Sir Gawain and the Classical Tradition: Essays on the Ancient AntecedentsE.L. Risden The 14th century English alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is admired for its morally complex plot and brilliant poetics. A chivalric romance placed in an Arthurian setting, it has since received acclaim for its commentary regarding important socio-political and religious concerns. The poem's technical brilliance blends psychological depth and vivid language to produce an effect widely considered superior to any other work of the time. Although the poem is a combination of English alliterative meter, romanticism, and a wide-ranging knowledge of Celtic lore, continental materials and Latin classics, the extent to which Classical antecedents affected or directed the poem is a point of continued controversy among literary scholars. This collection of essays by scholars of diverse interests addresses this puzzling and fascinating question. The introduction provides an expansive background for the topic, and subsequent essays explore the extent to which classical Greek, Roman, Arabic, Christian and Celtic influences are revealed in the poem's opening and closing allusions, themes, and composition. Essays discuss the way in which the anonymous author of Sir Gawain employs figural echoes of classical materials, cultural memoirs of past British tradition, and romantic re-textualizations of Trojan and British literature. It is argued that Sir Gawain may be understood as an Aeneas, Achilles, or Odysseus figure, while the British situation in the 14th century may be understood as analogous to that of ancient Troy. |
From inside the book
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... Aeneid recasts the story once again, and so on throughout the classical period and Middle Ages. Storytellers like Odysseus, Aeneas, Geo›rey, and the Gawain poet are quite capable of omission, embellishment, and invention, as the various ...
... Aeneid. Haydock argues that the attempts by students of the poem to pin down direct verbal borrowings from classical authors like Vergil have tended to be relatively unsuccessful because scholars have not fully explored the Gawain ...
... Aeneid, for example, Vergil o›ers two versions of the fall of Troy.8 Shortly after landfall at Carthage, Aeneas, hidden by a cloud his mother Venus provides, enters a newly constructed temple to Juno. There carved in relief on a wall he ...
... Aeneid, of course, is not the only classical Latin version of the Troy story. Ovid, for instance, in Heroides 1, retells aspects of the story from Penelope's perspective in her letter to Ulysses, and he recounts the story more fully in ...
... Aeneid. He then moves quickly through the history of Ascanius, son of Aeneas, father of Silvius, and grandfather of Brutus. This Brutus, as Geo›rey tells the story, fled Italy after killing his father in a hunting accident, freed a ...
Contents
1 | |
The Trojan Framework of Sir Gawain and | 49 |
Ritual Sacrifice and the PreChristian Subtext of Gawains | 65 |
Aeneas Gawain | 82 |
The Tresounous Tulk in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | 112 |
Classical AnaloguesEastern and Westernof Sir Gawain | 135 |
Classical Magic and Its Function | 182 |
About the Contributors | 211 |