Green Knight Research Articles

Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance by Walter Wadiak

Reviewed by: Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance by Walter Wadiak Maia Farrar Walter Wadiak, Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2017) 210 pp. Wadiak opens his monograph with the invitation to read romances "backwards"—retrospectively appreciating the ways the tales' endings return us to the initial problems of their openings. Such retrospection becomes the impetus for Wadiak's inspiring intervention, which argues for reading the genre "as a mirror of the ways" the medieval commercial and social economy similarly "reconstituted itself" (3). Specifically, Wadiak looks at the "symbolic violence" of the noble gift and the ways chivalric gifting becomes currency within the metaphorical mercantile economy of romance. The noble gift expresses violence by introducing a dependent relationship between the receiver and giver, one which might "secure peace" while simultaneously revealing the "latent aggressivity" of competitive giving (8). Opening with the "returns" of romance, Wadiak offers his theoretical framework to his study—using gift theory to ask "what kind of violence a gift can do" (9) and astutely links this question to romance, asking why "romance keep[s] coming back to medieval England" (15). The first chapter is a strong introduction to the symbolic violence of the gift and romance, using Floris and Blancheflour to demonstrate romance as the "time of the gift" and the genre's nostalgic demand for a return to "proper feudality" while simultaneously acknowledging the "utter artificiality" of its own nostalgia. In a condensed but remarkable reading of Floris, Wadiak sees the romance as using procedures of exchange to constitute itself as a cultural object where "the survival of these modes of value" seems to radically call into question "its own logic of commodification" (22). In this romance, the investment in the gift (as the lovers themselves become commodities and gifts) is both more marked and more fraught than primarily martial texts, highlighting for Wadiak the ways the gift reproduces violence. The second chapter turns to the gift as the aggressive currency of romance, arguing that the late-fourteenth-century "spendthrift romances," such as Sir Cleges, Launfal, and Sir Amadace, were responding to aristocratic "excessive giving." Gift giving has material limitations, which these spendthrift romances disastrously encounter. These texts position themselves through mercantile [End Page 281] culture—even divine intervention (such as Cleges' miraculous cherries) is economized—but rather than celebrating feudal violence, Cleges "sublimates this violence, economizing it as noble exchange" (49). Cleges' request for blows in exchange for the cherries equates violence with material gifts, but Wadiak importantly notes the role violence plays in proving Cleges' chivalric past and reestablishing him within the courtly culture. Even as Cleges' status as Uther's "paramour" is proven by his violence, it "paradoxically" demonstrates the ways both gifting and the violence of the gift are "inadequate" to sustain the system (35). Chapter three suggests that in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, gifts serve not only to "impose order precisely by the means of violence" but also to limit its destructiveness (77). For Chaucer, "literature itself is commodified," but it also seems to assert that the aristocratic economy of chivalry and noble gifting is a "distraction" from the "profitable business of bourgeois romance" (69). In The Knight's Tale, Theseus draws attention to the dual nature of gifts as a source of peace and a source of violence—encouraging aristocratic allegiance as well as power struggles. Perhaps slightly less compelling than the other chapters, this analysis focuses on Theseus' "symbolically violent" amphitheater without unpacking the ways Emilye (or women in romance more generally) acts as a gift, easily exchanged and commodified in frequently violent ways. Chaucer's romance fantasizes that the profits of violence can "be appropriated to the community at large" while simultaneously mourning the death of chivalry as the community is only brought together by their "common mortality" (86). Chapter four, on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, suggests the ways violence can be appropriated to unite the community. Wadiak persuasively articulates that Gawain's girdle, which both "stands for and wards off violence" (104), is simultaneously the paradigmatic gift and the embodiment of romance itself. However, Gawain's story evolved to become "popular" beyond...

