In Our Time - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

In a programme first broadcast in 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the jewels of medieval English poetry. It was written c1400 by an unknown poet and then was left hidden in private collections until the C19th when it emerged. It tells the story of a giant green knight who disrupts Christmas at Camelot, daring Gawain to cut off his head with an axe if he can do the same to Gawain the following year. Much to the surprise of Arthur's court, who were kicking the green head around, the decapitated body reaches for his head and rides off, leaving Gawain to face his promise and his apparently inevitable death the following Christmas.The illustration above is ©British Library Board Cotton MS Nero A.x, article 3, ff.94v95With Laura Ashe Professor of English Literature at Worcester College, University of OxfordAd Putter Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of BristolAnd Simon Armitage Poet and Professor of Poetry at the Universities of Leeds and OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is regarded as the greatest chivalric poem of the medieval world. It's set at Camelot at Christmas when a strange green man rides in on a green horse holding an axe and challenges King Arthur to hit him and be hit back.

Gawain steps in, takes the axe and chops off his green head only for the trunk to pick up the head telling Gawain to meet him next year when he'll do the same to him. The chivalrous Gawain takes up the challenge. It's vividly told, and at its heart is how Gawain approaches his own expected of the following Christmas, which he both faces up to and yet tries to avoid. With me to discuss Sir Gawain and the Green Act are

Laura Ash, Professor of English Literature at Worcester College University of Oxford, Simon Armitage, Translator of the poem and Professor of Poetry at the Universities of Leeds in Oxford and Ad Potter Professor of medieval English literature

at the University of Bristol and editor of the poem. Laura Ash, what my first audiences have brought to this story when they heard it? What would they know about Knights and Chivalry and all that? The first thing they would know

is that they are plunged into the foundation myth of Western Europe. The poem begins with the siege of Troy. It tells us sin the sage and the siege and the siege of Troy the book Britain and Burnt to Brondus and Ascus that is after the siege finished, then history begins. And history begins when Brutus comes to Britain

and founds the British line of kings, of whom the greatest king is Arthur. And so we're immediately plugged into the foundation history of the greatness of the country in which we sit in the late 14th century. And the greatest of those kings then is Arthur, on whom we zero in and we find ourselves at his glorious court. And now the audience can connect with a whole trope. of ideas that they have from the romance, which is the court as a centre of celebration and beauty

and perfect knights and perfect ladies and feasting and then questing individual nights. And the most luxury of dress and so on. Oh, of course, yes, everything you could imagine. And this poem like all romances is very interested in the wealth, the riches, the luxury, that these people have and possess and display. It's written in your guess around 1370. Yeah. Can you localise it a bit as well as the date at the time? So going on the dialect of the poem, we put it in the Northwest Midlands, roundabout, the border of indeed some of the places it describes,

the Wirral and kind of the top of Wales into the northwest part of England. But the real question is this sense of places that mattered in the British past, you know, the Welsh past, which is the British past. And it's about the same time that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales came out. Yes. And yet this was lost for centuries, and Canterbury Tales spread its wings and go a little book, as George said, went through the centuries. I mean, partly that is geographical in terms of Chaucer writing in London

and for the courtly audience. But the geography also impinges upon the dialect. Hence, it's not that people in London couldn't necessarily have understood the more northern dialect, whether it's possible that they had some difficulty with it. But certainly it's just in different. circles that where things that were written in London were much more easily expanded and transmitted across, things written in provincial centres had to take their chances. Can you tell us what people would think of as a chevalric code at that time?

The chevalric code is something very slippery. What it ultimately means it's a term of art for the successful business of being a warrior aristocrat. And in practice, that means a whole load of values that come from really the warrior past, prowess, pride in your skill in warfare, but also added to that Christian values of mercy and purity to some degree, but above all socialised elite values of generosity. What I mean is a whole demeanour of courtesy, generosity to your fellows, loyalty, always keeping your word, magnanimity, a sense of fellowship with those who are like you. And then, of course, in the literature and to some degree in life, the idea of love had entered the Chevalric Code, that the Great Knight will also have a noble love of a lady.

