Chivalry: You're Doing It Wrong (Series, Part 4)

Part 4: Friendship and Loyalty in King Arthur’s Court

Warning: Spoilers

The value of friendship in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight needs to be broken down into two parts.  This, the first part, will deal with friendship in King Arthur’s Court.

First, a clarification: since Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in Middle English, some of the words in it don’t exactly translate to modern English.  I talked about two of these words, troth and comitatus (although comitatus is really more of an Old English word), in Part 3: Generosity.  Felaȝschyp is one of these words.  It doesn’t really have a perfect translation.  It is most often translated as “fellowship” or “friendship”, though Tolkien translate it “friendliness”.  However, Gerald Morgan of Jesus College Oxford insists that it should be defined more like “loyalty”, so that’s the definition that I’m going to use. 

Really, the only examples of loyalty we see in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are comitatus relationships, either between King Arthur and his Knights, here, or between Lord Bertilak and his retainers and guests, which I will discuss in Part 5: Friendship and Loyalty in Hautdesert.  Remember, comitatus is the reciprocal relationship between a superior and his charges.  If you want more information, see Part 3: Generosity.

The unknown author of the poem obviously has great respect for loyalty, but takes great care to show how loyalty to a superior can be problematic if that superior is not a good role model.  This is very true for King Arthur.  King Arthur should have been the one setting an example of prudence for his knights.  Instead, he rashly puts himself at risk by accepting the Green Knight’s challenge, and Sir Gawain is honor-bound to step in to protect his king. 

He does not reciprocate the honor, respect, and loyalty that Sir Gawain shows him. Not only that, but the king doesn’t even really thank Sir Gawain for sacrificing himself on his behalf.  In King Arthur’s court, Sir Gawain is betrayed by his own loyalty to an insufficiently virtuous superior.

Chivalry: You're Doing It Wrong (Series, Part 3)

Part 3: Generosity

Warning: Spoilers

Sir Gawain’s main fault in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is his failure to give his host the magical green girdle (ribbon) he won.  In this respect, his failure is a failure of generosity.  This failure was a lot worse back then than it is now, so much so that Middle English had words that helped describe the situation that we no longer have. 

There was troth, the keeping of one’s word.  This word had the connotations that integrity does today.  By breaking his word, Sir Gawain did not keep his troth with his host. 

There was also the concept of comitatus, the reciprocal relationship between a superior and his charges.  This could be between a king and his knights, a lord and his vassals, a husband and his wife, a host and his guest, a father and his children, etc.  In a comitatus relationship, the superior gives his charges gifts and serves as an example to them, and in return his underlings are loyal to him, protect him, and bring him the spoils of their conquests. 

Because Sir Gawain did not bring his host the item he had won even after he had promised to do so, he also broke the comitatus bond.

However, it seems like this is the only instance that Sir Gawain is not generous.  Usually, he is generous to a fault.  He volunteers his life to protect his king.  Because he considers them winnings, he gives Lord Bertilak the kisses he won from Lord Bertilak’s wife, despite his winning them being an admission of sorts that he has been flirting with her. 

Yet when Sir Gawain has to choose between generosity and life, he chooses life.

We can’t really blame Sir Gawain for this.  The Green Knight says that his real fault is loving his life too much, and that he cannot fault Sir Gawain for that.  As a reader, I wasn’t sure what to think about this.  On the one hand, it does seem a little ridiculous to hold Sir Gawain to the standards of a Christmas party game when his life is at stake.  On the other hand, it is somewhat shocking that a knight as virtuous as Sir Gawain fails a test as simple as generosity.

The poem shows that generosity, though highly valuable, is not always possible.  Sometimes pragmatism must take precedent.  The Green Knight cannot fault Gawain for loving his life more than generosity, and neither should we.

Chivalry: You're Doing It Wrong (Series, Part 2)

Part 2: The Pentangle Knight

Warning: Spoilers

            Like in Beowulf, we aren’t introduced to the hero of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight until many lines into the poem. We no sooner learn Sir Gawain’s name than we are presented with his beloved shield, and the mark upon it.  The sign is a pentangle, a 5-pointed star.

            












This star is supposed to represent the virtues of a knight.  In this same passage, we are shown virtue through five groups of five.

There were the five senses, which represented purity in all aspects of life (reminiscent of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil). 

There was the group of five fingers on each hand, representing physical dexterity. 

There was the five wounds of Christ, which represented faith and piety. 

There were the five joys of the Virgin Mary.  You would think that these also represented religious faith, but they actually represented courage.  We know this because we are told that Sir Gawain has the Virgin Mary painted on the inside of his shield to give him courage during battle.  For more on that, see Part 9: Piety and Courage.

         











Annunciation

Nativity

Resurrection

Ascension

Assumption

Finally and most importantly, each of the points of the pentangle is supposed to represent one of the characteristics of a virtuous knight: generosity, friendship, chastity, courtesy, and piety.

The virtues presented in the pentangle are supposed to inform Sir Gawain’s actions throughout the rest of the poem, and yet in each of the five traits that the pentangle represents, Gawain either fails the virtue in one respect or another or is failed by it.  There will be a part or two devoted to each of these virtues, starting with generosity.

Chivalry: You're Doing It Wrong (Series, Part 1)

Part 1: Adventures in Chivalry (An Introduction)

Warning: Spoilers

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was not the medieval romance I expected.  I was expecting damsels in distress and knights in shining armor.  Instead, the majority of the poem was Sir Gawain trying to fend off the advances of a married woman, and winning kisses along the way.  During these scenes, he not only lacked shining armor but clothing in general, and Lady Bertilak was certainly not a damsel, much less a damsel in distress. 

The poem continued to reverse my expectations by presenting me with a less-than-perfect hero.  Sir Gawain is obsessed with chivalry, so much so that he paints a symbol that represents the five qualities of a knight on his shield, but he nonetheless manages to fail in all of these five qualities by the end of the poem.  These five aspects of chivalry are all presented in both positive and negative lights throughout the poem.

  The parts of the poem that did not focus on flirting focused on “The Beheading Game”.  In this game, Sir Gawain cuts off the Green Knight’s head and the miraculously not-dead-yet Green Knight is supposed to return the favor.  He is told to come to the Green Chapel one year from the beheading to get his own head chopped off, and is honor-bound to do so.

Supposedly, Sir Gawain’s flaw are presented in the end when he keeps a magical green girdle (ribbon) that will protect him from harm despite an agreement he had to give everything he won to his host, Lord Bertilak.

Another failing is that Sir Gawain flinched as the Green Knight swung his ax to behead him.  However, the fact that Sir Gawain didn’t realize that The Beheading Game was a bad idea in the first place may show that his real flaw was stupidity rather than any failure of virtue.  I guess you’ll have to read on and decide for yourself.

In its portrayal of chivalry, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is “both a tribute to romance and a critique of it”, and the poet uses chivalry to “reveal fascinating paradoxes in the romance world.”  In the subsequent blog series, I will take a look at each of these knightly qualities – generosity, friendship, chastity, courtesy, and piety – in turn, analyze how they present chivalry in both a positive and negative light, and then compare Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to modern medieval fantasies.

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