PREVIEW： Chronicles #33 ｜ Sir Gawain and The Green Knight with Nathan Hood： Part I
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Summary
In this episode of Chronicles, I'm joined by the founder of the Pendragon Foundation, Nathan Hood, to discuss Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a classic work of literature written in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to this very special episode of Chronicles, where today we're going to
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be talking all about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And I'm here joined by a great passionate
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medievalist and chairman of the Pendragon Foundation, Nathan Hood. Nathan, thank you
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for coming in. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. I mean, I've been a long time watcher and viewer of
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yours, Luca. And I love what you're doing in terms of celebrating culture and then to talk about Sir
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Gawain and the Green Knight. I mean, that's just a dream come true. So yeah, well, likewise, you know,
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I've, you know, long been interested in your takes on Tolkien and the Arthurian legends. And so no,
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it's wonderful to have you in to talk about such a classic piece of literature, one that I think
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really has a special place in the canon of Arthurian legends, but also obviously in the story of England
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itself, right? It's a very prominent work. And we'll obviously talk all about the actual story as we go
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further down. But why don't we begin by just setting the scene and the historical background and the
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time that this sort of this text was coming from. So obviously, we're dealing with a story that
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seems to have, well, first thing to say, we only have one manuscript, right, right, of Segwayne. We only have
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this now, because one manuscript managed to survive down the ages. I remember the first chronicle I covered on
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Beowulf, where I recounted the fact that we only have that because it was saved from a fire, right, in, in the
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1700s. And it seems that Segwayne was just as tightly worn over, you know, against the, you know, the sort of
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like dust of history. So we're glad to have it.
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Absolutely. And I mean, on one hand, it makes you think, how many wonderful works have we not got, or maybe
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are waiting to be discovered, actually, like Segwayne, because that was in the 19th century, I believe that it was
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recovered and or rediscovered for the first time. So for several hundred years, it hadn't been known
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about. And so that there's some optimism there, maybe some pessimism. But also, I think it speaks
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to the time that it's written in, which is, you know, we are on this back wall, we've got all these
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lovely printed books, and they're mass produced. And you could buy a book on Amazon really easily or
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on another publisher, right? Whereas in that time, it's all manuscript writing. And if it is written
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down, and it would be circulated through copies. So these are precious items that whoever owns it,
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it's a it's almost a status symbol that I have a manuscript, I have the written version of the
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story, it'd probably be lovely illumination on it, and various figures drawn on it. Or it would be
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orally performed. And that's probably how most people would encounter many of the stories, such
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as Beowulf, such as Segwayne, both of them poems. And in those days, poems weren't just recited,
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sometimes they were sung. So that gives us a bit of a flavor of how the people who, who would have
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first experienced this work, would have encountered it. And in contrast to us who get it in a lovely
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printed book, right? Yes. As individuals, probably would have been performed in a communal setting
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as well. Maybe think of the court of a castle, where around a nice fire, around a nice fire on
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a cold, dark night, the winds battering, and the rains coming in. And you're all huddled around and
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you hear Segwayne and the Green Knight. And I think I think a further aspect of this is, as we'll get into
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the story, it's all set in courts, and courtly life is a big part of it. And so for these people,
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it's not necessarily like a long lost age that's being presented here. It's actually their own lives
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can be seen in the story. Yes. And so the magic of the story, or the supernatural, or the challenging
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aspects of it, speak directly to their own experience. And I often say castles are a place where history
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and myth meet in a very strong way, not just for us, but for them, they encountered it as,
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you know, I'm sitting in a castle just as King Arthur sat in a castle. Right. So I think when
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they're hearing the story, they're not hearing some ancient myth, it would feel very alive to them.