Was this in one way, consciously or unconsciously, you will tell me, a way to stay above the fact that what they were doing was going around killing people a lot of the time? I think so, very much. The point about chivalry was it was an attempt to suggest that this hedonistic way of life that the warrior aristocracy of Western Europe led was nonetheless a vocation, that it was an ethical code, that it was something that God would smile upon and that could take you to heaven. And that really was riven with paradoxes that I think this poem takes some time gently to expose. Simon Amadis, what in less of a nutshell than I did it is the story about? Well, as Laura said, it briefly starts at the siege of Troy just to establish a bloodline with

the founding fathers of Britain. But the inciting incident is the Green Knight entering the hall on a green horse and laying down what seems to be an absurd challenge, a strike for a strike. Arthur picks up the sword. He interprets this as a sort of a martial challenge and is about to wield the weapon when Gawain pops up from his seat. And I think, you know, in terms of thinking of a beheading,

he almost literally imagines this as a no-brainer. And steps forward and says, let this challenge be mine. He chops the head of the Green Knight off. It rolls across the floor. The Green Knight somehow knows where it is and picks it up again and says, I will see you in a year's time,

in a year and a day. So a year goes by, and Gawain sets off across the countryside to keep his date with destiny, and at his lowest point when he's cold, lonely, hungry, exhausted, he makes a prayer and almost straight away in front of him is this most incredible, beautiful castle into which he is invited. And it's at that point that a story within the story begins,

a challenge within the challenge. The master of the house, who we later find out, Lord Bertilac says to Gawain will play a little exchange game here. I'll go out hunting every day and what I win in the field I will give to you when I come back as long as whatever you win in the house during the day you will give to me which Gawain agrees to and as soon as the Lord has gone out to make his first hunting trip Gawain is in bed and he hears the door of the bedchamber open and in comes Lord Bertilac's wife. And over the course of

three days, Gawain receives a series of kisses which he has to give to the Lord and Master in return for killed deer and wild boar and fox. And then comes the moment which really is

you know, highlights Gawain's faults and his flaws, which is that he is offered a magical belt from around the lady's waist which has life-protecting property. is. He agrees to take it and neglects to tell the Lord and Master of the House that he has done. That game comes to an end. A guide takes him towards this mysterious place, the Green Chapel,

where Gawain submits to the Green Knight's axe. And again, in a series of threes, the Green Knight makes three attempts on Gawain's neck, and on the third occasion just skims him. And then there is something of a discussion about what was meant by the whole enterprise. And Gawain returns to Camelot wearing the green belt now as a sash or a baldric. And it's adopted by the round table as a mark of their code and honour. Did you use a lot of alliteration in your translation, which bounds along, which I enjoyed enormously. was that in the original text? Was that how you sit out to do it?

You talk illiteratively quite a bit at the moment. I think that's probably a consequence of translating the poem. It's become a kind of Tourette. I can't get rid of it. Yeah, it absolutely, it is in the poem. And I've talked before about the alliteration within it as being the warp and the weft, the poetic warp and weft, which holds the poem together

without that alliteration. To me, it's still a great story, but the poetic energy and the poignancy and sometimes the comedy of the poem is lost. And I had a feeling that what's happened over a number of years is that in making faithful restorations and translations of the poem and being loyal to word meaning and definition,

you are automatically taken away from the acoustic patterns. in the poem. So I took it upon myself to rescore, to re-orchestrate the poem with those noises. And we'll come on, I'd part, thank you, you're out, you'll come on to that, a bit more of that in just a couple of minutes, and first of all, the poem was lost for centuries.

How did that happen? Well, how has it found? It's the easiest thing. Yeah, well, no one seems to have read it. There's very little sign of it being read at the time. It was collected by Henry Saville of Bank, who collected a lot of manuscripts from the north. Then it came into the hands of Sir Robert Cotton,

who was a great collector of manuscripts. It almost got burnt in the fire of Ashburnham House in 1731. So we're very lucky to have it. And then it just languished in the British Library. No one read it until the 19th century. And then it was discovered, and then people took it on and then they declared it to be unique and the greatest chivalric poem and so on.

You've edited it. So Simon was talking about what he did with the language. Can you give us some idea of what the original language sounded like? We're talking about the same time as Schorcer, as I indicated earlier. Can you give us a bit more detail on that, please? Sure. Well, the key is, as Simon says, is alliteration. And what the poem does is to combine illiterative long lines.

You see this instantly when you look at the poem in an addition. You've got these long lines. and then you've got the five short lines that rhyme. And in these alliterative long lines, the key is the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of stressed syllables. Such as. You've got the book.

Yeah, I'll read you a bit. You promised to give us an example. I will read you two alliterative long lines. If you will listen this lie, but on little huila, you shall tell it as tit as in tune herder. So those are the illiterative long lines, where you hear three alliterating sounds.

It was L in the first one, if you will listen this lie, but on little huila, and then a Tee in the next line, I shall tell it as teat as in tune herder. What's all that mean? If you want to listen to the story for a little while,

I will tell it promptly as I heard it recited in public. Now this is the same time as Chaucer, and the one that were probably in the sure has sought the drop to march, and beginning of Canterbury Tales, then led on, a subseem to have led on to the rest of the... This died away, it doesn't seem to have had any impact beyond its own until it was rediscovered, until it was discovered in the 19th century.

