{"id":7980,"date":"2021-09-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-15T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/?p=7980"},"modified":"2022-01-30T20:38:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T01:38:04","slug":"gawain-and-the-green-knight-another-medievalists-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/2021\/09\/15\/gawain-and-the-green-knight-another-medievalists-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Green Knight<\/em>: Another Medievalist\u2019s Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After almost forty-years without a major motion picture adaption, David Lowery’s The Green Knight<\/a><\/em> (2021) was much anticipated and made quite a splash, but pulled mixed reviews from scholars and critics.

The film’s primary source material, the medieval alliterative poem Gawain and the Green Knight<\/a><\/em>, happens to be my personal favorite work in Middle English, my favorite Arthurian romance and my second favorite work of medieval literature following only Beowulf<\/em>. Indeed, because I find both the story and poetics so fascinating, my very first blog<\/a> explored possible functions of the bob and wheel in Gawain and the Green Knight<\/em>. I have always read the poem as a tale of a hero brought low and the three conclusions offered by the Green Knight, Gawain himself and King Arthur\u2019s court provide a variety of interpretations from recognition of the hero\u2019s humanity to his feelings of failure and shame to the merriment and celebration of his chivalry by king and court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Images of Arthur, Guinevere, Gawain & the decapitated Green Knight in British Library, Cotton Nero MS a.x f.94v<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The poem\u2019s concatenation on themes (such as schame<\/em> \u201cshame\u201d emphasized in the “bob and wheel” structure) drives these points home but also mimics the psychological experience of anxiety and a nagging, internal monologue. The mystery of the enigmatic Green Knight haunts the entire tale. The parallelism, especially between Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as the playful emphasis on games, exchanges and hunts produces a thrilling, at times dizzying, narrative that is rich with implication and subterfuge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gawain confronts the Green Knight in the Green Chapel in British Library, Cotton Nero MS a.x f.129v.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Often with modern film adaptions of medieval literature, directors and producers make what I consider to be a fatal mistake of perceiving virtually every medieval tale as an action movie. In my view, this fundamental bias plagues every film adaption of the poem to date, and when I learned Lowery\u2019s The Green Knight<\/em> (2021) was under production and forthcoming, I will admit I was rather skeptical. However, even from the trailer<\/a>, it seemed\u2014at least to me\u2014this adaption of the medieval poem might get some things right which previous film adaptions<\/a> like Stephen Weeks\u2019s Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight<\/em> (1984) staring the late Sean Connery as the Green Knight did not seem to pick up on. When The Green Knight <\/em>was released in theaters, I went to see it, making it the only film I have seen in a movie theater since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, it did not disappoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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