Transcript Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Mr

Quick Details
• genre
• structure
• narrator
• point of view
• tone
• setting (time)
• settings (place)
• protagonist
• major conflict
• rising action
• climax
• falling action
Main Characters
Sir Gawain
How would you support the following statements? Gawain:
– seeks to improve his inner self throughout the poem.
– is humble and ambitious.
– stands by his commitments no matter what.
– fights fear with his desire to maintain integrity.
– is a paragon of virtue.
– values his own life more than his honesty.
– believes that sins should be as visible as virtues.
– is a round character.
The Green Knight
(also known as Bertilak de Hautdesert and the Host)
How would you support the following statements? The Green Knight:
– is a mysterious, supernatural, foreboding creature.
– symbolizes the wildness, fertility, and death that characterize a
primeval world.
– part of his function
is to establish a
relationship between
wilderness and
civilization, past
and present.
– has commonalities
between his personas.
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often
universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Chivalry
The ideals of chivalry derive from the Christian concept of morality, and the
proponents of chivalry seek to promote spiritual ideals in a spiritually
fallen world.
How would you support the statements that:
– SGGK criticizes chivalry for valuing appearance and symbols over truth.
– people are ranked in this court according to their mastery of a certain code
of behavior and good manners.
– in the forest, Gawain abandoned the codes of chivalry and admitted that his
animal nature requires him to seek physical comfort in order to survive.
– chivalry focuses on a connection with God.
– the inhabitants of Bertilak's castle teach Gawain about a kind of chivalry that
is more firmly based in truth and reality than that of Arthur's court.
– The “moral” is that we should strive to be chivalrous, but we are all human.
Code Of Chivalry
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valor and faith
To protect the weak and defenseless
To give succor to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honor and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honor of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honor of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
The Letter of the Law vs. Spirit of the Law
• Though the Green Knight refers to his challenge as a
“game,” he repeatedly uses the word “covenant,”
meaning a set of laws, a word that evokes the two
covenants represented by the Old and the New
Testaments.
• The Old Testament details the covenant made between
God and the people of Israel through Abraham, but the
New Testament replaces the old covenant with a new
covenant between Christ and his followers.
• In 2 Corinthians 3:6, Paul writes that Christ has “a new
covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but
the Spirit gives life.”
How would you support the following statements?
• The Green Knight at first seems concerned
solely with the letter of the law.
• At the poem's end, the covenant takes on a
new meaning and resembles the less literal,
more merciful New Testament covenant
between Christ and his Church.
• The Green Knight transforms his literal
covenant by offering Gawain justice
tempered with mercy, but the letter of the
law still threatens in the story's background,
and in Gawain's own psyche.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform
the text's major themes.
Seasons
At the beginning of Parts 2
and 4, the poet describes
the changing of the seasons.
How would you support the
statements?
– The changing seasons correspond to Gawain's changing
psychological states.
– The five changing seasons also correspond to the five ages of
man (birth/infancy, youth, adulthood, middle age, and old
age/death).
Games
• What “games” are played in this story?
• The relationship between
games and tests is explored
because games are forms
of social behavior, while
tests provide a measure of
an individual's inner worth.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or
colors used to represent abstract
ideas or concepts.
The Pentangle
• According to the Gawain-poet, King
Solomon originally designed the fivepointed star as his own magic seal.
• A symbol of truth, the
star has five points that
link and lock with each
other, forming what is
called the endless knot.
The pentangle symbolizes the virtues to which Gawain aspires:
1. to be faultless in his five senses;
2. never to fail in his five fingers;
3. to be faithful to the five wounds that Christ received on
the cross;
4. to be strengthened by the five joys that the Virgin Mary
had in Jesus (the Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection,
Ascension, and Assumption);
5. to possess brotherly love, courtesy, piety, and chastity.
The Green Girdle
The meaning of the host's wife's girdle changes
over the course of the narrative.
– What ties it to the Green Knight?
– In what way does it symbolize magic?
– What does it symbolize after Green Knight forgives
Gawain?
– What does it symbolize when Arthur and others wear
a green sash?
Essay Ideas
You may choose one of the following
ideas, or you may talk to me about
choosing a topic of your own.
• Analyze one round character and one flat character. Why were they
written this way? What impact does this have on the story?
• Choose 3-4 of the ideals in the code of chivalry and examine how
they play out in this story. Why did you choose these ideals? What
impact do these ideals have this story?
• Examine the issue of the differing covenants as displayed in this
story. Why did the author set up these conflicting ideas?
• Being a knight was not easy. Write about what it required and why
the characters in this story may have chosen this life.
• Write a compare and contrast essay examining Gawain and Beowulf
(this is only an option to those of you who wrote a poem rather than
a compare/contrast essay about Beowulf).
• Examine this story as an allegory. Allegories are extended
metaphors, in which, often, the characters represent common ideas
such as Everyman, Beauty, God, Satan, Justice, etc. Choose at
least three characters who represent larger ideas and explain the
impact this has on the story.