Title: The Court of Confusion – Difficulties in Interpreting the Supernatural

Court Exempla

Student Name: Robert Lyons

Course: EN6051 – Middle English Literature

Lecturer: Dr. Ken Rooney

Date: 1st January 2023

Question: Question 2

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 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH ESSAYS

Each essay must be uploaded to Canvas on the date of

submission. Please fill out this sheet, sign it and attach it to your
essay.

NAME (IN BLOCK CAPITALS): ROBBIE LYONS

STUDENT NUMBER: 118748505

MODULE CODE: EN6051

LECTURER: Dr. Ken Rooney

SUBMISSION DATE:

This essay complies with School of English regulations and

guidelines:
YES X

NO

Plagiarism is the substitution of other people’s work for one’s

own including the unacknowledged use of somebody else’s words
or ideas.

I understand this definition of plagiarism; I have read the School’s

Policy on Plagiarism, and I state that this essay does not contain
any plagiarised material. I have not copied any of it from
anywhere or anyone else. I have acknowledged all the sources
that I consulted when writing it and I have employed proper
citation when using somebody else’s words or ideas.

Signed: Robbie Lyons

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Perhaps the greatest difficulty in studying medieval texts is one of interpretation; once we

have discovered the intact manuscript and come to grips with the idiosyncrasies of the

language used, there is still as great a risk of failing to understand what we find in a more

insidious way than simply not knowing what a particular sentence literally means. This

omnipresent difficulty is further enhanced by the presence of supernatural elements in a given

work. Though they are often, indeed almost always, meant to convey a message or lesson of

some importance, their incorporeality and shock value readily tempt misinterpretation from

modern audiences to whom the gruesome spectacles of blood and decay most often invite

simple assignation to genre.

In this essay, I propose to examine the difficulties for interpretation posed by two

medieval texts in particular; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Awntyrs off Arthur.

The two run parallel in many respects. Both are alliterative Arthurian romances with highly

ornate structures of alliteration and rhyme intermingled. Both are complex, delicately-

balanced works that open with an explosive supernatural interruption of courtly life. And

both are exempla of a kind, though neither is as straightforward or prosaic as that simple

generic label suggests. Instead, both serve as lessons on the complex social roles expected of

aristocrats in medieval England; for men in Sir Gawain and for women in Awntyrs. Finally,

the complexity of both texts has led to difficulties of interpretation over the centuries. Sir

Gawain has recently been the subject of a high-profile, high-gloss adaptation of the sort that

specific medieval texts rarely receive, yet which fundamentally misinterprets key aspects of

the narrative. Awntyrs has a bipartite structure that frustrates its easy interpretation as a

unified whole. Together, and as parts of the Arthurian whole, they form a fascinating if

difficult, pair.

The courtly element of Sir Gawain is writ large from the outset, with Camelot’s court

at Christmas time being afforded descriptions almost as rich as the holiday fare. We are told

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that the “fair folk” of Camelot are in their “first age” (Gawain l. 54), a term that Morgan

convincingly deduces from Medieval customs of discussing age to mean in their early

twenties, certainly not over thirty. (Morgan 49-51). The court is praised for its boldness and

cheer, and Arthur highlighted as a man of high will (Gawain l. 57), perfectly suited to lead

such a company of bold young merrymakers. But while this scene might be taken as an

idealised depiction of proper revelry in keeping with the season, there is a ‘loose’ quality to

the court that can be seen as unbecoming rulers of men. The court as a whole displays the

classic chivalric combination of “courtesy, courage, and fame”, yet its wild enjoyment

borders on dissolution. Chism notes that in its frivolity the court “connects itself to nothing”

(Chism 66) beyond its own enjoyment, a reckless quality for the leading court of the realm.

