He provides Arthur with a father, King Uther, makes of Arthur's wars against the Saxons only his youthful exploits, relates at length how Arthur conquered almost all of Western Europe, and adds to the earlier story the figures of Merlin, Guenevere, Modred, Gawain, Kay, and Bedivere.
'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' may very fittingly bring to a close our hasty survey of the entire Norman-French period, a period mainly of formation, which has left no literary work of great and permanent fame, but in which, after all, there were some sincere and talented writers, who have fallen into forgetfulness rather through the untoward accidents of time than from lack of genuine merit in themselves.
And when his neighbour, Sir Kay, arguing with Sir Percivale on current form, appealed to him to back up his statement that Sir Gawain, though a workman-like middle-weight, lacked the punch, he did not answer, though the subject was one on which he held strong views.
'Sir Gawain, this Court would be greatly indebted to you if--'
Sir Gawain said he had strained a muscle at the last tournament.
While the scholars noted at the beginning of this essay have perceived the poet's sleight of hand in the first Fitt, they do not acknowledge that the alternatives so surreptitiously presented to
Gawain would have radical, and perhaps destructive, consequences for the narrative's trajectory, the basic structure of which the poet has inherited from his literary precursors.
Featuring opera star Denyce Graves, Chicken Jane, Martha Reader and the Vowelles, the "What's Your Name?" song,
Gawain's Word, Cliff Hanger, the Information Hen, Monkey Pop-Up Theater, Arty Smartypants, B.B.
He is known, of course, for his editions of the
Gawain poet's works; in this introduction to the poems he offers readings of the texts that make good sense of them.
The verse narrative, Sir
Gawain And The Green Knight, dates back to the 14th Century, although it was only published for the first time in 1839.
Then we have a romp, with Sir
Gawain, Terence, and even a strange knight who they find riding in a dung-cart ...
When the valiant knight
Gawain succumbs in his quest against enemies of Camelot, the young druid Rhiannon, still mourning the loss of her husband, takes him in.
Gawain - (Arthurian legend) a nephew of Arthur and one of the knights of the Round Table