Sir Gawain Research Articles

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

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.

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.

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.

Arthurian Biopolitics: Sovereignty and Ecology in Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle

This essay examines the fifteenth-century popular romance Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle through a biopolitical lens. Arthur’s confrontations with the Carl’s alternate forest dimension tease out sovereign anxieties born of population and landscape, of fashioned spaces and natural environments. An ecocritical sensitivity to governmentalities opens up spaces to locate and analyze mutations of power in the poem and its relation to the political threshold of the Anglo-Scottish borders.

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

3. The Role of Alliteration in the Alliterative Revival : Sir Gawain and Piers Plowman

3. The Role of Alliteration in the Alliterative Revival : Sir Gawain and Piers Plowman

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHTにおけるCHTHOLICISM

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHTにおけるCHTHOLICISM

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.

Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England. Michael Johnston. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xvi+301.

<i>Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England</i>. Michael Johnston. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xvi+301.

‘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.