I think to some extent that is a sort of product of linguistic history. The English we speak is basically descended from Chaucerian English, so we find Chaucer comprehensible. This poet was writing in a Cheshire dialect. and that has been sidelined really by an accident of linguistic history. That's not the language you and I speak. So we find it really difficult. My students find it very difficult. My students think when they read the poem that this must be a lot older than Chaucer.

They cannot conceive that these poets were actually contemporaries. They seem a world apart. What advantages did the poet get by, say, setting the poem at Camelot and at Christmas? Camelot, that is the big place where Arthur Holtz caught and puts you straight in the romance tradition. Christmas seems to be something of a convention of Middle English romances. They like setting their stories at Christmas. The French poets like setting their stories at springtime at Easter. The English poets like Christmas.

And they do that, I think, because it had become, the 14th century the big festival. Yeah, just on that, because it says at the beginning of the poem that they're all waiting, this entire feast has been served, but Arthur won't sit down until he hears of some avant-eure, until he has some adventure, some excitement

that he can find out about. And it's at that moment, of course, that on cue, the Green Knight rides in. It's almost a case of, be careful what you wish for. Yes. And the Green Man comes in, at least a head tall than everybody else, and massively built with green hair, cladding green, green feet on a green horse.

I'm just to say it slowly because of what it does sound a bit nursery rhymeish, which it wasn't. It was very menacing indeed. And they're overawed by him and so on. Then he begins what becomes the beheading game. And it doesn't in fact ask to be beheaded, does he? It's Gawain who make Arthur, first of all, and Gawain who say, we'll behead this one and then see what happened.

You tell me. Yeah, so we call it the beheading game because it turns up in other texts. And so there is an intertextual reason, you know, a sense that this trope exists in folktale that means that it has to be a beheading game. The earliest version I know of is in a Middle Irish manuscript of about 1,100 in which a character called Terror proposes the beheading game. And it's very clear what's happening there. The beheldon game is if you chop my head off, I'll chop yours off. Exactly.

Right. And so the idea there is, of course, the test is, is the hero equal to terror? Can he cope the terror? So you can see it has a folktale route. So there's that reason why it's a beheading game. Then there's the narrative compulsion that if, for example, so the Green Knight when he comes in, he says, you can tell I come in peace, I'm not armed,

and I'm holding a sprig of holly. I also happen to have this four-foot axe. And he says, if you will exchange a blow for another, then you can have this axe as a present. And so, you know, a clever solution would have been to tap him with the holly and then, ha-ha, Christmas would carry on. But, of course, then it would be a very short poem. But the final reason that it has to be a be beheading game

is this crisis precipitated by the fact that Arthur loses his temper. Arthur, who we're told, is Sunquat children. He is quite childlike, we're told. He's wild in his brain, we're told. And he grabs the axe and starts swinging it around the Green Knight's head. And at that point, someone has to save the day, and the axe has to be the weapon, and it's then that going steps in. But the meaning of the beheading game, I think, is very important.

Because the main problem with it is that it's a game. So in all the other versions, some overt meaning is given to it, as in is our hero equal to terror? Or alternatively, the person who takes up the game is a knight with no identity, no importance, and this is how he acquires his identity. Here, in contrast, we have Gawain, who is the finest knight of the court, who is left, as soon as the Green Knight has picked his head up off the floor, Gawain is left in this absolutely horrific situation whereby he can break his word, lose his honour and the court will lose its honour forever,

or he can keep his word and die and the court loses its greatest knight and hence loses its honour. What did you make of that when you came to translator, Simon? That Gawain's response which took it on further. Well, it's a really fascinating passage. I mean, the whole interchange between the knight and Arthur and then Gawain. As Laura says, it isn't explicitly stated. that the challenge needs to be with an axe. It's Arthur who interprets it that way,

even though the axe is part of the conversation. And Gawain follows suit. So I think the knight says to him, it needs to be somebody who is brave enough of blood and wild enough in their head. And the passage in which Gawain rises from the table and asks for the challenge to be his is a very handsome section in the point.

point. And it's also, I think, very telling. It's very skillfully and subtly written. Gawain is very self-deprecating. He describes himself as the weakest and most inexperienced of the knights. Is that part of the Shivalric posture? He's Arthur's nephew. Tolkien puts it really well. He says... In Tolkien's translation, he says something along the lines of, my life means the least if my life is lost. He plays with those L words. And at the same time, I also get the impression that Gawain is seeing this as an opportunity.

I think he's something of an opportunist, an opportunity to prove himself in front of Arthur, in front of the court, the round table, Gwynnevere, God. And that's when he comes forward. And I think in that section, we see Gawain's character, very beautifully drawn, both somebody who wants to be courageous and also, you know,

save his king from the embarrassment of having to go through with this, you know, absurd challenge. At the same time, I also think he sees it as an opportunity for promotion. And, and how does the media of the poem, a small bit of which you read, this me, how does it, How does it drive the matter in the poem?