On an Overgrown Path

On an Overgrown Path Simon Armitage (bio) The alternative guidebook leadsto a partially cleared space in the forest,but the next page has been ripped out. What is it I’m supposed to be looking for here?A flint arrowhead lodgedin the trunk of an ancient oak?The spot where Janác̆ek sat and composed?Is this the furthest point from the coast? Sometimes I go upstairsthen can’t remember why.And when did these flower-arranger’s handsat the ends of my armsbecome mine? But I like this place, where a blimp crash-landed,where ley lines cross,where a trapdoor leads to an underground churchhewn from a seam of coal, where the sterling silver shoesfrom a lost team of sacred horsesare still occasionally unearthed. [End Page 183] Simon Armitage Simon Armitage lives in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, and is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. His most recent collection is The Unaccompanied (Faber & Faber, UK, Knopf, US, 2017), and his medieval translations include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Faber & Faber, UK, Norton, US, 2007). His dramatic reworkings of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey have been performed at Shakespeare’s Globe, London. In 2015 he was appointed Oxford University professor of poetry. Copyright © 2018 The University of the South

Ethan Campbell, The Gawain-Poet and Fourteenth-Century English Anti-Clerical Tradition. Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications / Western Michigan University, 2018, pp. 238.

In the past four years, there has been a flurry of valuable new work on the poems of the Gawain-poet (also known as the Pearl-poet), which includes new editions, translations, monographs, pedagogical studies, and online resources. Among the editions and translations are Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron’s excellent facsimile edition and translation of Cotton Nero A.x (Folio Society, 2016), Simon Armitage’s verse translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl (W.W. Norton, 2008 and 2016 respectively) and, I allow myself to mention, my own dual-language edition-translation of Pearl with supplementary materials for collegiate teaching (Broadview, forthcoming). Academic monographs include Piotyr Spyra’s Epistemological Perspective of the Pearl-Poet (Ashgate, 2014), Cecelia Hatt’s God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre (Boydell & Brewer, 2015), my Signifying Power of Pearl: Medieval Literary and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre (Routledge, 2017), and Lisa Horton’s Scientific Rhetoric of the Pearl-Poet (Arc Humanities Press, forthcoming). Editors Mark Bradshaw Busbee and I have published Approaches to Teaching the Middle English Pearl (MLA, 2017), which contains insightful pedagogical essays from several professors. The journal Glossator provides a complete commentary on each section of Pearl, available online (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://glossator.org/2015/03/30/glossator-9-2015-pearl">https://glossator.org/2015/03/30/glossator-9-2015-pearl</ext-link>/), and additional resources are available at “Medieval Pearl” (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://medievalpearl.wordpress.com">https://medievalpearl.wordpress.com</ext-link>). Now Ethan Campbell’s The Gawain-Poet and the Fourteenth-Century English Anticlerical Tradition joins the ranks, making a meaningful contribution to our understanding of the poet in his cultural milieu.

Ser Gavejn i Zeleni vitez - tumačenja i značenja

The importance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for the history of English literature lies in the richness of its story and language, complexity of its structure and the poet's virtuosity. Another reason why it continues to attract and sustain broad interest of numerous theorists from around the world arises from the inspiration it provides for new interpretations, fuelled with its author's ambivalent attitude towards the ideals of romance and the ideals of his time in general, which brings it closer to the attitudes prevailing in contemporary literature. The potentials of this romance - veiled in mystery, challenging to readers, and deeply inspiring to contemporary authors - are owed to the features that contemporary English and Serbian fantasy borrows from medieval literature: a mythical past combined with (usually medieval) history, then a commixture of natural, supernatural and divine, as well as a blend of pre-Christian and Christian motifs. Accordingly, it is worth encouraging closer acquaintance of Serbian readers and theorists with its numerous values through verse translation and further, deeper analyses in the Serbian language.

Stanivukovic, Goran, ed. Timely Voices: Romance Writing in English Literature

From the fourteenth-century Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to In Parenthesis - an epic poem written in 1937 by painter and poet David Jones - English writers have looked to romance as a resource and a strategy to expand the imaginary reach of their writing. Rethinking the resilience, purpose, and place of romance in English literature, Timely Voices discusses moments that have altered how we read and interpret this ever-changing form. Addressing the various ways in which romance has absorbed and been absorbed by drama, prose, and poetry, contributors to this volume demonstrate that romance texts do not produce something defined or confined by a static genre, but rather express a repository of creative possibilities. Covering writers including the anonymous author of Sir Orfeo, Jane Austen, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Lucy Hutchinson, William Morris, Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, and Edmund Spenser, essays explore the magic and wonder of romance, Irish and Gaelic lore, how woodcuts in early books complement and extend printed text, how romance was dramatized, how it gives language to feminist politics and ideology, and how it becomes a counterpoint to finance in the fiction of the early Romantic period. A nuanced reinterpretation of romance in its own terms, Timely Voices inspires new appreciation of this form as a solution to textual, aesthetic, structural, ideological, and political problems in literature.

