The Gawain story is, on the surface, a simple one. Arthur and his knights are feasting at Christmas, looking for a seasonal game to play. Then the door blows open and a green giant arrives, not very jolly …
a dreadful man,
the most in the world’s mould of measure high,
from the nape to the waist so swart and so thick,
and his loins and his limbs so long and so great
half giant on earth I think now that he was;
but the most of man anyway I mean him to be,
and that the finest in his greatness that might ride,
for of back and breast though his body was strong,
both his belly and waist were worthily small,
and his features all followed his form made
and clean.
Wonder at his hue men displayed,
set in his semblance seen;
he fared as a giant were made,
and over all deepest green.
He calmly rides, on his huge green horse, into the hall with a strange challenge: one of the knights can have a free go at beheading him with an axe, and if the giant survives, the knight must take a blow in return, not flinching, a year from now. They are understandably nervous, but Sir Gawain takes up the challenge, and slices off the giant’s head. He promptly gets to his feet, picks it up, pops it under his arm and walks out. As he leaves, the severed head calmly and mockingly repeats the deal. Fast forward a year, and Gawain has set out on his quest through freezing dark forests to find the giant and offer his neck to the axe. He is riding through a landscape full of monsters and challenges, but also a real Britain:
He had no friend but his steed by furze and down,
and no one but God to speak with on the way,
till that he neared full nigh to northern Wales.
All the Isle of Anglesey on the left hand he held,
and fared over the fords by the forelands,
over at Holyhead, till he reached the bank
in the wilderness of Wirral – few thereabouts
that either God or other with good heart loved.
On Christmas Eve, he finally finds a mysterious castle that seems to float in a green landscape untouched by winter. He is welcomed by its lord, Bertilak. Over the next three days Gawain will stay in the castle and they will exchange gifts. But Bertilak’s wife tries hard to seduce our hero while her husband is away hunting. He doesn’t give way, except for kisses and accepting a green garter from her. Then he rides off to find the giant at his Green Chapel. The first time he kneels for the axe he flinches away, and the giant mocks him. The second time, the giant misses. The third time his blade cuts Gawain, but only slightly. He reveals himself as Bertilak, who has known all along about the attempted seduction – a test of Gawain’s nobility which he (almost) passed. Gawain returns to Arthur’s court to tell his story.
Laid out like that, the poem is a straightforward enough magical romance – the monster, the wicked lady, the tempted hero, the test, the happy outcome. It is structured around triplets – three journeys, three scenes in court, three tests, and so on. It’s a longer version of the kind of story we can imagine being told around hundreds of medieval hearths. But what my account misses is everything that is really important here – the contrast between the warm, luxurious, succulent world of the castles and the bare, icy, threatening landscape of cliffs and forests beyond; the psychological subtlety of erotic temptation struggling with Christian morality; the genuine menace of the green knight as he mocks Arthur’s court. These aren’t idealisations or symbols but real people, caught up in a world of magical threats and spiritual redemption that feels very much like the world of the early 1400s. Here, for example, is Gawain snug in bed in Bertilak’s castle, as his wife tries to seduce him one morning while her husband is out hunting the deer:
Thus larks the lord by linden-wood eaves,
while Gawain the good man gaily abed lies,
lurks till the daylight gleams on the walls,
under canopy full clear, curtained about.
And as in slumber he lay, softly he heard
a little sound at his door, and it slid open;
and he heaves up his head out of the clothes,
a corner of the curtain he caught up a little,
and watches warily to make out what it might be.
It was the lady, the loveliest to behold,
that drew the door after her full silent and still,
and bent her way to the bed; and the knight ashamed,
laid him down again lightly and feigned to sleep.
And she stepped silently and stole to his bed,
caught up the curtain and crept within,
and sat her full softly on the bedside
and lingered there long, to look when he wakened.
The lord lay low, lurked a full long while,
compassing in his conscience what this case might
mean or amount to, marvelling in thought.
But yet he said to himself: ‘More seemly it were
to descry with speech, in a space, what she wishes.’
Then he wakened and wriggled and to her he turned,
and lifted his eyelids and let on he was startled,
and signed himself with his hand, as with prayer, to be
safer.
With chin and cheek full sweet,
both white and red together,
full graciously did she greet,
lips light with laughter.
‘Good morning, Sir Gawain,’ said that sweet lady,
‘You are a sleeper unsafe, that one may slip hither.
Now are you taken in a trice, lest a truce we shape,
I shall bind you in your bed, that you may trust.’
All laughing the lady made her light jests.
This is as vividly imagined, and as sexy, as any modern novel. Chaucer himself couldn’t have done it better, and it’s a fit entrant, perhaps, for the Good Sex Awards. Here, by contrast, is a description of Bertilak’s men slicing up the animals he’s killed while out hunting. As you enjoy it, remember that we, like Gawain, are waiting for the moment, which cannot be far off, when he has to present his own neck to the green giant’s blade … This isn’t really just about dead deer.
Some that were there searched them in assay,
and two fingers of fat they found on the feeblest.
Then they slit the slot, and seized the first stomach,
shaved it with sharp knives, and knotted the sheared.
Then lopped off the four limbs and rent off the hide,
next broke they the belly, the bowels out-taking,
deftly, lest they undid and destroyed the knot.
They