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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Fitt 1 with Dr. Justin Jackson
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- [00:00]
A
Today on Ascend, the Great Books Podcast, we are starting our Christmas and New Year's read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A beautiful, spirited poem about bravery, temptation, the chivalric providence, fey magic, and so much more. It is well worth your time. It's beautiful. It's complicated. Read it in a small group. Iron sharpens iron. This is an excellent Christmas read. We'll have a wonderful small group to discuss it today. George from Chivalry Guild banished Kent. And Dr. Justin Jackson from Hillsdale College, who's an absolute whirlwind. Greatly appreciated him coming on. He reads the opening of Beowulf in Old English. He tosses in some Chaucer and then opens up Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Middle English just so you can hear the comparison. Really fascinating. I was not very familiar with that at all. He also challenged a lot of my understandings of this text and invited me to a whole new level of appreciation. So join us for a wonderful discussion on FIT one of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father of five, and serve as the Chancellor General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We are recording on a beautiful afternoon here at the Chancery. If you're new to Ascend, we're a weekly podcast that helps guide you through the great books. For example, if you want to read the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Greek plays, Dante's Inferno, or Plato, we have podcast videos and written guides to help you or your small group read these great books. Go check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook, and Patreon. We appreciate all our supporters who have access to written guides and also a community chat on Plato. Visit thegreatbookspodcast.com for a reading schedule and more information. Okay, today's gonna be a good day today. Today we're taking a break from reading the Platonic Dialogues to discuss Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It's going to be our Christmas read. We also have some excellent guests who are going to help us introduce this text. And today we are discussing the first part, or the first fit, as it's called. So our first guest, we have our friend, Banished Kent, who runs an account on X mainly focused on esoteric texts and Christmas memes, as I can tell at the moment. So, Kent, we're very happy to have you on the podcast today.
- [02:18]
B
Yeah, I'm honored to be with you guys. Thank you so much for inviting me.
- [02:21]
A
Yeah, not a problem. We also have returning to the podcast, our good friend the Chivalry Guild, run by George, who runs an excellent account on X extolling the virtues of chivalry and pulling from the legends of King Arthur, the song of Roland, the Crusades, and much, much more. He also has a substack called the chivalry Guild Letters. Welcome back to the podcast.
- [02:43]
C
Thank you, Deacon. Great to be here.
- [02:46]
A
Yeah, it's good to have you back. I appreciated our episode when we discussed your book. That was actually a lot of fun.
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C
Enjoyed it, too.
- [02:52]
A
And then Third, we have Dr. Justin Jackson, who serves as the chair of the English department at Hillsdale College. He also runs a substack called how do you read it? With lots of excellent videos. Also a lot of good videos with Hillsdale College online courses on YouTube. So, Professor Jackson, we are very happy to have you today. Welcome to the podcast.
- [03:13]
D
It's great to be here.
- [03:14]
A
Okay, good. So maybe just like, start us off with, like, brass tacks, like, what is Sir Gawain in the green Knight?
- [03:22]
D
Yeah, I mean, it's. It's one of those things where it's. It's lots of stuff. So let's put a date to it. And I hope it's not controversial. It may be. I think it's probably written between 1370s, 1390s. I go with 1370s and probably later 1370s. I think it's what we know as a Ricardian pop home. That just means King Richard II became king in 1377. He was a boy king. England is pretty disastrous politically at this time. It's why you'll get a boyish Arthur. I think there are lots of Criticisms in late 14th century Literature about boy kings. You get it? Langland's Pierce Plowman. So I put it around there. The most important thing, I think, is to know he's a contemporary of Chaucer's. And in that light, it's a pretty astounding. We still have this poem. There's only one copy of it. There's only one copy of this entire manuscript. This has four poems in it. Pearl, the most exquisite poem in the English language, Cleanness, which is kind of a retelling of Genesis in the book of Daniel Patience, which is a quasi translation retelling of the book of Jonah, Complete, the only other text other than Wycliffe's Bible. And then finally, Sir Gawain and the green Knight that comes in at the. It's the final poem there. It's only one copy. It's beautifully illuminated. It's a small. It's called Cotton Nero A ten. I think the manuscripts maybe five by seven. So it's a little tiny thing. I'm. I was astounded to see it because it looms so large in my academic life for so long. And then you get there and you go, oh, it's beautiful, but. But very small. It's astounding to think that we only had one. So, you know, you take Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, you have 55 manuscripts of that. You take Langland's Pierce Plowman. Good 50 manuscripts of that. This one is but one. And we really don't even know that anyone