Pentangle, weighing Gawain and finding him wanting. Gawain’s failure, moreover, foregrounds the human need for grace and forgiveness, demonstrating both the impossibility of human perfection and the humanity of imperfections redeemed. This essay explores the semi-typological relationship between Gawain and St Peter, arguing that the likenesses between the Arthurian knight and Christ’s disciple effectively reinforce the poem’s message that failings are inevitable in a post-lapsarian world, but that those errors can yet be mercifully and graciously redeemed. Gawain’s fairy-wrought ‘fall’ from excellence is, it turns out, a happy one – a chivalric felix culpa that makes room for the forgiveness and recovery of knightly failings.
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