5 points of chivalry code sir gawain and the green knight

The success of his suggestion is made clear by its ability to restore a spirit of mirth among the courtiers at the New Year festivities. At the conclusion of the Green Knight's visit, for example, Arthur succeeds in undercutting the danger and significance of the Green Knight's 'game' by referring to what the court has just witnessed as mere entertainment. At the same time in paradoxical fashion, medievals show every sign of having been able to distinguish play from real life. In Sir Gawain, the hero finds himself in danger of losing his life as a consequence of his participation in what his challenger insists on calling 'a Cristmasse game.' (4) Everyone at court seems to regard the Green Knight's challenge and the obligation it places upon Gawain with the utmost seriousness.

Because of their class-affirming, self-affirming status, games had an importance and significance for aristocrats like the king's nephew that was far beyond what their playful grandeur would suggest to a modern observer. And this grand participatory quality of medieval entertainments at court and the consequences of this participation offer us a fascinating perspective on an aristocratic knight like Sir Gawain, concerned as he is with who he is throughout Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The grand apotheosis effected by these beautiful forms of play became inextricably tied to defining the self. The interesting thing about most of these entertainments is that rather than simply tableaux or pageants, they came increasingly during the middle ages to involve aristocratic patrons directly in the activities in a dramatic way. The elaborate efforts to maintain this beautiful vision of one's class and one's self-what Patterson calls the 'aestheticization of life' (3)-underlies the record of lavish tournaments, feasts, vow-makings, royal entries, and other aristocratic entertainments of this period.

This institution has long been recognized as a beautiful fiction, producing a lovely, apotheosized version of the self with the capability of camouflaging one's failings and the uncertainties of life. The work of such new historicists as Stephen Greenblatt and Lee Patterson has focused the attention of literary critics on the meaning of history and the historical importance of the symbolic, the notion that man 'above all makes meaning.' (1) To emphasize this view of history, Lee Patterson borrows a phrase used in a different context by anthropologist Clifford Geertz: 'the real is as imagined as the imaginary.' (2)Īny student of late medieval social history can see the appropriateness of this borrowing, particularly with regard to chivalry.

5 points of chivalry code sir gawain and the green knight