Green Knight

This article is about the character in Arthurian legend. For other uses, see Green Knight (disambiguation).

A painting from the original manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Green Knight is seated on the horse, holding up his severed head in his right hand.

The Green Knight (Welsh: Marchog Gwyrdd, Cornish: Marghek Gwyrdh, Breton: Marc'heg Gwer) is a heroic character of the Matter of Britain, originating in the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the related medieval work The Greene Knight. His true name is revealed to be Bertilak de Hautdesert (spelled in some translations as "Bercilak" or "Bernlak") in Sir Gawain, while The Greene Knight names him "Bredbeddle".[1] The Green Knight later features as one of Arthur's greatest champions in the fragmentary ballad King Arthur and King Cornwall, again with the name "Bredbeddle".[2]

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Bertilak is transformed into the Green Knight by Morgan le Fay, a traditional adversary of King Arthur, to test his court. However, in The Greene Knight, he is transformed by a different woman for the same purpose. In both stories, he sends his wife to seduce Gawain as a further test. The King Arthur and King Cornwall ballad portrays him as an exorcist and one of the most powerful knights of Arthur's court. His wider role in Arthurian literature includes being a judge and tester of knights, and as such, the other characters consider him as friendly but terrifying and somewhat mysterious.[3]

In Sir Gawain, the Green Knight is so called because his skin and clothes are green. The meaning of his greenness has puzzled scholars.[4] Some identify him as the Green Man, a vegetation being of medieval art;[3] others as a recollection of a figure from Celtic mythology;[5] a Christian "pagan" symbol – the personified Devil.[3] The medievalist C. S. Lewis said the character was "as vivid and concrete as any image in literature."[3] Scholar J. A. Burrow called him the "most difficult character" to interpret.[3]

  1. ^ Hahn, Thomas. "The Greene Knight". In Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, p. 314. Western Michigan University Medieval Institute Publications. (2000) ISBN 1-879288-59-1.
  2. ^ Hahn, Thomas. "King Arthur and King Cornwall". In Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, p. 427. Western Michigan University Medieval Institute Publications. (2000) ISBN 1-879288-59-1.
  3. ^ a b c d e Besserman, Lawrence. "The Idea of the Green Knight." ELH, Vol. 53, No. 2. (Summer, 1986), pp. 219–239. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
  4. ^ Mann, Jill (2009). "Courtly Aesthetics and Courtly Ethics in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". Studies in the Age of Chaucer. 31 (1): 231–265. doi:10.1353/sac.2009.a380147. ISSN 1949-0755. S2CID 191181088. The combination of his greenness with the most sophisticated luxury of courtly dress turns him into an enigmatic spectacle, one whose appearance is scrutinized in exhaustive detail over three long stanzas, as the courtiers (and the reader) try to decipher its meaning. He is at once totally open to inspection and totally opaque.
  5. ^ Gentile, John S. (2014). "Shape-Shifter in the Green: Performing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". Storytelling, Self, Society. 10 (2): 220–243. doi:10.13110/storselfsoci.10.2.0220. ISSN 1932-0280.