Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance

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1 University Press Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-10 of 10 items for: keywords : Arthurian romances Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance Item type: book acprof:oso/ This is an innovative and original exploration of the connections between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most well-known works of medieval English literature, and the tradition of French Arthurian romance, best-known through the works of Chretien de Troyes two centuries earlier. The book compares Gawain with a wide range of French Arthurian romances, exploring their recurrent structural patterns and motifs, their ethical orientation and the social context in which they were produced. It presents a wealth of new sources and analogues, which provide illuminating points of comparison for analysis of the self-consciousness with which the Gawain-poet handled the staple ingredients of Arthurian romance. Throughout, the author pays close attention to the ways in which the modes of representation of Arthurian romance are related to social and historical context. By revealing in the course of their romances the importance of conscience, courtliness, and self-restraint, literati such as the Gawain-poet and Chretien de Troyes helped a feudal society with an obsolete chivalric ideology adapt to the changing times. Introduction: Sir Gawain and French Arthurian Romance acprof:oso/ This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the connection between the romantic fiction Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the French tradition of Arthurian romance. This book Page 1 of 5

2 specifically examines the connections between the heroic ideal in this fiction and in earlier Arthurian romance and between their interest in polite manners and peaceful interpersonal relations. It aims to trace the literary influences that lie behind Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and to understand the tradition to which it belongs historically. The Convention of Hospitality acprof:oso/ This chapter examines the description of hospitality in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It compares the hospitality scene in this work to those of Old French Arthurian romances and suggests that both represent a remarkably similar protocol of hospitality. It discusses the dangers of hospitality for Arthurian knights and analyses the way Chretien de Troyes and the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exploited the dramatic potential of hospitality. Narratives of True Love and Twelfth-Century Common Sense William M. Reddy in The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, CE Published in print: 2012 Published Online: September 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University of Chicago Press DOI: / chicago/ This chapter considers the incorporation of the courtly love ideal into the verse narratives of some Arthurian romances. It also examines the question of how widely the principles of courtly love were actually put into practice in the twelfth century. The discussions cover the source material of Arthurian romance; a reading of Chrétien's Lancelot ; aristocratic speech in the Tristan myth; the Lais of Marie de France; more real-life romances of the late twelfth century; and courtly love conventions' satirical treatment in fabliaux. Page 2 of 5

3 Unhappy endings: The most accursed, unhappy, and evil fortuned Helen Cooper in The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare Published in print: 2004 Published Online: September 2007 ISBN: eisbn: acprof:oso/ The happy ending is often taken as the definitive feature of romance; this chapter looks at the exceptions. Each of the motifs discussed in earlier chapters can impel disaster, as Judas and Mordred survive exposure in an open boat, magic is increasingly assimilated to witchcraft, and fairy prophecy predicts calamity. A number of the prose romances, not least Valentine and Orson and Malory s Morte Darthur, end in parricide and war. The logical end of such treatments was to recast Arthurian romance as tragedy, as happened in The Misfortunes of Arthur, where the problematic succession of Arthur is used as the material for a revenge play. Shakespeare s reworking of the story of King Lear keeps its original framing clearly enough to recall the romance underlying it. The Plantagenet Court and the World of King Arthur Jean Flori and Olive Classe in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Rebel Published in print: 2007 Published Online: March 2012 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: Edinburgh University Press DOI: / edinburgh/ The extraordinary success enjoyed by Arthurian romance in Plantagenet domains has led most historians and specialists in twelfth-century literature to see it as part of a propaganda exercise orchestrated by the dynasty itself. Today, there is a tendency to accept the idea in a more tempered form; people prefer to talk about diffused propaganda' for the Plantagenet ideology. Thanks to the success of Geoffrey of Monmouth's work, the Historia regum Britanniae, the prestige of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere rubbed off onto Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose ancestors they were taken to be now that the court of King Arthur had been ascribed historical status. This chapter states with some confidence that the Plantagenet court adopted the Arthurian one and made it its own by assimilation, for a variety of ideological motives. Page 3 of 5

4 Conclusion acprof:oso/ This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the connection between the romantic fiction Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the French tradition of Arthurian romance. The findings reveal that this work is clearly indebted to the Old French courtly romance, particularly to that of Chretien de Troyes. This indicates that the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight clearly followed the conventions that can be found in many courtly romances, especially in the representation of hospitality, cultural progress, the nobility of knights, and civilized interaction. The Specular Madman Sylvia Huot in Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Found and Lost Published in print: 2003 Published Online: January 2010 ISBN: eisbn: acprof:oso/ This chapter examines the portrayal of the madman as a member of a community. In Arthurian romance, the court fool Daguenet offers a parody of knighthood, while heroic figures such as Lancelot and Tristan stand at the pinnacle of greatness; these figures define the outer limits of the chivalric identity adopted by normal knights. When Lancelot and Tristan lapse into madness, their role at court changes while retaining its liminal quality. Comparative analysis of their madness, together with the character of Daguenet, brings out the variety of ways that madness serves as a literary device to characterise the culture and ethos of a royal court. Adam de la Halle s Jeu de la Feuillee features a madman in an urban setting whose antics mask a more serious commentary on the ways that social exclusion operates in defining communal identity. Page 4 of 5

5 The Art of the Storyteller Joseph J. Duggan in The Romances of Chretien de Troyes Published in print: 2001 Published Online: October 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: Yale University Press DOI: /yale/ This chapter describes Chretien de Troyes as a master storyteller an innovator who created the literary tradition of the Arthurian romance, which rose to popularity with his works, was continued in prose form soon after his death, and has lasted to this day in a variety of national literatures. His romances are read by the educated public young and old, figure on school reading lists for courses in literature and history, are a major source of knowledge for details of everyday living in the twelfth century, and can still provide entertainment for those seeking a temporary reprieve from life's pressures. The reasons for this success are many, and although it is impossible to exhaust the subject, as the vast volume of studies on Chretien attests, this chapter explores a few of the more significant ones. Knight or Eye Candy?: the gendering gaze in hartmann von aue s iwein Sandra Lindemann Summers in Ogling Ladies: Scopophilia in Medieval German Literature Published in print: 2013 Published Online: September 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University Press of Florida DOI: /florida/ This chapter closely looks at the diegetic gaze of female characters populating Hartmann von Aue s poem Iwein. The outside gaze, meaning contemporary readership of romances, was also primarily female. The countless dedications to their doyenneship at the beginning of manuscripts point to the conclusion that ladies played an active role in the writing of Arthurian romance, even though they did not themselves author any of the poems. Iwein, in particular, exemplifies how male medieval poets focused on female audiences, composing specifically for this readership, and customizing the narrative to the ladies approving gaze. Page 5 of 5