I think the metre has some of the same contrasts that the poem does. The poem is so rich in contrasts in settings, indoor, outdoor, the comfort of indoors, the rigours of outdoor life. And I think what the poet has tried to do with this metre is to find some of that same balance. You get the roughness of a literature of verse, It's not regular in its rhythms. And that roughness is followed by these five lines at the end of all of the stanzas, the bobb and wheel, that are in flowing and melodious verse.

They certainly illiterate, but the rhythm is regular and alternating. So you have two very different forms of music. It's what Simon called the kind of acoustic world of the poem is very rich, and has these contrasts, which I think the poet, the poet, wanted. Would the audience listening at the time, let's presume, like Chaucer's poems, they were read aloud to audiences who wanted to be read aloud to whether educated or not, we don't know, some of them certainly were, would they appreciate all this? I think, of course, they would have understood the language much better than we would.

They were also part of a literary tradition of a literative poetry, so that some of the specialized diction, which is really hard for modern reasons, I mean, I'm thinking, for example, of the number of words this poet has for man. If he wants to say man, he can say Freke if he wants to alliterate on an F. He can say weir if he wants to alliterate on a W. He can say Harthel if he wants to alliterate on H. That diction was more familiar to audiences who had read and heard other poems in a literature of metre. Yeah.

And so they would know what was going on. They would follow it. It would be being delivered orally, you think, to a court, as you were. I imagine an oral performance of it myself, yes. And I think some of the structure of the poem, there it is written in four fits. Fits? Four parts. Sorry, I should have glossed that word.

It's in four parts. And that, I think, makes it possible to recite it in installments. And what goes on in the beginning of the poem, when Arthur asks initially for a tale of adventure, to liven up his meal on New Year's Day. That is actually the kind of circumstances in which the poem itself may have been recited. So imagine an audience on Christmas Day

that needs entertainment, New Year's Day. We want stories, we want to be entertained. That is the situation in the poem itself and very likely to be the situation outside the poem for the audience. Nora, he sets off to find the Green Night and has, this is a year later, and has a fantastical journey. And there's a wonderful description of the seasons changing in that year. Yes.

Beautiful. And then he meets wild beasts and giants. And very briefly, we are led to assume, demolishes a lot of them. And on he goes in this one amazing armour, but very wearily, hungrily, often sleeping in the open, we're told, sometimes indoors. Can you, is this a typical quest, situation. This is very beautifully done

because in many ways it is a typical quest situation which echoes the pattern, the structure of all kinds of Arthurian romances, but everything is slightly twisted. So the astonishing description

of the seasons is utterly beautiful, poetically beautiful, and it allows us to imagine for a moment that we're in a cyclical world where, you know, winter will come, but then spring will come, everything will renew. And then just as,

if we're allowing ourselves to rest into that, we're then told, a year, yernus full yerna and yeldus never leika, the form to the finisement, fold us full seldom. A year turns very quickly and does not give back the same. The beginning to the ending very seldom matches. And we're now, we have enforced upon us again and again that we're not in a cyclical world, we're in a linear world. Time is passing for Gawain and he is now approaching his death.

And he thinks all the time on this quest of his death. and that is the first twist, because in Arthurian romance, no one ever dies. You know, the threat of death is entirely spurious and invented. And we get that hammered home to us when we're told, oh, and he was attacked by bulls and bears and snakes and dragons and wadwows and giants. And I'm sure he would have died loads of times, says the poet. He literally says, I'm sure he would have died loads, except he was great. And what we've just had in ten lines.

Yeah, that is the way he puts it. And what we've just had in those ten lines is the whole plot of another Arthurian romance. you know, a whole plot which has him fight ever greater enemies showing that he's an ever greater night. I do want to come in. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Laura makes, that he doesn't seem to be very interested

in the usual stuff of romance, fights with dragons and wild men. Because just when he said, you know, he might have been killed very often, the poet says, but the winter was worse. Weirathed him not so much that winter nass were. And then you return to an unusual element of realism, these wintry landscapes. Iceicles hanging off his helmet.

Yeah, the beauty of that, the chill of it. And exactly, so his human body and his shivering and his cold and his fear of death in comparison with, we've had a description of his gorgeous armour, none of which he's going to protect him, because presumably he's going to kneel down and have his head cut off. And so this constant sense of suspense and horror cutting against the structures of the romance. I think it's also in passages like that that we realize just what a wonderful poet and storyteller the Gawain poet was. All that adventure, which as you say takes place very quickly and almost off camera, really, is a prelude to the moment when Gawain will be confronted with this beautiful and very hospitable castle.