Arthur himself is highlighted, particularly his description as “being almost boyish…[h]is

blood was busy and he buzzed with thoughts.” (Gawain ll. 86-89). Arthur’s restlessness, his

short fuse, and whether or not the term “boyish” is meant to be derogatory arouse conflicting

readings. Whether one agrees with Morgan’s positive or Chism’s negative interpretation, this

first point of contention, coming even before the Green Knight makes his presence known, is

indicative of the poem’s complexity; despite clearly signposting its own messages and

morals, it is capable of generating an ambivalence not usually associated with exempla. But

rather than further dwell on the uncertainty of the young court’s leadership here, let us allow

our titular Green Knight to do it for us.

The first quality of the Knight we are shown is his size; he appears, presumably in

silhouette, filling the hall door of Camelot. His massive size is remarked on for several lines

(Gawain ll. 137-144), and while it may be hyperbole to crown him “a half giant”, there is a

challenge implicit in his very stature that would appeal to hot-blooded young warriors such as

those we have seen in the preceding scenes. There are few tales in the Bible that would cry

out to a knight like that of David and Goliath, of overcoming a superlatively mighty foe in

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single combat. While not explicitly supernatural until he steps into the light and reveals his

verdure at the wheel that ends the stanza, his size is calculated to the purpose he later explains

to Gawain.

And then there is the Green Knight’s greenness. It is poem’s most memorable visual

motif, its first announcement of the supernatural, and its most enduring unexplained mystery.

The Knight’s size, his bluster and disrespect, his laissez-faire attitude towards decapitation,

these all serve practical functions in his execution of Morgan le Fay’s plan to disrupt and test

Camelot. But his greenness simply seems to marks him as something strange and its elusive

meaning is the cause of much modern misinterpretation. To the modern audience green is

immediately associated with nature before anything else, and this had led to a preponderance

of depictions of the Green Knight as an avatar of the forest, clothed in leaves and bark or

even crowned with antlers1. His appearance in The Green Knight, the recent Lowery film,

drives this even further; its Knight is more tree than man, with thick wooden skin, and

branches in lieu of hair. His greenness is the implied threat of nature to civilisation, decay to

life. Such depictions are striking, beautiful or haunting as tone demands, but are not in

keeping with the description of the Knight given in the text, whose only botanical flourish, a

holly branch carried in the hand (Gawain ll. 206-207), is more of a gesture of Yuletide peace

than a battle standard of Nature against Man.

However, that is not to say that nature is not intentionally-invoked by the Knight’s

description in text, “gowned in green growth” as he is (Gawain l. 185); rather, the meaning of

that invocation has been lost in centuries of translation. To the medieval mind, green was the

colour of nature, yes, yet it was also the colour of the Devil. An odd notion to a modern

reader more familiar with scarlet fiends wielding glowing pitchforks. But that is precisely the

1
Not exactly a single source on this, but simply ask Professor Google for “Green Knight art”

cast your eye over the results.

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point; the Devil feared most by the Medieval audience was more subtle. An insidious tempter

who wore a pleasing guise to fool you from the path to Heaven. Robertson notes, from Livy

by way of Bersuire, that “green is a pleasant colour so that beasts like it and are attracted to

green places.” Hunters in search of these beasts also wear green, to avoid forewarning their

prey and to “appear pleasant themselves.” In this, they mimic the Devil’s original trick on

Eve, and use duplicity to obtain their ends as the Adversary hunts the souls of weak and

foolish mortals. (Robertson 471-472). As a matter of fact, in a footnote Robertson makes the

caveat that this may not apply to the Green Knight in particular, himself not being a hunter,

but here I disagree with him. We know from the poem’s ending that our Green Knight is not

the Devil, true, but although he ends up being a far more benevolent figure there is no

denying his parallels to the ‘Devil as a Hunter’ motif; he appears with a special purpose in

mind, to trick and entrap foolhardy young men, striking at their precise weaknesses and

achieving his (and le Fay’s) ends through duplicity, guile, and otherworldly power. His open

greenness is therefore a further mockery, announcing him as one who has come to

“[demolish] both the inconsequentiality of court exchange and the protocols of judicial

combat.” (Chism 85). A warning ignored by the rash young knight who takes his head.

