Essay Title - King Arthur and the link to the medieval romanace Sir Gawain & the Green Knight
The commencement of the anonymous European medieval romance, known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, provides a striking representation of the Arthurian Court. The first impression is one of dramatic immediacy, as the ambience of Camelot at the festive time of Christmas and New Year is conveyed with an air of intimacy, vitiating much of the Arthurian mythic tale. This living presence is cast through the highly skilled depictions of the key features of the court, including its King and Queen, its knights and ladies, the typical behaviours of these courtly personalities and crucially the values of the Arthurian court and ways they manifest themselves through the narrative.
The court itself is presented as a safe haven and sanctuary for Arthur, his knights and their ladies, suggested through the phrase, ‘Arthur lay at Camelot’, (line 37) inferring a state of physical and psychological repose. Furthermore, the endless resources of food and wine, indicated through evocative descriptions such as ‘many were the dainties, and rare the meats, so great was the plenty they might scarce find room on the board to set on the dishes. Each helped himself as he liked best, and to each two were twelve dishes, with great plenty of beer and wine available’ (lines 121-125) suggests the court is a place of bounty and potential for physical indulgence. In spite of this, the methodical and cyclical practices identified, such as the attendance at Chapel service before the reveling begins, introduces the reader to the underlying sense of restraint and orderliness, which marks this depiction of Arthur’s court. Moreover, the seating arrangements to feast encapsulate the hierarchical order of Arthur’s court, with Guinevere and others elevated on a dais and decked in precious metals such as gold, conveys the sense of .decorum, courtly manners and self discipline, the ethos of Arthur’s success, noted in the action when ‘they washed and sat them down to the feast in fitting rank and order’. (line 71)
Another evident feature of the presentation of Arthur’s court is the abiding sense of camaraderie underlining the bond between Arthur and his knights, as well as the blessed idyllic physical and spiritual condition of the courtiers. The ‘gallant knights’ who formed a ‘noble brotherhood’, the ‘fair folk (who) were in their youth’, were the ‘fairest and most fortunate under heaven’. (line 55-56)
This idealism is extended to the courtiers’ apparent blissful experience of life at its fullest. Their pattern of life found an implied equilibrium, comprised of ‘rich revels’, ‘gay talk and jest’; cycles of competition in the form of ‘joust and tourney, counterbalanced by celebration, as they revert ‘back to the court to make carols’. (lines 40-43)
Furthermore, the poet imbues Arthur’s court with a spiritual significance, with Christmas time featuring a 15 day feast, highlighted with song by day and dance by night, as precursor to the celebration of the New Year. For the business of the Arthurian court, the moment brings proud reflection, the spirit of fellowship and brotherhood, celebration and renewal; through shared joy, the exchanging of gifts and a will to perpetuate the chivalric code of honour, nobility, self sacrifice and placing of one’s life in the hands of fate.
The most significant features of the opening of Gawain and the Green Knight, which evoke a strong sense of Arthur’s court, are the representations of Arthur himself and his queen Guinevere. They are not only the centre pieces of courtly life, but they epitomise the court’s values and spirit. For ‘the comeliest king who ever held court’, (line 54) demonstrates a rewarding spirit towards his knights and their women; is of great repute and renown, possesses qualities of deference and unstinting loyalty towards his men. Indeed, Arthur’s courtly actions reflect his conviction to value his knights. The poet states that ‘Arthur would not eat till all were served, so full of joy and gladness was he, even as a child; he liked not either to lie long, or to sit long at meat, so worked upon him his young blood and his wild brain’ (lines 85-89). This delightful description shows Arthur’s feverish propensity to repeatedly rekindle his youth through dreams and visions of future conquests in the name of honour, epitomising the spirit of the chivalric code, remaining ever young, through tirelessly swimming against the tide, as it were. Arthur is presented as embracing difficulty, hardship, peril and ardour, exercising passion to remain forever passionate. This romantic ideal resonates through the poet’s matter of fact admission, that ‘he liked not either to lie long, or to sit long at meat’(line 88).