Sir Gawain Hits the Radio Waves

This research project examines some of the complexities of the Medieval work “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” from the perspectives of both world­renown scholars and laymen interviewees. The study uses professional in­studio equipment to record responses to research questions asked of academics by long­ distance phone interview. In the same way, the researcher asks questions of a randomly selected public group and records the commentary with portable equipment. The researcher then compiles raw material from interviews in bricolage format. The result juxtaposes the original views of both prominent researchers and the public on controversial issues within the “Gawain” text. The study likens the complex issues of gender, public morality, community and capitalism occupying medieval audiences to the types of challenges society faces today. This comparison of medieval and modern issues show that historical literary works are of enduring value to the contemporary reader; works, like “Sir Gawain”, deal with a complex set of social issues in a way that encourages a multiplicity of readings and engages with various different audiences. As a way of reaching the broad audience concerned with these issues, the project arranges the interview feedback into a radio program format complete with medieval musical segue­ways. The program originally aired on CFRC, Queen’s Radio in two parts on March 28th and April 6th, 2006, respectively, and remains available on­line via www.chatterbook.ca. Professors from Canada, the United States and Europe have requested permission to use the project as a teaching aid.

Cecilia A. Hatt: God and the Gawain-Poet. Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Cecilia A. Hatt: God and the Gawain-Poet. Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

New Light on the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Manuscript: Multispectral Imaging and the Cotton Nero A.x. Illustrations

New Light on the <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i> Manuscript: Multispectral Imaging and the Cotton Nero A.x. Illustrations

Cecilia A. Hatt, God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre in “Pearl,” “Cleanness,” “Patience,” and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2015. Pp. x, 249. $99. ISBN: 978-1-84384-419-8.

Cecilia A. Hatt, <i>God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre in “Pearl,” “Cleanness,” “Patience,” and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”</i> Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2015. Pp. x, 249. $99. ISBN: 978-1-84384-419-8.

Beyond the Convention? Representation of Female Characters in Middle English Romances

The paper presents literary images of medieval women in four Middle English romances, viz. King Horn, Sir Isumbras, Havelok the Dane and Sir Gawain and the Green Night. Its aim is to identify some conventional patterns of representation of female characters in the literary works classified as different subtypes of the genre of romance, namely ancestral romance (King Horn, Havelok the Dane), homiletic romance (Sir Isumbras) and Arthurian romance (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). After Sharon Farmer and other feminist critics, the concept of gender is interpreted as one of the major categories of difference in medieval English society. This argument is supported by the analysis of the construction of female characters in the romances in question. However, while it is important to remember that the society of medieval England was to a large extent male-governed and male-dominated, which is the reason for the apparent centrality of male protagonists in medieval English literature, the function of female characters in literary works of that period is not necessarily secondary. The paper focuses on the importance of women in presenting the protagonist’s genealogy and on selected strategies of representation, such as reversal of gender roles or marginalization of female characters. The essay attempts to demonstrate that the category of gender, as it is seen in the medieval texts, cannot be reduced to a simplified model of binary oppositions, since the romances also introduce the complexity of power relations and tensions between the sexes.

God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Cynthia A. Hatt. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. Pp. x+249.

<i>God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>. Cynthia A. Hatt. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. Pp. x+249.

Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature. Aisling Byrne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xi+212.

<i>Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature</i>. Aisling Byrne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xi+212.

An animal studies and ecocritical reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

In this ecocritical and animal studies reading of the anonymous fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1375–1400), I focus on what the poem divulges about medieval attitudes toward hunting animals for sport. Studies that focus on the blurring of conceptual, cognitive, and ethical distinctions between animals and humans in medieval literature invite consideration of that blurring as it is found in the triple hunt scenes of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. My argument is that the triple hunt scenes confront the problem of truth (trawþe) in the context of animal sports as well as in the context of the games in which Bertilak invites Gawain and the court of Camelot to participate. In elaborating on the given content, I also note the thematic and conceptual overlaps among Bertilak, Gawain, and the fox, a tripling that scholars have overlooked in their focus on the parallels between Gawain and the deer, boar, and fox. I rely on scholarly studies by such key figures in animal studies and medieval studies as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Susan Crane and such key figures in ecocriticism and medieval studies as Gillian Rudd and Corinne J. Saunders in my focus on animal hunting in medieval Britain. In addition, I refer to several modern translations of the poem: two recent translations by W. S. Merwin and Simon Armitage and three older and canonical translations by J. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, Marie Borroff, and Brian Stone.