This flash of violence, viscerally described, is where the Green Knight’s supernatural

elements reach their fever pitch. The poet spares no audience’s sensibilities in his description

of the blade’s journey through green flesh and red blood. (Gawain ll. 424-426). But this

violence, and its supernatural subversion, arising from nowhere on Christmas Day, is a part

of the Knight’s subversion of courtly honour and in particular of masculine chivalry. Men of

the noble classes that Arthur’s Round Table are drawn from were trained warriors and killers;

their status as ‘Those Who Fight’ was the source of their power and authority. The chivalric

code of honour and the glamour of courtly life were necessary structures to distance

themselves from simple butchers and validate their status as the men atop their society. Yet

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by provoking them, with a few plain insults dismantling the “fortitude and fearlessness” of

the “House of Arthur” (Gawain ll. 309-315), the Knight is able to provoke shocking violence

from these young men on such a day of peace. Particularly telling, in the face of the Knight’s

almost uniform greenness, are the only two elements of his which are pointedly not green; his

eyes and his blood. Immediately before his demeaning tirade against the court’s

cowardliness, the Knight’s “red eyes rolling” (Gawain l. 304) challenge the court and

immediately afterwards Arthur himself “saw red.” (Gawain l. 316). The jolly young king is

himself brought down to the cajoling Knight’s level, losing his own head in a red rage. The

nature of the company as a whole, a further discourtesy of the court of the Round Table, is

seen in the critical moments between the Knight’s decapitation and his otherworldly exit.

With the head of a perfect stranger at their feet, the king’s men “kick it as it clatters past”

(Gawain l. 428), in a display that could be taken as either revulsion, a fearful and dishonest

reaction from men of battle, or worse still as disrespect to a slain foe. In one fell swoop of his

own axe in another’s hand, the Knight probes the weaknesses of the Round Table to their

depths.

With the headless ride of the Green Knight from Camelot, the overtly supernatural

nature of his test ends, at least until he reveals his true purpose and form to Gawain in the

Green Chapel. The world of the romance is a mundane one into which the supernatural

intrudes with a pointed purpose behind its every manifestation. This mundanity is a key

difference between the original text and the Lowery adaptation, and one which muddies the

waters of interpretation almost beyond understanding. Between ghostly saints, talking foxes,

and herds of giants, the world of the 2021 Green Knight is more akin to a dark fairy tale than

a ‘realistic’ romance. The many strange and fantastic events that Gawain is a party to in the

film, and the fact that he is for long stretches of time the only human character to which we

can turn, make Gawain the sole focus of the audience’s attention; his character’s personal

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journey and personal honour become so important that the social element of the romance is

lost; there, after all, no ‘I’ in court. Bertilak’s castle in the film is a hauntingly bare place, a

façade when compared to the lively court that is assembled before each exchange of winnings

in the romance (Gawain ll. 1372-1375 and 1625-1626). Not only does this courtly setting

underline the importance of the exchanges (Morgan 109), but it changes the nature of

Gawain’s transgression in a fundamental way. In the film, Gawain inhabits a world that is

openly magical and he has repeatedly been shown to fail in knightly virtues; he is captured

and nearly killed by common bandits, quails in fear when the giant turns to face him, and

gives in to the lady’s sexual advances. To a man in his position, the act of keeping the girdle

is hardly a difficult decision. His honour is long besmirched and one more magical artifact

among the wonders he has seen is hardly a stretch. Whereas to the Gawain of the romance, a

paragon “famed for prowess and purity” (Gawain l. 912), the acceptance and withholding of

the girdle is a far greater risk and more treacherous failure. He must not only betray Bertilak,

he must do it publicly before the very court that so admires him and what is more must do it

without even the certainty that doing so will spare him. That a man like Gawain should be

willing to deceive for something that “might just” save him shows the depths of his fear and

desperation as the Green Chapel draws nigh. (Gawain ll.1855-1858). The careless use of the

supernatural dilutes the treacherous allure of the Lady’s girdle and the weight of Gawain’s

internal struggle.