I mean, we're not talking about sort of, you know, a little chef with sort of, you know, a bird. Gagabar across the road. We're talking high-end hospitality waiting for him. I think we can live with that. Can I just ask you on to him before we move on Laura? This description of the seasons, which is quite wonderful. Did it surprise you

how accurate, surprise me, how accurate and detail. It was Laurentian in a way, wasn't it? It's just precise, moving, he's got it, what things happened to colours, heat, the whole thing. Yeah, it's

it's very meteorological descriptions of what's happening in the sky, what's happening on the land, what's happening to the animals. At the same time, it happens very quickly over about one and a half sections. It's got to be there. We've got to know that the world has turned on its axis. We've got to know that a year has passed. But I don't think the author wants to get caught up with several stanzas of the passage of time.

So although it is beautiful and accurate, very quickly a year has gone by. And if you compare that with the next section of the poem, which is Gawain being armoured and getting dressed and ready to ride out on his horse, Gringley, that takes a lot longer. That's sort of six, seven, eight, eight sections. Just I wanted to come in on,

some talking about the amazing castle that he encounters and something that Ad said earlier about the brilliant contrast between outside and inside. This is vital to the romance. In the romance, there are only really two places to be. There's inside the court where you're celebrated and feasted, and there's outside the court where you're tested and encounter enemies and obstacles.

And the brilliant thing about Bertilac's castle is that Gawain thinks he's inside. He thinks he can relax, and in fact, this is where he is tested. He's in despair. He hasn't found this place. He prays. He looks up, and the country. castle is there, this massive, and he goes in

and he's right royally received. There you are. They're very excited to have him and they all whisper to each other, this is great stuff. Now we're going to find out how to be a knight, how to woo the ladies. And this is a joke that goes throughout because our Gawain is very pure and clean

and doesn't want to woo the lady. But everyone around him is saying, come on your Gawain. Yes. And you wanted to come in. Just to add that Gawain had this reputation. of being rather a womanizer. And this seems,

this obviously was known to the poet. And it becomes known to the people in the poem who have expectations. Excuse me. We can't leave out a substantial section of the poem where this most beautiful woman whom he doesn't know is a wife,

he's the most beautiful woman in the world that she comes in. He's lying in bed and he's been told he can stay there and rest and rest for the great feet ahead. And she makes something very clear attempt three times to seduce him. Yes. I mean, there's nothing hidden about that,

isn't it? No, nothing at all. But I'm being very reticent about it all. Well, she says several very dangerous things. One is she says they're in complete privacy. And the problem is that in a chivalric honor world, if something isn't known about it, it hasn't really happened. It doesn't have consequences. And she is very direct.

She says to him, if you are Gawain, if you care for your courtesy, if you care for your reputation, why have you not asked me for a kiss? Why have you not asked me for more than a kiss? And she pushes him, the poet says she pushed him ever harder each day. And the poet comments at one point, great peril between him stod,

great peril stood between them if Mary doesn't look after her night. Simon. I think it's important to remember at this point, though, that he's being stitched up. I think in the modern parlance... He doesn't know he's being stitched up. And actually, we don't know at that point either. But retrospectively, we find out that this is,

I think what the papers these days would call, a honey trap. And it's a kind of pincer movement really from which Gawain has no option. Even at one point tries to pretend that he's asleep as she comes into the room. And he has to use all his skills as a knight

to deflect and parry her advances. And eventually she presses upon him this apparently, allegedly, magical belt. She's got the belt in her hand, actually, as she offers it to. He's already refused a ring. And my feeling is that it's almost out of embarrassment, as much as wanting to save his neck, that he takes the belt. On that, I think it's important that this isn't just his Christianity versus his chivalry. These are two aspects of his chivalry, that he has to be loyal to the Lord and he has to be courteous to the lady. So even chivalry itself doesn't help him

in this situation. No, he has to offend one of them. by accepting what the other person wants. Is there a distinct change in language in how seduction seems? I don't think the language change is a great deal. She is very direct. He is forever tactful, and that tactfulness sometimes consists of misconstruing what she's in fact after.

So he's a beautifully courteous knight who finds a way, tries to find ways of parrying her in a way that doesn't offend her, that doesn't hurt her feelings. But he's also, he's looking after his own code, isn't he? He's looking after the chivalrous code of a knight. He mustn't take advantage when he's been given hospitality of someone connected with those who have given him hospitality. This would be unschivalrous. Is that right?

That is absolutely right. So that's tearing away to him. But at the same time, the chivalrous code, as she keeps saying to him, she keeps saying you're not going if you won't make love to me, is what she keeps saying. His chivalrous code goes away. I think code is not always a very helpful word. It suggests something very rigid. And I think what the poet sees is that there are ethical conflicts here.

On the one hand, of course, he mustn't sleep with a lady. she's the wife of the man who's offering him hospitality. But there are her feelings to consider and of course there's also his own life to consider when he takes the green girdle. So there are... The green girdle is going to protect him from death. Yes, that's the big thing.

