Quick Details• genre   

• structure

• narrator   

• point of view  

• tone

• setting (time)

• settings (place)   

• protagonist   

• major conflict  

• rising action   

• climax  

• falling action

Main Characters

Sir Gawain

How would you support the following statements? Gawain:– seeks to improve his inner self throughout the poem.

– is humble and ambitious.

– stands by his commitments no matter what.

– fights fear with his desire to maintain integrity.

– is a paragon of virtue.

– values his own life more than his honesty.

– believes that sins should be as visible as virtues.

– is a round character.

The Green Knight (also known as Bertilak de Hautdesert and the

Host)

How would you support the following statements? The Green Knight:

– is a mysterious, supernatural, foreboding creature.

– symbolizes the wildness, fertility, and death that characterize a

primeval world.

– part of his function

is to establish a

relationship between

wilderness and

civilization, past

and present.

– has commonalities

between his personas.

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Chivalry The ideals of chivalry derive from the Christian concept of morality, and the

proponents of chivalry seek to promote spiritual ideals in a spiritually fallen world.

How would you support the statements that:

– SGGK criticizes chivalry for valuing appearance and symbols over truth.

– people are ranked in this court according to their mastery of a certain code

of behavior and good manners.

– in the forest, Gawain abandoned the codes of chivalry and admitted that his

animal nature requires him to seek physical comfort in order to survive.

– chivalry focuses on a connection with God.

– the inhabitants of Bertilak's castle teach Gawain about a kind of chivalry that

is more firmly based in truth and reality than that of Arthur's court.

– The “moral” is that we should strive to be chivalrous, but we are all human.

Code Of Chivalry1. To fear God and maintain His Church

2. To serve the liege lord in valor and faith

3. To protect the weak and defenseless

4. To give succor to widows and orphans

5. To refrain from the wanton giving of offence

6. To live by honor and for glory

7. To despise pecuniary reward

8. To fight for the welfare of all

9. To obey those placed in authority

10. To guard the honor of fellow knights

11. To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit

12. To keep faith

13. At all times to speak the truth

14. To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun

15. To respect the honor of women

16. Never to refuse a challenge from an equal

The Letter of the Law vs. Spirit of the Law

• Though the Green Knight refers to his challenge as a “game,” he repeatedly uses the word “covenant,” meaning a set of laws, a word that evokes the two covenants represented by the Old and the New Testaments.

• The Old Testament details the covenant made between God and the people of Israel through Abraham, but the New Testament replaces the old covenant with a new covenant between Christ and his followers.

• In 2 Corinthians 3:6, Paul writes that Christ has “a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

How would you support the following statements?

• The Green Knight at first seems concerned solely with the letter of the law.

• At the poem's end, the covenant takes on a new meaning and resembles the less literal, more merciful New Testament covenant between Christ and his Church.

• The Green Knight transforms his literal covenant by offering Gawain justice tempered with mercy, but the letter of the law still threatens in the story's background, and in Gawain's own psyche.

MotifsMotifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary

devices that can help to develop and inform

the text's major themes.

Seasons

At the beginning of Parts 2and 4, the poet describes the changing of the seasons. How would you support the statements?

– The changing seasons correspond to Gawain's changing psychological states.

– The five changing seasons also correspond to the five ages of man (birth/infancy, youth, adulthood, middle age, and old age/death).

Games

• What “games” are played in this story?

• The relationship between games and tests is explored because games are forms of social behavior, while tests provide a measure of an individual's inner worth.

SymbolsSymbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract

ideas or concepts.

The Pentangle

• According to the Gawain-poet, King Solomon originally designed the five-pointed star as his own magic seal.

• A symbol of truth, the star has five points that link and lock with each other, forming what is called the endless knot.

The pentangle symbolizes the virtues to which Gawain aspires:

1. to be faultless in his five senses;

2. never to fail in his five fingers;

3. to be faithful to the five wounds that Christ received on the cross;

4. to be strengthened by the five joys that the Virgin Mary had in Jesus (the Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension, and Assumption);

5. to possess brotherly love, courtesy, piety, and chastity.

The Green Girdle

The meaning of the host's wife's girdle changes

over the course of the narrative.

– What ties it to the Green Knight?

– In what way does it symbolize magic?

– What does it symbolize after Green Knight forgives

Gawain?

– What does it symbolize when Arthur and others wear

a green sash?

Essay IdeasYou may choose one of the following

ideas, or you may talk to me about choosing a topic of your own.

• Analyze one round character and one flat character. Why were they written this way? What impact does this have on the story?

• Choose 3-4 of the ideals in the code of chivalry and examine how they play out in this story. Why did you choose these ideals? What impact do these ideals have this story?

• Examine the issue of the differing covenants as displayed in this story. Why did the author set up these conflicting ideas?

• Being a knight was not easy. Write about what it required and why the characters in this story may have chosen this life.

• Write a compare and contrast essay examining Gawain and Beowulf (this is only an option to those of you who wrote a poem rather than a compare/contrast essay about Beowulf).

• Examine this story as an allegory. Allegories are extended metaphors, in which, often, the characters represent common ideas such as Everyman, Beauty, God, Satan, Justice, etc. Choose at least three characters who represent larger ideas and explain the impact this has on the story.