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Definitely. And also as well, at this point, everyone would have been, certainly at the time
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when this was written in the 14th century, people would have been very familiar with these characters
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by now, of course, you know, going back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, you know, history of Kings of Britain,
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and then going through and Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian romances, and obviously, we're actually
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before Mallory's, obviously, very famous death of Arthur, at this point, but people would have known
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these characters. And obviously, as you say, many of those medieval stories, there would have been
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far more than we have now. It's just that many of them have simply not survived down to our present
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time. And you have, as well, there is no official Arthurian canon, of course, as well, there is no
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this happened, then this happened. And this knight always does this deed in every story. Because
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obviously, different people are writing up and down the country. And that's just in England,
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of course, France is, you know, Chrétien de Troyes are doing their own thing. Of course,
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the Germans have got the Niebuhr-Lungenlied and many of their, which is not strictly Arthurian. But,
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you know, it speaks to that kind of, it's, it's still looking at the same themes that Arthur tackles,
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chivalry, and honour, and courtliness, and revenge, and all these temptations of sin. You know,
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obviously, it was a popular topic around Europe at the time. And so when people see Sir Gawain
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being the main character of this story, there would have been a tremendous amount of excitement
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in there, because Gawain was one of the greats. He was one of, he's the cousin of the king, you know,
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of Arthur. He has a long storied history. And it would have, you can see laced throughout the text,
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many references to previous adventures that Gawain has been on or little, you know, nods to previous
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literature on the character that would have been very obvious to people in that contemporary 14th
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century setting. Absolutely. I think it's hard to, for us to see how prevalent the Arthurian stories were
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in that time, and how widespread knowledge of Arthur would have been, and of Gawain and Lancelot,
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and so on. So much so that I think, you know, you mentioned Geoffrey of Monmouth there. We only have
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one manuscript for the Gawain's text. I think there's over 100 manuscripts of that circulated around the
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courts of Europe. So it's all over from Britain to France, Germany, Italy. And I think there's even
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evidence of some references in the Holy Land, right, with the Crusaders. So it spreads all across
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Christendom. So it's not just in Britain. But what's really interesting about Gawain is he gets
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treated quite differently in the literatures of the different countries. Let's just focus on England
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So in Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain, Gawain, as you say, is a prominent
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character. He's a cousin of the king. He's a heroic and mobile individual. He's kind of the
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greatest of the knights at that point. And that seems to be the trajectory in the English kind of
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canon, if there is such a thing. Tradition, in the English tradition. Whereas in France, with
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Cretien, you start to get the introduction of new characters. Now, they are based on Celtic
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names or characters, but they're not fully worked out until Cretien comes along. And then you start
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getting Lancelot of the lake. Right. And he becomes the greatest of the knights. And one of the things
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that comes in at the same time is this whole courtly love angle, where a knight has to wrestle
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with his loyalty to his lord, and serving his lord, but also serving the lady. And maybe that has an
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amorous aspect. And this is kind of based on the courts, which Cretien's writing in, actually, at that
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time. He's reflecting the behavior back at the court. And so what happens is you get Lancelot and
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Percival and so on. And these are elevated, but Gawain gets put down as a consequence in the French
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literature. Shafted. Very much so. He's contrasted. So take the quest for the Holy Grail, the Lancelot
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Grail cycle, one of the great Arthurian stories. Even though Lancelot has committed an affair with
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Guinevere, he is still able to get to the castle of the Grail, but he cannot get in. Or he can get in
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after confession or so on, in certain versions. Gawain is so consumed by earthly glory and lust that he
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just gives up on the quest almost immediately. He can't stick it. And so we're seeing like a
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condemnation of this character now. That doesn't happen in the English tradition. He's always held
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up as the great hero. And Lancelot is not really on that level. So I think it's this story, at the very
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outset, it's by having Gawain as the main character. Yes. And as we'll see, he's presented in a positive and
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affirming light. It's a robustly English tale. And I think the people would have resonated with that
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as a consequence. I think if memory serves, because it's a while since I've read it, but in
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Maori's The Death of Arthur as well, I seem to remember in that final climactic battle with Mordred
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that it's Gawain's death that is most mourned by Arthur, right? It's not Lancelot. It's Gawain.
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That's the one that leaves him in the greatest amount of sorrow and anguish. So yeah, definitely
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one of the most important nights, the most important one, as you say, in the English tradition.