Testing Camelot’s honour may be the Knight’s primary purpose, but he does confess

to another; sending Guinevere to her grave with fright at the sight of a spectre “making

ghostly speeches.” (Gawain ll. 2460-2461). While this may be a facetious remark on the

Knight’s part, Morgan might have been disappointed to learn that Guinevere had had

experience with spirits of a far grislier nature than Camelot’s verdant visitor. Grislier and

stranger, for while any confusion of interpretation in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight may

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be attributed to that work’s depth and intricacy, the confusions that haunt The Awntyrs off

Arthur are of a much more fundamental nature. The message appears simpler, on the surface

a simple didactic lesson from the dead, yet the story’s arbitrary marriage of two seemingly

unrelated episodes has caused widespread debate and disagreement between scholars. Even

its status as a single work is not a fixed point; Ralph Hanna concludes “…that the two parts

were composed by different authors and compiled by a third”, but other notable critics

disagree. David Klausner acknowledges a thematic connection but asserts that the poem is the

result of fusing two separate works, while Thorlac Turville-Petre argues that the seeming lack

of connection is the message. (Robson 220).

Robson herself asserts critics who wish to read Awntyrs as a unified whole must adopt

“contradictory and contrived positions” (221), and while I am loathe to gainsay my senior on

this point, I am afraid I do read Awntyrs as just that. Because even taking all considerations of

multiple authorship or supposed differences in poetical skill between halves into account,

Awntyrs is a unified whole in form in which we possess it, and its message, I assert, is one of

peace. Gaynour as portrayed is as much an exemplar to the young ladies of a court of noble

listeners as Gawain is to young men in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The supernatural events of Awntyrs, as in Sir Gawain, are largely confined to the first

major scene. But rather than appearing before the arrayed whole of Camelot’s aristocracy, the

unnamed spirit that identifies itself as Gaynour’s mother chooses her audience more

carefully, manifesting only for Gaynour and Gawain, and even the latter’s presence appears

mere happenstance at first. This selective manifestation is particularly noteworthy given that

the spectre had all of Arthurs “dukes and dussiperes” (Awntyrs l. 4) close at hand for a more

public showing if that had been its goal. Yet the message it imparts to Gaynour is, to be

frank, not terribly original. An exhortation to charity and abstinence is hardly unusual in the

annals of medieval Catholicism, as are warnings of the pain of Purgatory and pleas for

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masses to be said in the name of the restless soul. But what is notable is the messenger and

her appearance; even other medieval ghosts are rarely as vividly painted in the language of

death and decay. Worse still, the figure of the ghost is stripped of any of the dignity she

deserves, royal or human. She appears stripped, clad only in shrouds and grave earth, gnawed

upon by the base creatures of the tarn, who do not allow her ghostly visitation to interrupt

their meal. (Awntyrs ll. 105-122). Robson notes how realistically the corpse is drawn up

before the reader, even suggesting that the episode may be partially inspired by the tragic

discovery of such bodies in the now vanished tarn. I agree with her assertion that “…the fact

that this woman was a queen is of far less importance than the fact that she is now a corpse”

(Robson 222), but would take it even further. What the woman says is of far less importance

than what she is; a vivid memento mori that strikes from out of the blue on a day of peace and

relaxation for Gaynour, who rides out in the full security of youth, beauty, and wealth, in a

“gleterand gide” (Awntyrs l. 15), unprepared for anything but a quiet ride through the woods.

So much for the supernatural element of The Awntyrs. Yet its oft-ignored second half

may hold the key to properly interpreting the ghost’s true effect on Gaynour’s outlook. On

the surface, the tale of Galeron’s challenge to Arthur’s court and of his and Gawain’s deadly

duel, has little bearing on the ghost story that comes before it. Chism considers the episode

Gawain’s, with Gaynour and him each dominating one half of the romance. (Chism 254).

However, while Gawain’s part in this episode is long on heroic violence, it is short on

character or self-determination. Both he and Galeron, seemingly good men, are bound by the

codes of chivalry to slaughter one another in a duel that is heightened in the romance to a

grisly spectacle of impalement, decapitation, and general mayhem. (Awntyrs ll. 514-619).

