This is an innovative and original exploration of the connections between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most well-known works of medieval English literature, and the tradition of French Arthurian romance, best-known through the works of Chretien de Troyes two centuries earlier.
The book compares Gawain with a wide range of French Arthurian romances, exploring their recurrent structural patterns ad motifs, their ethical orientation and the social context in which they were produced. It presents a wealth of new sources and analogues, which provide illuminating points of comparison for analysis of the self-consciousness with which the Gawain-poet handled the staple ingredients of Arthurian romance. Throughout, Ad Putter plays close attention to the ways in which the
modes of representation of Arthurian romance are related to social and historical context. By revealing in the course of their romances the importance of conscience, courtliness, and self-restraint, literati such as the Gawain-poet and Chretien de Troyes helped a feudal society with an obsolete
chivalric ideology adapt to the changing times.
- ISBN10 0198182538
- ISBN13 9780198182535
- Publish Date 13 April 1995
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 292
- Language English