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There's also something to be said, isn't there, about the era that this was written in and the
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alliterative revival, right? We're looking at a time where there is an active effort by poets and
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scholars to revive the alliterative form of poetry, you know, that old Germanic form of poetry that
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Beowulf was based on and a lot of the Anglo-Saxon traditions of, you know, creating poetry against
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the more rhythmic rhyming verse of the Normans. And so you can see there's a really interesting
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aspect to it where you can see the old Anglo-Saxon spirit trying to reassert itself after the Norman
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conquest still, that it's still, you can tell it's there and very much in the memory of people,
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but it's not getting the breathing space to thrive as it once did.
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I think it's, it's even more specific than that in some ways, because the author seems to have
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come, we don't know the author, like who it was exactly. There's no biographical information.
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Yes, yes, it was, it was Baz. Yeah. Well, in some ways, maybe. Baz the Barb.
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Because it seems like he, he was based in Chester. There's some of the wording seems to have the
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dialect of the Northwest in that time or the Western areas. And a lot of it's the journeys or
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the places that are mentioned are on the West coast, like the Wirral, for example, the mountains
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of Wales and so on. So this seems like somebody who knows the geography quite well is steeped in that
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sort of location. And we know that in the late 14th century in the court of Richard II, there was a
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number of Cheshire men or men from Chester. So maybe this was one of them or somebody connected to
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that kind of courtly scene. So he seems to not just be kind of exemplifying or celebrating England and
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English traditions, but very much regional as well. And I think that's actually strengthens the
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patriotism then, because it's a love of England, but a love of it as it is concretely in a certain
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place and time which he belongs to. And I think many of us resonate with that. It's a love of home.
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Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Actually, on that exact point, I wanted to read an extended passage from
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Tolkien's lecture on Sir Gwain and the Green Knight. It will not surprise you, ladies and gentlemen,
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to know that I'm using the Tolkien translation, of course, for this particular episode. But from his
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lecture on the actual poet himself, he says, he was a man of serious and devout mind, though not
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without humour. He had an interest in theology and some knowledge of it, though an amateur knowledge,
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perhaps, rather than a professional. He had Latin and French and was well enough read in French books,
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both romantic and instructive. But his home was in the West Midlands of England. So much his language
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shows and his metre and his scenery. His active life must have lain in the latter half of the 14th
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century, and he was thus a contemporary of Chaucer's. But whereas Chaucer has never become a closed book,
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and has continued to be read with pleasure since the 15th century, Sir Gwain and the Green Knight and
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Pearl are practically unintelligible to modern readers. Indeed, in their own time, the adjectives dark
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and hard would probably have been applied to these poems by most to enjoy the works of Chaucer.
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For Chaucer was a native of London, and the populous south-east of England, and the language which he
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naturally used has proved to be the foundation of standard English and literary English of later
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times. The kind of verse which he composed was the kind English poets mostly used for the next 500
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years. But the language of this unknown author from the far less populous, far more conservative West
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Midlands, his grammar, his style, his vocabulary, were in many respects remote from those of London.
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Sir Gwain and the Green Knight, he used the ancient English meter, which descended from antiquity,
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that kind of verse which is now called alliterative. And so, yeah, you can see Tolkien there,
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just very much seconding all of the points that you just made. And it's remarkable as well, isn't it,
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how you are just from the character of someone's writing from that time, able to pinpoint something
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about their life with otherwise very little to go on. Absolutely. And again, I think that's actually
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a good point that we just take English as standard, and it really becomes standardised in the 19th century
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with grammar books and so on, trying to codify the English language in spelling and how it's said.
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But prior to the modern age or the industrial age, wherever you went in England, things would be
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spelt differently, they would be said differently, and it was a much more fluid and dynamic language
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as a consequence of that. And so that's how you're able to pinpoint in a way that today it's very hard
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to, you couldn't tell from most people's writing where they come from, because even if they speak
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with a heavy dialect, it doesn't translate into their actual, actual words.
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No, not at all. All right, then. Shall we begin by talking about the actual story itself, then?
