The anonymously written tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight revolves around the emergence a Green Knight in Camelot, under the guidance of a female sorcerer’s power, to test the Knights of the Round Table. Now, rather than concentrating on Sir. Gawain or the Knights for that matter, Lawrence Besserman’s work focuses on The Idea of the Green Knight, who apparently, possesses “paradoxical qualities” (220). According to the author, the knight’s green color serves two purposes as it depicts the traits of a “green man” and a “wild man” with each portrayal bringing forth a different quality of the subject (Besserman 220). On one hand, the Green Knight represents natural vitality, as the color of his ensemble is the same as that of nature; on the other, the fact that the character does not die at the beginning of the poem makes him grotesque as readers question his immortality. To that end, Besserman holds that The Idea of the Green Knight is a blend of all the mentioned attributes, and a separation of the two is impossible because the anonymous writer meant for him to possess a “double image” (228).
The evidence for Besserman’s assertions is present in the last stanza as the Green Knight gives his girdle to Sir Gawain: the token is also green (II.2508). When Sir Gawain receives the green girdle, it acts as a reminder of his “cowardice and covetousness” while residing in the Green Knight’s castle (Besserman 233). However, when he returns to Camelot, the green girdle becomes a symbol of honor; thus fulfilling the elements of a double image (II.2513-2520). Hence, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Green Knight’s character acquires differing qualities that stem from the color that could assume different meanings depending on the immediate context of the same.
Works Cited
Besserman, Lawrence. "The Idea of the Green Knight." ELH 53.2 (1986): 219-239. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org>.
"Sir Gawain And The Green Knight." The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Ed. Sarah Lawall, Lee Patterson, Patricia Meyer Spacks, William G. Thalmann and Heather James. Trans. Marie Borroff. 9. Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. 1643-1695. Print.
