Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The Gawain Poet · c. 1390 CE · Poem · English · Medieval

A green giant rides into Camelot at New Year and offers any knight a blow with his axe on condition of taking one back in a year; Gawain accepts, and the journey to keep the appointment brings him to a castle whose lord proposes a daily exchange of winnings while his wife visits Gawain's bedroom. The alliterative verse holds courtly comedy, a winter road and a bargain nobody can honestly keep in a single shape. Preserved in one manuscript alongside Pearl, it is the finest Middle English romance and the only Arthurian work read as closely as Chaucer.

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Lineage

• ↓ Pearl
  The Gawain Poet · c. 1400 CE · Poem — companion to this
• ↓ Patience
  The Gawain Poet · c. 1400 CE · Poem — companion to this
• ↓ Cleanness
  The Gawain Poet · c. 1400 CE · Poem — companion to this

Attributes

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