Gawain

'GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT' (c 1375)

This greatly admired alliterative poem consists of 2530 lines in stanzas of varying length, each ending with a 'bob and wheel'. The vividness of the language, among other qualities, has led the poem to be considered one of the greatest in Middle English.

As Peter Davidson points out in his The Idea of North, Gawain has been a crucial text for imagining the North for generations of English-speaking readers. The winter journey northwards in Book II seems a paradigm for all fearful journeys into the unknown, where monsters and, of course, adverse weather lie in wait. It is somewhat amusingly overdone, as if the author, an unequivocal northerner, is setting out to chill the blood of a southern audience - Gawain encounters dragons, wolves and wild men; there are naked rocks, crashing burns (a northern word) and icicles:

Ther as claterande fro the crest the colde born rennez
And henged heze ouer his hede in hard iisse-ikkles.

The landscape, according to the poet, is somewhere north of the Wirral. The misty moorlands, snowy heights and clattering burns have a distinctly North Pennine feel - 'burn' is a Northumbrian word. The poem may conceivably be linked to the late 14th century Arthurian/Gawain tales set near Penrith (v. ARTHURIAN LEGEND).

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
'GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT' (c 1375) This greatly admired alliterative poem consists of 2530 lines in stanzas of varying length, each ending with a 'bob and wheel'. The vividness of the language, among other qualities, has led the poem to be considered one of the greatest in Middle English. As Peter Davidson points out in his The Idea of North, Gawain has been a crucial text for imagining the North for generations of English-speaking readers. The winter journey northwards in Book II seems a paradigm for all fearful journeys into the unknown, where monsters and, of course, adverse weather lie in wait. It is somewhat amusingly overdone, as if the author, an unequivocal northerner, is setting out to chill the blood of a southern audience - Gawain encounters dragons, wolves and wild men; there are naked rocks, crashing burns (a northern word) and icicles: Ther as claterande fro the crest the colde born rennez And henged heze ouer his hede in hard iisse-ikkles. The landscape, according to the poet, is somewhere north of the Wirral. The misty moorlands, snowy heights and clattering burns have a distinctly North Pennine feel - 'burn' is a Northumbrian word. The poem may conceivably be linked to the late 14th century Arthurian/Gawain tales set near Penrith (v. ARTHURIAN LEGEND).
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