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So, I think it would serve as well to just read the opening passage from Sir Gawain and
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the Green Knight, because it begins with a great deal of world-building and just setting
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When the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy, and the fortress fell in flame to firebrands
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and ashes, the traitor who the contrivance of treason there fashioned was tried for his
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treachery, the most true upon earth. It was Aeneas the noble and his renowned kindred, who
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then laid under them lands, and lords became of well nigh all the wealth in the western isles.
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When royal Romulus to Rome his road had taken, in great pomp and pride he peopled it first
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and named it with his own name, that yet now it bears.
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Tyreus went to Tuscany in towns, founded Longbeard in Lombardy, uplifted halls, and far over the
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French flood, Felix Brutus, on many a broad bank in Bray Britain, established full fair,
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where strange things, strife and sadness, at wiles in the land did fair, and each other
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grief and gladness oft fast have followed there.
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And so we immediately just get, as you say, the sense of immediate time and place, right?
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It takes the mythological approach to Britain and its origin is laid out by Geoffrey of Monmouth
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and Brutus of Troy establishing Britain, and then it zooms in on the time of Arthur and
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his knights, so it immediately sets them in that continuity of the great heroes.
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Yeah, and I think it's important that we understand that for many people they would have thought
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this was history, right? That when Geoffrey of Monmouth writes the history of the kings
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of Britain, it's not presented as a romance, which maybe could exist in a time outside of
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time, as it were. It's not a fable. It's not something which is purely made up. It's actually
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many people thought, yes, there was a Brutus from Troy who founded Britain, and there was a King
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Arthur, and actually, especially in the time of Edward I, the first different factions were
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competing over who was going to fulfil the Arthurian prophecies, who was Arthur going
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to return and restore, or was Edward the new Arthur, etc., etc.
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And you see that in tension with the kings of England, all the way, of course, up to Hengwar
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VII, naming his own eldest son Arthur, before that all went calamitously wrong. But that mission
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endured for a long time throughout the English monarchy.
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I think the other thing to add to it is, so with that story, there's a kind of cycle that
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repeats through these different characters. So we have the medieval idea of the Wheel of
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From Boethius and so on, and it gets kind of brought into a lot of their literature, where
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you have this idea that individuals such as a king might rise and fall, but this is in
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their own life, so we can see that with Arthur, right? That he rises to kinghood, but eventually
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his whole kingdom is brought low and through civil war and is destroyed. But then nations
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have that too. And so with Brutus and Arthur, you see a repeated pattern, and this is true of
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the kings more broadly. So I think this is also being kind of brought through to us again
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in this passage. It's saying that this story that you're about to hear fits in with that
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kind of cyclical world. That kind of world where, yeah, we haven't a great court at Camelot,
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but maybe it's on the way down, or something bad's going to happen to it. It's maybe signposting
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for us. Yes. So then we're introduced to Arthur and his knights, and obviously, though this
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isn't Arthur's story, I will just say that it is... I can't help but smile whenever Arthur
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is on the page at any time in any story. He's just such a magnificent character, and he's
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always dealt with in such a... He's given such gravitas and reverence wherever he appears.
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You know, he really is the most legendary king, you know, the platonic ideal of a good knight
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and a good king. And you see that very much here as well. You know, the depiction of Camelot
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at the beginning and the grand feast as they're at Christmas, aren't they? And it's New Year's
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Eve after celebrating, obviously, because we celebrate Christmas for many, many days, of course,
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not just the one and all of the... The 12 days of Christmas. Right, yes. I have heard of that,
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you know. Oh, yes. Yeah, the 12 days of Christmas, of course, and all of the religious ceremonies
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that, of course, take place with that. And so we're here on New Year's Eve, and it's all
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very jovial, of course. There's a great amount of feasting. Queen Guinevere is there, all of
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the great knights, and Guine, importantly, is sat at the high table with Arthur and with the
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Queen as well. So you immediately see his prominence of place in Arthur's court. And Guine is a terrific
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character because you see his... He's kind of excessively chivalrous in many ways, but we'll
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come to that as we go through. So they're all there, and obviously what we see is the doors
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fling open, and upon this horse comes in this man into the hall. And obviously I'll have to
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read the extended passage because this is obviously the introduction of our main character, really,
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other than Guine, which is the Green Knight himself.
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