So he takes it later hearing Greta Sutton considered himself to have been a coward for taking it because he knows he's not going to die because of the green girdle. Yeah. And in some ways, it's only his own moral code that he's gone against there. Nobody ever said at the beginning of the challenge that he wasn't allowed to use a little magic in, you know, when he finally meets the Green Knight in the Green Chapel.

That was never one of the agreed terms. But I think it goes against the standards which he has set himself. It's the fact that he decides not to tell. Bertilac that he has the belt that is his crime in Bertilac's eyes. He doesn't do this exchange and we have to miss out because we're going in this direction on that direction.

Very, very, quite long, intense, magnificent hunting scenes. Taring through the forest, catching deer, slicing them up, chasing that wild ball that obeys them and turns on their dogs and so. They go on and on their big scenes and their powerful part of the poem. Why do you think,

I'd, why do you think he was, he concentrated on those to the except to the length of which he did. On the one hand, I think he loves the contrast between the scenes in the bedroom where everything's hushed. It's cinematic, isn't it, the switch? Yeah, and then you get the wild outdoors.

Although, when I say wild, the thing we need to remember is that the hunt was the most important aristocratic pastime. And if you loved things courtly, you would also love the hunt. so that what we regard as uncivilised, you know, cutting up, slicing up of deer, is for the poet a form of art.

There's a way of doing it, a proper way of doing it, and he observes these rituals of courtly life. But it's amazing detail. I mean, you must have finally quite hard to translate. Absolutely did it all by how you skin a deer, you cut off this bit for that, and the awful for the dog. It's brilliantly done.

By way of research, I went to a deer farm in Todmenden and watched it taking place. And I got the impression that, as an art, it hadn't really changed over the centuries, very sort of tactfully and skillfully done. But Laura's absolutely right. They are filmic jump cuts that take place. And I think we're being invited

through watching these very detailed, quite grisly scenes of internal organs of flesh, penetration, the chase, the disrobing of animals, as a psychological version of the thoughts which are probably running riot in Gawain's head in the bedroom. What's so important about him being green, Adam? Several things seem important. On the one hand, the colour green is associated with nature in the poem.

But green was also the colour of the devil, and that becomes very important as the poem moves towards the Green Chapel because Gawain at that moment thinks that he's dealing with someone demonic, someone diabolical. So there the colour green takes on a different meaning. It's the association with the devil that matters there. So we've already heard that the giant has three ghosts to be heading, he misses the first time, misses him deliberately, and then he just nicks him on the third time,

saying the first two times you returned the kisses the third time you didn't return their belt, but that's a small matter really. What does that say about the green, what does that say about the whole enterprise of the beheading, about the Green Knights position in this and Gawain's position in this? So at this point, the beheading game and the exchange of winnings game are brought together fatally for Gawain's realisation that he's been stitched up in Simon's words. And what becomes apparent is that the beheading game was not,

just a Christmas game, as the Green Knight said it was, the Christmas game that Gawain had pitched to him that left him thinking, as Simon suggested, that why shouldn't I use magic? He thinks, if he mithaic have slipped to be unslain, the Sleth were noble, if I could use this belt, this magic belt not to be killed, then it would be a noble device.

Seems fair enough. The Green Knight used magic. And so in terms of the Chevalric game, he thinks that this is how he will succeed. But when the Green Knight fainted, at him twice and then nicks his neck and says, oh, you were doing so well, but then you failed in your loyalty on the third day because you took the girdle and didn't give it back. He says, but it's because you loved your life, so I blame you the less. That's okay.

But I take a harsh line than Simon on this about what Gawain has done wrong. Because I don't think it's, I mean, there's a reading of the poem which is a very amiable reading that says, nobody is perfect. This is what Gowain learns. However, I think there's a deep twist that lies underneath, which is, Gawain goes to confession the day. He goes to the Green Chapel, and we're told he was confessed so clean as they're ready for doomsday. And he says to the guide who takes him there, I won't run away, I trust in God, I trust absolutely in God. And the problem is this is a lie. He's trusting in a supposedly magic belt.

And the irony is if he had trusted in God, i.e. if he had just gone to his death and accepted. what might happen, then nothing would have happened. You want to come in? I think this is very true for Gawain's perspective on the matter. As far as Gawain is concerned, he's failed miserably. The interesting thing about the poem is that everyone else thinks he's done really well. That includes the Green Knight, who pats him on the back and says, well done. Arthur's Court take a similar view.

Yeah. But here's a thing, though. What's the Green Knight's moral high ground? he has been operated the whole way through by the evil sorceress Morgan Lefei. What's the court's moral high ground? They're the people who did nothing when this crisis arose. And then when Gawain rode away said, well, that was stupid. Who let that happen? So the court is hypocritical and shallow and the Green Knight doesn't have the moral high ground. And we don't know the poet's opinion and we don't know God's opinion.

