Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Medieval Bildungsroman?

The Landscape of Medieval Romance

The Pearl Poet's Europe (c. 1328)

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm still working on my Gawain paper, which is taking shape bit by bit in a rough, patched-together manner, and as readers might have noted, I'm presenting the story as a sort of Medieval Bildungsroman, a story of personal development in which a character comes to deeper insight and greater maturity.

"Medieval Bildungsroman" is an expression that I came up with just this morning, but I see that it's been coined already. Joseph Szoverffy used the term way back in 1977 in his review of Ruodlieb: Faksimile-Ausgabe des Codex Latinus Monacensis 19486 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek Munchen und der Fragmente von St. Florian, by Walter Haug, in Speculum, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Oct., 1977), pp. 981-983. Some 15 years later, John W. Baldwin used the expression in his article "Five Discourses on Desire: Sexuality and Gender in Northern France around 1200," also in Speculum, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Oct., 1991), pp. 797-819. And just three years later, John Il Kwun (or John Bachmann?) seems to have used the expression in "The Ultimate Quest: Secular and Spiritual Conceptions of Self-Perfection in the Medieval Chivalric Romance," Google Group: sci.anthropology, May 1, 1994. More recently, on September 27, 2004, M. Charlotte Wolf finished a dissertation, "The Treatment of Fragmentation in Irmtraud Morgner's Unfinished Salman Trilogy" (Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, Ohio), in which she also used the expression.

I cannot, therefore, claim originality in coming up with the expression Medieval Bildungsroman, for its use stretches back to at least 1977. But I can perhaps say something new about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. If this is a Bildungsroman, then what does Gawain learn about himself in the process of his self-formation? One thing that he learns is that he is not completely in control of his own moral development, for he has been tricked into greater self-knowledge, but he does attempt to learn his lesson and apply it.

In particular, his confession to King Arthur in the presence of his fellow knights after returning to that royal court seems to distinguish two sins that he has committed:

"Behold, sir," said he, and handles the belt,
"This is the blazon of the blemish that I bear on my neck;
This is the sign of sore loss that I have suffered there
For the cowardice and coveting that I came to there;
This is the badge of false faith that I was found in there,
And I must bear it on my body till I breathe my last.
For one may keep a deed dark, but undo it no whit,
For where a fault is made fast, it is fixed forevermore."
(ll 2505-2512)

Gawain accuses himself of "cowardice" (couardise) and "coveting" (couetyse). Both contribute to his "false faith" (vntrawþe), a self-reproach by which Gawain confesses his unworthiness to wear the pentangle, that "endless knot" (endeles knot) that stands for trawþe -- the Middle English of “troth” -- which combined the meanings "truth" and "loyalty." Gawain's sin has loosened that endless knot, and the baldric crossing over the shoulder where the shield with pentangle had been hung (line 621) has been replaced with the belt as a substitute baldric tied with a knot at his left side (line 2486). In Gawain's confession, the fault that he has committed will stain him as long as he lives, but what precisely does Gawain confess to? His couardise is clear enough: fear for his life partly led him to accept the belt offered by Lady Bertilak. But what was the object of his couetyse? This recalls the earlier discussion of Matthew 5:27-28.

Ye han herd that it was seid to elde men, Thou schalt do no letcherie. But Y seie to you, that euery man that seeth a womman for to coueite hir, hath now do letcherie bi hir in his herte. (Matheu 5:27-28: Wycliffe Bible)

In that earlier discussion, we learned that in the 14th century, the time of both Wycliffe and the Pearl Poet, the word "covet" (coueite) meant "To desire with concupiscence or with fleshly appetite" (OED I, 1106, 2). The term here, however, is the noun "covetise" (couetyse), so what did it mean? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "covetise" had a sexual connotation in the 14th century. In Daniel 13:7 of the 1382 Wycliffe Bible, we read these words concerning the men who saw the beautiful Susanne bathing:

Thei brennyden in the couetise of hir. (OED I, "covetise," 1106, 1)

They burned with covetise for her. (My Translation)

And Chaucer uses the noun "covetise" to warn against lechery in his Parson's Tale, written about 1386 (OED I, "covetise," 1106, 1). Speaking of the sin worked by the devil's hand, Chaucer identifies the specific work of the devil's first finger:

This is that other hand of the devel, with five fyngres to cache the peple to his vileynye. / The firste finger is the fool lookynge of the fool woman and of the fool man, that sleeth right as the basilicok sleeth folk by the venom of his sighte, for the coveitise of eyen folweth the coveitise of the herte. (John H. Fisher, editor, "Parson's Tale," in The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), page 385 (ll 851-852))

This is the other hand of the devil, with five fingers to draw people to his villainy. / The first finger is the foolish glancing of the foolish woman and of the foolish man, which slays [people] exactly as the basilicok slays people by the venom of its glance, for the covetise of the eyes follows the covetise of the heart. (My Translation)

Chaucer's parson thus identifies "covetise" with lechery and emphasizes that "the covetise of the eyes follows the covetise of the heart," which fits rather nicely with the view that Gawain has fallen into an adultery of the heart, given his confession of "coveting" (couetyse). Gawain takes rather hard his self-knowledge as one guilty of breaking faith for the low motives of cowardice and lechery. Indeed, he tell us in line 2512 that "where a fault is made fast, it is fixed forevermore," as though he believes that his sin has brought him into a fallen state as low as original sin brought Adam. While Gawain's self-reproach might seem excessive, it represents an important stage in his development as a Christian knight, for he has previously been held in thrall to pride, as the Green Knight tells us in revealing that Morgan le Faye sent him:

She guided me in this guise to your glorious hall,
To assay, if such it were, the surfeit of pride
That is rumored of the retinue of the Round Table.
(ll 2456-2458)

The Middle English word translated by Borroff as the phrase "surfeit of pride" is surquidre (cf. sourquydrye, line 311) which the OED traces to as early as 1225 and renders as "arrogance, haughty pride, presumption" (OED II, “surquidry,” 243). Gawain does, in fact, recognize his fault of pride, for in the punning passage of lines 2437-2338, Gawain has already agreed to keep the belt, saying that it will remind him of his pride and humble his heart. Although the Green Knight assures Gawain that his confession of all his failings has left him as pure as if he had never sinned (lines 2391-2394), Gawain remains troubled over his fall and considers himself stained for life, as we have already seen. Indeed, Gawain needed to fail for this story to be a Christian one, for such is the Christian view of human nature, that it is fallen and must therefore fail due to its innate sin.

Sir Gawain's encounter with Lady Bertilak and his subsequent entrapment in an adultery of the heart thus works as a type of felix culpa -- a fortunate fall -- that leads him to deeper knowledge of himself and thereby to the possibility of salvation.

And that's where my paper now stands, at 22 pages and still in need of a conclusion -- plus a great deal of smoothing out, minor additions, scholarly notes, and so on. Obviously too long for a 20-minute presentation...