That there are no hard feelings afterwards, on either the knights’ part nor Arthur’s,

demonstrate the contradictory nature of using life-or-death violence as a means of solving

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what is ultimately a property dispute. The only thing that keeps the romance from ending

with a mass said in the name of two, or even three, souls is Gaynour’s intervention.

The tradition of the queen as a peace-weaver goes back as far as Beowulf at least,

where Wealhþēow and Hildeburh serve as ‘freoðu-webbe’ (Fulk p. 215) to regulate the

violence of heroic Anglo-Saxon culture. Both Galeron’s unnamed lady and Gaynour herself

act in this role, with the former wailing and shrieking throughout the dreadful duel (Awntyrs

l. 536) and the latter finally interceding on her and Galeron’s behalf before the final blow is

struck. (Awntyrs ll. 619-637).

Gaynour’s mercy is late in coming, and the fact that it comes at all may be what binds

the duel episode to the ghost story. A series of striking linguistic parallels call to the

encounter with the ghost to both the reader’s memory and Gaynour’s, despite no explicit

connection being drawn. When the duel begins Gawain and Galeron ride forth in “gleterand

golde”, as Gaynour did at the beginning of the hunt. (Awntyrs l. 496). The ghost’s dreadful

moans and shrieks are mirrored by the wounded Galeron as he “Grisly…grone[s] on the

grene.” (Awntyrs l. 606) and his own lady’s panicked cries. Finally, the lady’s plea to

Gaynour directly, mercy for Galeron “that is so delfull dight” (Awntyrs l. 623), echoes the

ghost’s terrible warning of “thus dethe wil you dight” (Awntyrs l. 170) so clearly that it

cannot be a coincidence that it finally steels Gaynour’s resolve to seek respite for the

challenger. While individual parallels may be dismissed as the necessary constraints of the

romance’s difficult alliterative form, or even as evidence as plagiarism by author of the

second episode if such an author existed, their order of progression and direct effect on

Gaynour’s actions make it clear that she has not forgotten the dreadful sight she saw emerge

from the tarn. That this connection is not drawn explicitly, but left implied, is a part of the

tale’s confident presentation and inducement to think on death and mercy.

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 Thus, Gaynour is the protagonist of both episodes, and as wholly encompassed by the

lesson of Awntyrs as Gawain is by the Green Knight’s test. The supernatural serves in both

cases as the force that intrudes upon complacent courts to remind feasters and hunters of their

duty. The knight must temper the violence necessary to his life as a warrior with courtesy,

fidelity, and honour. The lady must be a hand of peace when all else fails, calming force to

stop bloodshed to the “grete conforde” of all.

Robbie Lyons

References

Awntyrs Poet. “The Awntyrs off Arthur.” Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales. Edited

by Thomas Hahn, Medieval Institute Publications, 1995, Teams Middle English Text Series,

https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/hahn-sir-gawain-awntyrs-off-arthur, [Accessed 16th

December 2022].

Burrow, J.A. A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Routledge & Kegan Paul,

1977.

Chism, Christine. Alliterative Revivals. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Fulk, R. D. The Beowulf Manuscript. Harvard University Press, 2010.

Gawain Poet. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” The Norton Anthology of English

Literature: The Middle Ages. 10th ed., edited by James Simpson, W.W. Norton & Company,

2018, pp. 201-256.

Morgan, Gerald. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Idea of Righteousness. Irish

Academic Press, 1991.

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Robertson, D.W. Jr. “Why the Devil Wears Green”. Modern Language Notes, vol. 69, no. 7,

1954, pp. 470-472, JSTOR, https://www-jstor-org.ucc.idm.oclc.org/stable/3039609?

seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents, [Accessed 20th December 2022].

The Green Knight. Directed by David Lowery, A24, 2021.

Putter, Ad. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance. Clarendon

Press, 1995.

Robson, Margaret. “From Beyond the Grave: Darkness at Noon in The Awntyrs off Arthure.”

The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance. Edited by Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert,

Longman, 2000.

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