Sir Gawain

[poliphilo]

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is all about aristocratic types being polite to one another. It's like Jane Austen with hauberks. The fighting- with bores (boars), bears and etains (giants)- is hurried past so we can get to the really interesting stuff- which is the paying of compliments. These guys eat a lot too. And when they want to reward themselves for some particularly fabulous act of courtesy they tuck into double portions.

I've been meaning to read this since the seventies (when I bought the copy I've been hauling from house to house.) I find I'm getting the hang of Middle English and that much of the obsolete vocabulary is guessable. They have ever so many different words for "man"-but I suppose we do too. I love the rattle of alliterative verse- and the brilliance of the scene-painting- at its best when the weather is worst.:

 

Near slain with the sleet, he slept in his irons

More nights than enough in naked rocks,

There as clattering from the crest the cold burn runs,

And hanged high over his head in hard icicles.*

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Which, to my mind, suggests that the ear is key, a consciousness at some level, much like one must be well aware of the rules and restrictions of grammar in order to break them properly.