reviews85 ad putter, Sir Gawain andthe Green Knight andFrenchArthurian Romance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. xii, 279. isbn: 019-8182538-8. $49.95. In glancing along the library shelf devoted to books on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one might be pardoned for giving Ad Putter's book short shrift. From the title, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance, it appears to be nothing more than another source study. A new book on sources certainly seems superfluous. Yet this should not discourage the serious scholar of Middle English from spending some time with Putter's book. Putter's work is sound scholarship, well-written and thought-provoking. The book is divided into an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. The chapters discuss, respectively, landscape in the poem, hospitality, the temptation scenes, honor and hospitality, and the social functions ofcourtly romance. It was originally written as a dissertation supervised by Jill Mann at the University ofCambridge, but it has none of the drawbacks frequently found in such documents. Putter's style is engaging and lively and, while all his points are adequately supported, readers do not find themselves swamped with block quotations and anxiously defensive footnotes. The central chapters offer excellent examples ofPutter's critical acumen. In Chapter 2, for example, he discusses the convention ofhospitality. After describing the features of the typical hospitable welcome in courtly romance, Putter explains the danger inherent in it, namely, that it may conceal hostile intent: like no other romancers, Chrétien and the Gawain-poet explore the discrepancies between faces and feelings that go hand in hand with the codification of an etiquette ofhospitality. . . [Alongside the discrepancy between faces and feelings which etiquette encourages, there appears the possibility of deceit. (99) Putter uses this convention to show how both poets reverse the expectations oftheir readers. Usually, the hospitable welcome is the prelude to an adventure, which leads readers to expect such during Calogrenant s narrative at the beginning ofChretien's Yvain. However, Chrétien here presents us with an ignominous defeat which simply acts as a spur for the adventures of the protagonist, whose hospitable welcome is passed over rapidly in favor of the battle at the fountain. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight functions in a similar way. Reading the Middle English poem, we expect an adventure to follow Gawain's time at Hautdesert when, in fact, the true test is conducted within the castle walls. In his exploration ofthe temptation scenes, Putter outlines the Hostess's technique of appealing to a fictional Gawain in order to break down his defenses. When she muses, 'Bot bat 3e be Gawan, hit gotz in mynde' (Tolkien, Gordon and Davis 1293), she is appealing to a perception ofthe knight that, even within the confines ofthis particular romance, is fictional. Her appeal to his amorousness describes the Gawain of French romance, not the Gawain we have been following in the Middle English romance. Gawain is easily able to resist her at this point. Next, she tries directness. By asking Gawain ifhe has 'a lemman, a leuer, pat yow lykez better' (Tolkien, Gordon and Davis 1782), the Hostess forces him to abandon his courtesy and answer her arthuriana 6.3 (1996) reviews86 directly. In so doing, she 'deprives Gawain of the possibility of maintaining for her benefit the illusion that she was merely playing an urbane game' (139) and, in this sense, Gawain has failed, though his hand was forced. His true failure comes when the Hostess's proffer ofthe Green Girdle convinces him that he is actually in a world of romance, similar to the one to which the Hostess had earlier appealed for his reputation. Under this illusion, he accepts the girdle, and the consequences of untrawpe. The most fruitful chapters, however, are those in which Putter presents his interpretation oflandscape (1) and honor (4), though I have some reservations about the latter. In his discussion of landscape, Putter shows how a contrast between the forest and the court allows poets in the romance tradition, most notably the Gawainpoet and Chrétien de Troyes, to juxtapose civilization and the wilderness: As Gawain and, with more difficulty, Yvain manage ultimatelyto maintain their...