Lesson 4: Sir Gawain and The Green Knight pp.19-24

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

English Literature

PTA exam in VWO 6
This year: The Middle Ages (period 4)

• Beowulf
• Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Robin Hood
• Canterbury Tales

Today's learning goal

After the lesson you can: 

• summarise the story "Gawain and the Green Knight"

 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

late 14th century

Alquin, page 26

• Poem

• Genre: Chivalric Romance

• Derived from French Arthurian tales

• Only one manuscript remains

When does the story begin?

1. Christmas Eve
2. Christmas Day
3. New Year's Eve
4. New Year's Day

A huge green knight enters the castle and challenges the knights. What is the challenge?

1. He wants them to take a swing at him with his own axe
2. He wants to hit them with an axe
3. He wants them to follow him to the Green Chapel
4. He wants to see them again a year and a day later

What happens after Gawain decapitates the Green Knight?

1. The Green Knight dies
2. The Green Knight gets up and leaves without his head.
3. The Green Knight gets up, picks up his head and leaves
4. The Green Knight picks up his head, promises to meet Gawain a year and a day later and leaves.

Why does Gawain volunteer?

1. Because King Arthur tells him to
2. Because he is in love with Queen Guinevere and wants to impress her.
3. Because he thinks he is useless and expendable
4. Because he wants to show off his bravery

Which word best describes the arrangement Gawain and the lord of the castle make?

1. Reciprocity
2. Cowardice
3. Insanity
4. Arrogance

Questions first passage

• How does Gawain behave towards the lady of the castle?
• What is the most striking aspect of the lady's behaviour?
• Why does Gawain resist her advances?

1. He is very chivalrous. In other words, he behaves exactly as one would expect of a knight: he is polite towards her, he flirts with her a little and he promises to serve her.
2. She leads the conversation, actively trying to seduce Gawain. However, she does not seem disappointed that he rejects her advances.
3. His quest matters more than anything else, as indicated by the passage ‘[he] had little love / To spare from his sorrowful quest, which he might not / forestall.’ Furthermore, he has made a vow of chastity, which he is not prepared to break. It might also be that he doesn’t dare accept the lady’s advances, because of his agreement with the lord of the castle.

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Question 1. How does Gawain behave towards the lady of the castle?

• He is very chivalrous. In other words, he behaves exactly as one would expect of a knight: he is polite towards her, he flirts with her a little and he promises to serve her.

canopy bed

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Question 2. What is the most striking aspect of the lady's behaviour?

• She leads the conversation, actively trying to seduce Gawain. However, she does not seem disappointed that he rejects her advances

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Question 3. Why does Gawain resist her advances? 

• His quest matters more than anything else, 
   ‘[he] had little love / To spare from his sorrowful quest, which he might not / forestall.’
• he has made a vow of chastity, which he is not prepared to break. 
• It might also be that he doesn’t dare accept the lady’s advances, because of his agreement with the lord of the castle.

Summarise what happened so far in five sentences.

1. When King Arthur was celebrating New Year's a strange knight arrived and challenged them to cut of his head with his own axe.

2. After Sir Gawain has cut off his head, the Green Knight picks it up and promises to meet Gawain a year later to receive the blow himself.

3. One year later, Sir Gawain goes looking for he Green chapel and stays with a lord on the way.

4. Sir Gawain and the lord agreed to exchange everything they received.

5. The lady of the castle visits Gawain and seduces him.

Question 5a . write down an example of alliteration from lines 1-15

Question 5a . Identify the alliterative words in lines 1 to 15

• line 3 snug/streams, while/walls
  
• line 4 coverlets/canopied
  
• line 5 drowsing/dimly
  
• line 6 small/sound
  
• line 8 lifts/little, corner/curtain
  
• line 10 lady/lovely/look
  
• line 11 draws/door
  
• line 13 sinks/soundlessly
  
• line 14 steps/steals
  
• line 15 brushes/back, curtain/cautiously/creeps

Which famous mediaeval poem is alliterative throughout?

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Question 5c. Explain: in this poem the 4 short rhyming lines are used as a cliffhanger. 

• Like the closing scene of a soap opera, the final four lines leave the audience wondering what is going to happen in the next part.

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Question 6. How does Gawain behave when he meets the Green Knight?

Question 7. What parallels are there between Gawain's encounter with the lady and his meeting with the Green Knight?

Question 8. How is is that the Green Knight is able to recognise the belt Gawain is wearing?

Question 9. The Green Knight thinks that Gawain is the most faultless warrior that walks on foot. Do you agree after reading the two fragments?

Question 11. Why did the Green Knight want to test Gawain and why did he send his wife to Gawain?

Question 6. How does Gawain behave when he meets the Green Knight?

• At first, he is not very chivalrous: despite his magic belt, he is scared and he fails to keep the agreement, insofar as he flinches when the Green Knight swings his axe. Only once the belt has done its job does Gawain become talkative again. When it comes to light that the belt belongs to the Green Knight, Gawain recognises that he hasn’t behaved nobly and regrets what he has done.

Question 7. What parallels are there between Gawain's encounter with the lady and his meeting with the Green Knight?

• In both encounters, Gawain shows reluctance: first to be seduced by the beautiful lady, and later, to be slain by the Green Knight. In both cases, his reputation is consequently questioned and he is goaded for his reluctance: the lady challenges Gawain by referring to his reputation as a lover, while the Green Knight challenges him by drawing attention to his reputation as a knight.

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Question 8. How is it that the Green Knight is able to recognise the belt Gawain is wearing?

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Question 9. The Green Knight thinks that Gawain is the most faultless warrior that walks on foot. Do you agree after reading the two fragments?