And the poet could have told us either. You bring these contradictions over very clearly, Simon. What did you think of them as you were re- or as you were translating it? I don't feel that the religious elements are as important in the poem as some other people do. The poem is religious in the sense that he has religious trappings and furnishings. But I think the lesson, if we can put it that way, that Gawain actually learns, is one of being human. His mistakes are very human mistakes.

I think he learns to be a mortal, flinching from the blade, is an involuntary biological reflex. I don't suppose he or the Gawain poet would have put it in those terms. Also, accepting the belt for loving his life through wanting to exist and survive, may go against some elements of the chivalric code. But he analyses his faults into untruth and treachery and cowardice. And not all of those things are religious sins. How does this figure in the pattern of chivalric literature at the time,

this challenging the chivalry, deceiving the chivalry, and bringing Christianity to bear against the chivalry, whereas it was supposed to inform it? Is this played out elsewhere? I think it's very unusual. We normally have heroes, of course, who succeed, and what we have in this romance is a hero who fails. I think that creates possibilities.

It becomes possible to measure heroism, by the way, you respond to failure. And I think one other way Gawain reveals his heroism. There's no other word for it. You and I wouldn't have gone to the Green Chapel to have our head cut off. We wouldn't have gone as far as this.

We are inferior to Gowain. But Gowain sets himself high standards. And I think his mortification at failure is really a reflection of the standards he sets himself, which are so much higher than anyone else's. Would you conclude about the fact? from the complications which he sets ethically and on. I think that, and this is where I differ from Simon,

I think he is a profoundly Christian poet who is writing an absolutely astonishingly brilliant chivalric romance, which nonetheless eviscerates very gently, very quietly, the values of chivalry. Because the reason I think that Gawain failed was he is a hero, he has astonishingly high standards, as Ad says, but he's trapped in what seems to be a meaningless, game because you can't win chivalry by dying. So he's told you have to keep your honour, but you can't keep your honour. So we are left with the contradiction. Why is the anti-chivalry poem that's supposed to be uniquely great poem in the history of chivalry?

Simon, that's up to you. Because it's a great piece of literature. And I think what we keep going back to, or what I go back to, is just the astonishing feat of authorship. You know, what's very apparent in this poem is that the poet is that is a poet is a, the master of structure, the way that he seeds the plot, threads the narrative, gives character to people from aristocracy, right down to the lowest guide, even to supernatural people, to the great detail in the poem. You know, that description of the castle, which he talks

about being paired out of paper and so on. He is one of the godfathers of contemporary poetry. Everything that we respect and admire and celebrate about poetry today is in this poem. Well, thank you very much, Simon Armitage, Ad Potter and Laura Ash. Thank you for listening. Next week we'll be talking about the poor law of 1834 and the rise of the workhouse. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Well, we didn't talk about the pentangle for a start.

So the pentangle, this design on his shield, that the poet says, I'm going to stop and explain this to you, even if it delays me. And then he spends tens of lines explaining what this five-pointed star, this endless knot signifies. So we have five sets of five, and the first two are Gowain's physical qualities and his mental qualities. And then we have two Christian ones in a kind of tick-box way, the five wounds of Christ and the five joys of Mary. And then we have five chivalric qualities which are unique to this poet. Any poets of the time could have posited five of our equalities. The ones this poet chooses are already quite mixed

secular and Christian. We have fellowship, fellowship, loyalty to your fellow knights. Clanness, which is purity of soul, sinlessness. Courtesy, which is that whole way of being when you're courteous and polite to everyone. Franchise, which is generosity, greatness of soul. And pite, which is mercy and piety both. So that's his guide to

chivalry. But then he says that this endless not is fastened on that man and we're having hugely telegraphed to us this is an impossible to reach standard of perfection. So that love of patterns that he shows in the pentangle is also the pattern that he sets himself and manages to realise in the poem because the poem is numerical.

Line one is repeated at line 2525, 25, which is the multiples of five, which are also in the pentangle. So he loved patterns, and he describes the pentangle in precisely 25 alliterative long lines. Of course, reading the poem numerically can read you down, lead you down all kinds of conspiracy theory, can't you? I'm particularly interested in the colour in the poem. I mean, there have been a lot of theories and there's a lot of speculation about the way it links to heraldry or the devil. or to dress codes and to the world of fairies.

And I've never felt that any of those theories were particularly conclusive or convincing. I feel that he has imposed meaning on the colour green within the context of the poem rather than drawing on prescribed significances. And I really like this idea that it's something to do with the internal world versus the outside world. The round table is comfortable.