God and the Gawain Poet: Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Cecilia A. Hatt, D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2015, pp. x + 249, £60.00, hbk

New BlackfriarsVolume 98, Issue 1075 p. 357-359 Review GOD AND THE GAWAIN POET: THEOLOGY AND GENRE IN PEARL, CLEANNESS, PATIENCE AND SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT by Cecilia A. Hatt, D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2015, pp. x + 249, £60.00, hbk SANTHA BHATTACHARJI, SANTHA BHATTACHARJISearch for more papers by this author SANTHA BHATTACHARJI, SANTHA BHATTACHARJISearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 April 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12281Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume98, Issue1075May 2017Pages 357-359 RelatedInformation

The Conclusion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Three Knightly Verdicts

The Conclusion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Three Knightly Verdicts

Cecilia A. Hatt. God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Cambridge: Brewer, 2015, x + 249 pp., £ 60.00.

Cecilia A. Hatt. God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Cambridge: Brewer, 2015, x + 249 pp., £ 60.00.

‘Inculcation’ in Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetics and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

GEOFFREY of Vinsauf employs inculcatio as a literary term of art both in his Poetria Nova and in his Documentum de Arte Versificandi. The word has its origin in the verb inculcare, meaning literally ‘to tread down’, and by the time of Classical Latin this verb had already developed a transferred sense, ‘to impress (an idea, etc., upon a person’s mind), din in, drive home’.1 Hence the noun inculcatio could be used, like its English derivative, to refer to ‘the action of impressing on the mind by forcible admonition, or frequent repetition’.2 This is the sense in which Geoffrey of Vinsauf employs the word. Both the Poetria Nova and the Documentum introduce their accounts of inculcatio rather awkwardly in connection with another topic, determinatio.3 In Poetria Nova, Geoffrey observes that, since individual words are no more than the raw material (‘mater hyle’, 1762) of discourse, they commonly stand to be ‘determined’—by the addition, that is, of other words which will specify their bearing in the particular context. Thus adjectives may be determined by nouns, as in Geoffrey’s illustrative line about a miser: ‘Plenus opum, vacuus virtutum, avidissimus rerum’ (‘Full of riches, empty of virtues, most desirous of possessions’, 1785). It is strings of parallel phrases such as this that prompt Poetria Nova to speak of inculcatio:

Beyond Mastery: Interspecies Apprenticeship in Middle English Romance

Drawing upon Gala Argent’s theory of interspecies apprenticeship, this article illuminates animal agency at work in several Middle English romances: Bevis of Hampton, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and two Fierabras romances. The extraordinary equine characters in these texts work to school their knights in chivalric virtues and behaviors, with horse often mastering human in a way that complicates traditional hierarchies ranking mankind above other creatures. Ultimately, this representation of horses contrasts with more anthropocentric discourses in other medieval genres: romances offer a unique way of recuperating a countervailing medieval perspective on animal agency, one that acknowledges animals as active participants in shaping human cultures.

Gawain &amp; Parsifal: The Road to Purity

The road to purity for a knight of the Round Table is a long one with different approaches to an outcome. Sir Gawain’s self-guilt and Sir Percival’s (Parsifal’s) naivete ultimately lead these knights to purity.The monomyth, a term coined by Joseph Campbell, shows a circular pattern for all heroes. They must first struggle through arduous tasks or journeys, find their downfalls, and reemerge with a new knowledge of their errors. Both Gawain and Parsifal subject themselves to the monomyth in order to reach purity. Each knight goes through the cycle in separate ways. In each of the following tales, the knights exhibit the notions of humility and repentance, two attributes leading to the final goal of purity. Purity is quite prevalent in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight of the anonymous Pearl Poet and The Tale of the Sangreal from Le Morte D’Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the audience sees Gawain’s guilt three times when he confesses to the Priest, the Green Knight, and finally Arthur. In the Tale of the Sangreal, Parsifal’s naivete during the Grail Quest precipitates three encounters with the Devil in various forms: a stallion, a serpent, and a seductress. My thesis states that Gawain reaches purity via self-guilt and repentance, whereas Parsifal reaches purity via naivete and repentance.

