The Knots of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’s Boar Chase (Lines 1431–7)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Editors have struggled to reconcile the two appearances of the term knot in the boar chase of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (lines 1431 and 1434) with the competing demands of intelligible syntax and etymological sense. Most opt for the sense “rocky hill” for both, but this forces other terms in the passage, namely umbekesten and even hem (“them”) into the status as very unlikely hapaxes. This essay advocates acceptance of the necessity of emendation at line 1434 as by far the least intrusive solution, and proposes the new possibility of covert, “hiding place, thicket.”