It's cosseted, it's secure, and the green knight comes along from the outside to challenge that. Also, if we think about the green chapel, you know, the green knight's supposed at home, this is a place without a roof. It's very much of the outside. And as Laura was saying, when he turns up, as well as holding the axe, he has a branch or a bob or a sprig of holly. And in some ways, that makes him evergreen. You know, this is the middle of winter. So he is both seasonal and unseasonal. And I think that ambiguity is absolutely key

because he's not just a freak, he's not just a monster. Yes, he's green, he's anchor green, he's vivid green. But he's also handsome, sleek, slim at the waist, and he's a speaker of the King's English. We know this because he speaks to Arthur. So he's not a complete, you know, he's not got four heads or something like that. And I think that makes him a credible enemy for Gawain to stand up to and measure himself against.

It's what puts them in the trap. Because if you were a green monster, or even, let's face it, a peasant, they could throw him out. But because he's a great figure of knighthood and also happens to be green, they have to go for it. He is a knight and he's a figure of nature, as you say. But then he's also so smartly dressed. And the other way, the colour green becomes so important, as Simon rightly says, in the work itself, is when the girdle comes into play. That is a green girdle.

Now, we don't know as yet that it has any connection with the green night, but that becomes obvious in retrospect. So there's a bit of colour coding going on in the poem and in the plotting. And the point's being made elsewhere, that what other colour could he have been? No, if he were black or pink or red, you know, we're talking about sort of skin tones, black would have been too funereal and morbid and too overdramatic.

Purple, blue, that would have been out. He has this relationship with the natural world. He's both of our world and not of our world. Wouldn't like it have been more demonic than green now? I'm not sure at the time. The devil does wear green. No, so you're right. There's an association with...

But then also the association with nature. And I agree with you entirely. I think when my students say, what does the green mean? I say it means we don't know what this means. You know, he is threatening because we don't know what he means. And he is not green the way sometimes. are, you can encounter green knights and romances. And what that means is that they've got green armour.

Now, so the poet has to emphasise that it's not just its armour that's green, it's everything that is green. But it's also delayed brilliantly, isn't it? So we're first told that he's tall and he's perfectly formed and he's handsome and he's well-dressed. And only at the very end of one of the short rhyming lines that we told, he fared her as Freikovada and O'erl Encagrena. He bore himself as a noble man and he was green all over. I would only

sort of add that from my point of view I think the poem is very funny and a lot of that humour sometimes gets taken away Like going clutching the duvet up to his chin Yeah I mean he is a kind of prissy precocious pretentious I'm alliterating again

He is those things And I think he's been set up for a failure Certainly with the armour in the dressing as well after a while I just think, come on. The social comedy is really exquisite. The bedroom scenes are so well observed. And he's embarrassed. And there's not many poems.

So the exchange of winning scenes. Sorry, just following up. So when he gives the kisses back to the Lord, he of course doesn't know he's giving them back. He doesn't know that the Lord sent her with the kisses. But nevertheless, he gives them to their rightful owner exactly as they were given to him. So we're told that he throws his arms around the Lord's neck.

and kisses him sweetly and courteously. And so he makes himself a comic figure in doing that. Anyway, I think he's trying to act out the chivalry which he's devoted himself to. He mustn't do this because knights don't make love to, as we're on there. The wife of their house. I mean, they do, though, in romances a lot. Yeah, happens a lot in romances. And that's why she expects it to happen.

That's a lot. That's the joke. It's all intertextual. You know, she's saying, look, I've read about Gawain. I know what Gawain does. And he's going, no, that's not me. I've got Mary painted up inside of my shield. Because it happened in other places doesn't mean he's got to do it as well. Maybe what makes it exceptional is that he doesn't act like other people in other places.

He feels to me as if he's out of his depth in those scenes. I also think that towards the end of those hunting scenes, intercut with the bedroom scenes, the poem becomes incredibly transgressive, more transgressive than a green man. man losing his head and then sort of self-medicating. At one point, a lie is being told. A man is contemplating wearing a belt from a woman's wardrobe. That woman is the wife of the man who another man is about to kiss. And I think at that moment, the, you know, the transgressions are really, you know, heavily accumulated.

And we haven't talked actually about the figure of Morgan Le Fay, whom we do encounter, we don't know who she is at the time, when Gowin encounters the beautiful wife at the same time, first time he encounters this ugly, elderly lady, and the poet spends some time contrasting the beauty of the young lady with the hideousness of the elderly lady, and only later to discover that she is the person who has been running this whole show and is this presence. I find that a bit hard parted that bit, actually. I think it was running out of stone. Yes, there's a convenience unit way of explaining the marvelous. I think the British talk to the discussion before we become as much transgressive.

In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Well, hey, hello. So before you stop listening, you can't start it with hey, hello. We're not in California. Okay, go row again. All right. Hello, I'm Rohan Silver and I'm an entrepreneur. And I'm Kamal Ahmed.

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