字幕列表 影片播放 列印英文字幕 welcome to lecture 8 for English 250 this is on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight I've entitled this context beginnings. it's hard to date exactly the time of writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight your text will tell you somewhere around 1360 I think that's probably a fairly good date, it is part of a tradition something called the alliterative revival the alliterative revival, old English literature was written in half lines so that the controlling consonant sound across the entire line of poetry will be the same so if say for example a G that shows up in one word the poet will try to use words that have G's throughout or R's or S's or T's, something like that. That tradition in writing it fell out of favor in certain parts of England but in the part of England the southwest part of England where Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written it continued so we call that and poems of its type using this particular verse form, works of the alliterative revival. We haven't talked much about manuscripts, Beowulf exists in a single manuscript for us today Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exists in a single manuscript along with several other poems and the other poems that are included in the main script probably tell something about the reception of the poem, perhaps the writer of the poem and how we might interpret it. The first poem that I have listed here for you is a poem entitled Pearl. Pearl is a poem up religious consolation in the Christian tradition the speaker in the poem has a young daughter whose name is Pearl who has died and he's coming to terms with that death, that loss which you can understand he sees her on the other side she reminds him of important bits of scripture that interestingly enough often wind up as part of funeral services today as a kind of consolation at the end of the poem he is convinced that she is okay where she is, it's a poem of Christian consolation or the death of an infant. Infant mortality was very high in the middle ages Patience is a retelling of the Jonah story from the work of and Jonah in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. A very interesting and colorful retelling the story fairly close to a biblical paraphrase there are a couple unusual things the writer's obviously interested in Noah's no I'm sorry Johna's journey to Nineveh, and there's a great deal of attention to boat rigging's and that sort of thing they tell us that our poet was interested in sailing and navigation. Purity is a collection of biblical exampla particularly from the book of Daniel The Feast of Belshazzar dealing with temple ornaments and ritual practices the notion that purity was something which in order to be acceptable there was both an external and an internal quality associated with it. So what you hear with those three is this is a poem a manuscript with religious poems which leads us to an interesting question how on earth is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the midst of these? Because Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a romance. Romance is not about love it is about the concept of adventure keep that in mind, it's not about love it's about adventure, it's the world nights it's the world of ladies its the world court splendor it's the world of quests and of course the quests are asscoiated with that adventure in this segment of our course we will look at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and we will also look at the Wife of Bath's tale both of which are medieval romances the tradition of course is French in origin this particular romance puts a particular virtue on trial I want to look at that for a minute I've given you a definition you want to remember this one "courtesy" courtesy we think today about courtesy as essentially holding the door for someone else, saying excuse me I didn't mean to cut in front of you in line, that sort of thing for the Middle Ages courtesy particularly among the knightly classes meant something like this " it's a traditional speech in action in which the person resigns his or her will over to another person" think about that so I will do something because you want me to do it I might not want to do it myself but out a deferrance to you I will do it now if you're thinking in terms of ethical considerations you realize very quickly that that can get us into a bit of hot water really fast we're going to watch Sir Gawain in, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tread lightly among his various levels of being courteous to the knight of the castle and the knight's wife. and we will look at that in some detail I want to think about Arthur's Court first of all at the opening of the poem and this begins in your text on page 186 the poem is divided into something called fits section 1 section 2 section 3 section 4 is certainly the way to think about that. Were at the Christmas season so there's been feasting going on and by the way the feasting has been going on for 15 days, a fortnight is 2 weeks and one day would be 15 days. so these people really do know how to live it up the twelve days of Christmas got extended as it were everybody it Arthur's Court is spoken of in superlatives, there are are the most chivalrous knights the most wonderful ladies in the world this is indeed the world of splendor but there something very unusual about this we might expect Arthur to be this sort of giant of a figure but indeed in the poem he is represented in some ways being rather boyish are and in fact when our green knight arrives he is going to insult those sitting in the court and essentially say that they're just a bunch of boys one thing to remember about this initial feast that we have in this is on page 188 we will look in class at some very detailed descriptions in this poem, this poem is very rich in detail and an introductory lecture simply can't cover the entire range of possibilities, but more less to set out a way that you can think about it. Notice the seating description beginning on page 188 and this begins at line 109 "Good sir Gawain is seated by Guinevere and at Arthur's other side sits Agravain a la dure main on the other side sits, both the king’s sister-sons and full sure knights; Bishop Baldwin above, he begins the table, and Ywain, Urien’s son, ate alongside him. notice everybody has a certain spot and you've got to notice in this one Bishop Baldwin has the most important seat so our representative of the church at the feast has the most important seat, even more than that of Arthur by the way Arthur has not taken his seat yet because he is waiting to hear an adventure little does he know that he's going to see one what do you make in this green knight? green his horse is green, and of course there's this gold embroidered thread that runs around the garments that he wears he laughs a lot, in fact laughter is very important in the poem. Laughter is an interesting emotion once you began to think about it but let's think about this green knight what would green represent? all colors have traditional associations with them green for a medieval world we are of course in the middle of winter so green showing up at that particular point indicates the possibility of maybe an early spring or the renewal of life in fact in in the Eastern Church the celebration of what is traditionally called old Christmas maybe as late as January the 7th with the idea that if you look under logs you already see life bursting forth from the ground, so those notions even during the holiday season of the renewal of nature, so in some ways he's associated with renewal of nature. Green is also associated with another thing however for the medieval world its also associated with evil and the demonic. no wonder no one wants to take on his challenge but there's also another important association with the color green that is the concept of contemplation reading a lot of the medieval mystical texts or text that tell you how you can become a mystic Walter Hilton's scale of perfection, other works the victirnes. you find that green is associated with contemplation the notion that in contemplating the very color itself you were able to think about even the very depths of your own soul and your own situation that's going to become very important for Sir Gawain in the last part of our poem no one wants to take the challenge, the challenge come forward chop off my head and a year hence you come to my place and I'll chop off your head, well that doesn't quite sound like a game it sounds like indeed once it happens it's over well indeed he continues to taunt around line 280 was that reference that I meant with regard to he is insulting the manhood of those at Arthur's Court something is unusual here though Gawain steps forward amidst all the laughter that would that would have grieved for Arthur himself. he says that he is the weakest and feeblest of the Warriors at line 354 and then you're asking yourself is this simply a humility toe post a kind of thing or you may have friends who say you know I'm not very good at playing the guitar you hand them your guitar and you know you get a world-class performance it could be that kind of humility to oppose, whatever it is Gawain is going to become the representative of Arthur's Court will he stand the challenge? can he stand the challenge? and how will he stand challenge? sure enough he chops off the Knights head but there's an interesting detail that the poem notes that the knight picks up the head and turns the head so that will be facing Guinevere mmm keep that in mind and of course he reminds Gawain that he is to meet him on New Years Day a year hence part 2 of the poem Arthur is wondering what's going on here but he doesn't say anything, line 467 he doesn't say anything. in fit 2 the year passes very quickly and Gawain is leaving on a religious holiday November the 1st typically refers to as All Saints Day for the beginning of his activity he travels around through the area of Wales Christmas Eve comes and being a good medieval Christian he knows that he needs to receive the Eucharist the mass for Christmas and he prays that he will find a castle that will provide him with a place to stay and he's going to stay here for several days, something is going to happen a series is going to fall in place whereby he is going to accecpt a challenge from the knight of the castle, that they will exchange winnings whenever the knight wins in his quests he will exchange with Gawain in the evening and Gawain will exchange whatever he wins at the castle doesn't seem like it would be very much in exchange does it? stay tuned we will find out.
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