Wednesday 10 February 2016


Sir Gawain and Green Knight.

Video with Simon Armitage

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  romance does not attempt a whole life: it focuses on two New Year’s Day feasts and the intervening year;
folklore motifs— the beheading game, the vegetation myth ( myth of life, death, and rebirth ), the arming and testing of the hero, the exchange of winnings.

 Plot and place details become number symbolic, for example,2 feasts, 2 parts of the beheading game, 2 courts, 3 temptations, 4 parts of the romance, 4  seasons.

 Ultimately  - the paradoxical conclusion that mark of shame and badge of honor are one and the same as Gawain retains the green girdle to remind him of his act of deception,  and faithful ness in all else.

An idealistic, romance portrayal of how the individual can fit into the great scheme of things.



Articles on Simon Armitage
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/03/poetry.simonarmitage



Tristan and Iseult http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14244/14244-h/14244-h.htm
At home read:
THE WOOD OF MOROIS
THE DEATH OF TRISTAN

Tristan and Iseult story in short
http://bostonlyricopera.blogspot.lt/2014/10/the-romance-of-tristan-and-iseult-by.html