Has anyone read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

[Lolitava]

Hi, i have a question about this work and i don't know if this is the right place
to post in.

In Sir Gawain, there're two episodes of Gawain's wandering in the wood.

As we know, the author uses repetition a lot to emphasize something.

Does anyone know the intention of the author about the two episodes?

I would really appreciate your replies. :)

[Shea]

I was hoping that this would be more of a discussion on the story. This sounds more like a class question. Could you give us some more of your own observations? I happen to love this story.

[Shea]

By the way, welcome to the forums! :)

[parap]

Depends on how you read romances. They have been analyzed as psychological: the psychological rise and fall, growth, development, and change in the protagonist. Try reading it from this perspective, and you might find quite a few answers (like the wilderness being a reflection of the psychological state of the protagonist).

And yes, Gawain and the Green Knight is "repetitive", though I would prefer "cyclic".

For more info, try to get your hands on:

John Finlayson, “Definitions of Middle English Romance: Part I & II”, The Chaucer Review, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1980.

W. R. J. Barron, English Medieval Romances, Essex: Longman Group UK, 1987.

Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W. R. Tresk, Princeton University, 1953 (Chapter 6: "The Knight Rides Forth").

[mousemouse]

I read it some time ago, but I think I interpreted the forest as a "being lost" situation. This can ofcourse mean a lot of things (one of them being psykological, where the forest would be a representation of sexuality - or soemthing like that. Especially because those knight were famuos for their sexual abstinens.
It could also mean lost in a more religious way, since the forrest often has been used to describe this wandering until the right path is found.
According to Jung the forest is a dangerous place symbolising the subconscious desires. So that might be related to both af the above.
I am not sure, but I think that Sir Gawain and the green Knight was a pretty early poem about the knights that would later become the knights of the green table. If this is the case, then you might want to look into wether England was actually a christian society at the time.
Hope this helps a little.