The poet’s Arthur shunned self indulgence, even against the backdrop of imagined recent self sacrificial warfare. This vision opposes the typical depiction of men of war, cast as indulging in revelry and drunken behaviour. Instead, the chivalric code places strict constraints upon the exercising of passion, which is kept for noble conquest, rather than licentiousness. Moreover, Arthur’s custodianship of the chivalric code of honour was also manifest during festive seasons. While high feast days suggest an inclination to satisfy the cravings of the flesh and induce sloth or greed, Arthur’s exercising of self-restraint extended to preserving the code of nobility.
The Arthurian court is also presented as a stage for the recalling of past chivalric action, a locale in which the knights themselves, their ladies, their round table and their king become mythologised. This is noted when the poet deftly draws our attention to the Arthurian custom, ‘that he would never eat upon an high day till he had been advised of some knightly deed, or some strange and marvellous tale, of his ancestors, or of arms, or of other ventures’(lines 91-95)
Arthur’s court is also realised as a microcosm of the fields of warfare, since knight’s, even in festive seasons, ask ‘leave of their king to joust with fellow knights’, (lines 41-42) reinforcing the knightly spirit writ large, that they ‘might set their lives in jeopardy, one against another, as fortune might favour them’, (lines 97-98) the fate of the brother’s mortality rendered vulnerable to reinforce the knight’s internalisation of their self sacrificial code.
The representation of Guinevere, who ‘gaily clad, sat on the high daïs. Silken was her seat, with a fair canopy over her head,’ (lines 74-78) exudes an idealism of physical beauty and refinement. The expensive canopy above her seat ‘of rich tapestries of Tars, embroidered, and studded with costly gems’ symbolises the might of Arthur’s victories, distilled in his royal court- reflected through the detail of his queen’s artistic decoration. The exotic nature of Arthur’s court is also implied by the reference to Guinevere’s canopy being formed with tapestries from Tars. Geographically remote from Arthur’s seat in Camelot, Tarsus, located in modern day Turkey, is a material reminder of the magnitude of Arthur’s custodian like vision. The tapestry emblems from Tarsus emblazon Guinevere’s canopy, reflecting the depth of Arthurian pride in past campaign victories.
The ethos of the Arthurian court is tested and partially vindicated when Sir Gawain journeys to make good his word, to visit the Green Knight at the Green Chapel. The dual qualities of Arthur’s knights, namely courtesy and nobility, are pitted against each other by the host’s ruse. While Gawain extends sublime courtesy to the Green knight’s wife, he protects his knightly reputation, resolving not to breach his chivalric code, and in turn, not to accept the Lady’s offers of love. Admittedly, Anderson (2005, 196) alerts us to the implicit ambiguity in several of the verbal exchanges between Gawain and Bercilak’s wife in the temptation sequence, exposing the fragility of the chivalric code’s over reliance upon courtesy. Through manipulation of medieval syntax, Line 1237, “Ye ar welcum to my cors” has the dual meanings of ‘you are welcome to me’ or ‘you are welcome to my body’. While Anderson notes Gawain takes the naïve interpretation of the Lady’s words, his claim to nobility to tenuous, due to an over-reliance upon courtesy. Nonetheless, the repute of the court as expounded in the poem’s opening sequence is substantially upheld by Gawain’s resolve, with the concession that Gawain’s acceptance of Bercilak’s wife’s girdle, earns him chastisement and light hearted belittlement, both from Bercilak’s castle and upon return to Camelot.
Bibliography
Anderson, John, J. Language and Imagination in the Gawain Poems Manchester University Press, 2005
Anderson, John, J. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Everyman’s Library, 1996
Weston. J (n.d.) Gawain and the Green Knight The Camelot Project at The University of Rochester (http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cphome.stm. last updated January 8, 2008, retrieved January 12, 2008.