Conquering the Reign of Femeny: Gender and Genre in Chaucer’s Romance by Angela Jane Weisl

REVIEWS naries, grammar texts, ancillary texts and translations, and "Yearly Bibliographies and Other Bibliographical Listings. " Finally, the editor's superb glossary provides relevant information "for every form of every word" (p.217) in Pearl. Such data is anchored further by the "literal meanings [ofwords}, line numbers, grammatical elements, and etymological derivatives [OED, MED}" (p.xi). In general, Vantuono succeeds admirably in his editorial purposes, for he has crafted a book suitable for students and scholars alike.Such an edition, then, both illuminates Pearl's rich vision world and comple­ ments Vantuono's earlier work, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Dual-Language Version (1991). ROBERT J.BLANCH Northeastern University ANGELA JANE WEISL.Conquering the Reign ofFemeny: Gender and Genre in Chaucer's Romance. Chaucer Studies, vol. 22. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.Pp.ix, 133.$53.0 0. This provocative little volume begins with an image from ltalo Cal­ vino's Invisible Cities in which several men simultaneously dream of a long-haired naked woman vanishing through an unknown city into the darkness.Failing to locate the city, they construct one of their own, with mazes to trap the vision should she reappear.This image, Angela Jane Weisl tells us, embodies the romance genre in that its essential content of male desire, the action of pursuing the woman, and the method ofexecution through entrapping labyrinths recapitulate the ro­ mance.It is a haunting metaphor. Insights in the twenty-page introduction, which this reader found more evocative than the somewhat repetitive readings of four individ­ ual romances, are quite creative.Weisl's thesis is that Chaucer pushes "boundaries (the glass ceiling that defines roles, positions, and possi­ bilities}, testing the genre's limits ...to show both its confines and its potential" (p.3).Since romance defines the nature and behavior ofhero­ ines (who cannot be ugly Loathly Ladies, self-motivated, independent young Alisons, or gregariously assertive old Alisons), it contains them. Feminine confinement, such as that of the coerced, unwilling Emelye, 335 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER then, symbolizes the genre. In upsetting her gendered role, Criseyde flaunts tradition, upsetting both the genre and her tale, which can no longer support a standard romance ending. Although these ideas seem intriguing, many romances defy the "confined-woman" schema-Parzival, Amis andAmiloun (with one very dominant Belisaunt and another domineering wife), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (whose two women wield much power), and the allitera­ tive Morte Arthure (with no primary woman) come to mind.Eventually Weisl acknowledges exceptions, that "many poems that are gener­ ally ...lays or romances are not really about romantic love at all" (p.8), seemingly contradicting herself. Classifying is hazardous, as Susan Crane has noted, but perhaps limiting the thesis to certain types of ro­ mances might have ameliorated the problem.Several evocative issues tease us, but remain unclarified.How, for example, is Boccaccio a source for Chaucer's methodology as much as for plot? How do Chaucer's ro­ mances, transformed into self-referential narratives, tell us as much about narrative as they do about love? Some claims seem controversial or contradictory.For example, Weisl states, "Chaucer, strikingly, can­ not end two of his romances" (p. 5), discounting those who insist The Squire's Tale and Tale ofSir Thopas are in fact ended precisely at the right, intended moment.Since some romances contain didactic elements, the author posits a reverse mimesis-life imitating art.But from Horace or before, the ends of poetry have always been to teach and entertain, so how does romance differ? Certain statements appear self-evident or un­ remarkable, such as Chaucer's attitude to romance: "The genre is prob­ lematic for him; he continually challenges, expands, and tests the lim­ its of the romance by shifting its contexts and altering its conventions" (p.2).Does his policy differ for other genres, equally manipulated for the new creative spark they elicit? Is not his genius that he regularly transgresses, defies boundaries, violates generic expectations, and to successful, not deconstructive, ends? Weisl believes that although women are necessary to the genre, their space and roles are restricted.Yet she admits: "The woman's role can be greater than [inspiring and perfecting...