ever read these poems. It was most likely given to a noble family. We're pretty sure this is a poet who has clerical training since he knows the Bible so well. He's very theologically literate, but he also knows chivalric literature. Quite. It's astounding to me to think of the man who could give us, I think, the greatest dream vision poem in Pearl can also give us the greatest chivalric romance in the English language. That's pretty astounding to me. So contemporary of Chaucer's. He's part of what's known as the alliterative revival in England in the 14th century. Alliteration just means they're not going with rhyme. Though he does try to show off in Pearl. He does both alliteration and he rhymes, I think, just. I imagine he just wanted to show how good he was. So he's part of the alliterative revival, which is going back to a much older Old English Germanic poetic foundation where you have half lines, there are stresses predicated upon the first letters of words. That's what alliteration means. So he's part of that revival. What else to say about him? We don't know who he is. We know what area he comes from just because we can do dialectal analysis to kind of pinpoint it. So Cheshire, Cheshire, for those of you, especially if you're American, you probably don't know geography very well. I. I don't. But I do know this because I studied it. Cheshire's in the Northwest Midlands. So if I were doing England, London's down here. Cheshire's up in the northwest part of England, probably 180 miles away from it. So it's a good. It's a good train ride there. So the alliterative revival. He is pretty masterful with language. He uses when he's in the rugged. Gawain is in the rugged wilderness. He. He intentionally will use Old Norse words. Right, Grundlestone. But when he's in Bertilak's castle, which your readers will get to, he loves using French words because that's very courtly. In fact, we'll see with his, his beheading game, he's tapping into kind of an old Irish tradition that's there. But when Gowan's in Bertilak's castle, he'll tap into an old French tradition which is far more courtly. So he's a very interesting poet, and everybody tries to figure out who he is. That's pretty much the background that your readers need to know. That it is really is a unique manuscript that survived. There was. The manuscript is called Cottonero A10. We call it Cotton because Sir Robert Cotton owned all of these manuscripts. His library eventually became the British Library, and it survived the 1731 fire of Ashburnham. So just imagine if that fire ate this manuscript. We don't have any of this, by the way. Beowulf is in that same library and it was actually scorched. And it's the only one we, we have. And you don't get really any literary references to the text at all in any English literature. I don't. I'll be honest, I don't even know that the family read it. I have no idea. I, I, you know, I just think of my own library. How many books have academics bought that they don't read? I'm guilty of that a thousand times over. Yeah. What if that's the case? So there it is. That's where we are with just kind of the nuts and bolts of the history, the material history of, of the manuscript itself and the author. And I won't conjecture to who it is. Lots of people like to play parlor games to figure it out, but I always just say, I, I don't know.
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A
Yeah, no, well said. I really appreciate that. It is interesting when we're in the great books tradition to read and engage with a great book that really isn't part of the great conversation, that really didn't actually enter into that conversation when it was written. There's a few other books like that. It's really fascinating to actually think that the benefit and the fruitfulness, the fecundity of this text wasn't really received at the time and is only being received later on. You know, this. Can I just talk about, like, maybe real quick, like, our familiarity with this text. So this was not part of my great books tradition. Like, when I, when I studied this, we didn't read any of this. Actually, who I'm going to blame is actually George behind Chivalry Guild, because he started posting on this a few years ago. And let me look at my date here. Yeah, 2022. I realized there was a gap, so I read Sir Gawain and Green Knight. I read Song of Roland, I read the Death of Arthur and I read. Oh, I read Howard Pyle's King Arthur and I read it to my children and really greatly enjoyed it. So this is a text that I really love. I really appreciate it. I haven't ever, like, studied it in an academic setting, but maybe like, you know, George with Chivalry Guild, like, how did you stumble upon this text? Like, how did you come to love this text?
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C
How did I come to love this text? I only discovered it myself about five years ago or so. It wasn't actually very long before the awful A24 movie came out. Have you guys seen the Green Knight?
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A
Yeah, unfortunately, I have. I don't recommend anyone go see it.
- [11:22]
C
Right. Do not. Do not go see it. But it was not long before that that I discovered the text. And I guess for me, I'm really fascinated by how this fits into Arthurian legend and Arthuriana and the fact that Mallory doesn't have this when he is compiling La Morte d' Arthur and the way that it isn't in that text, but it's in conversation with that. And I want to get into a little bit later how I see Gawain as sort of the anti Lancelot, but don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. I just. I love the text so much. It is. It works on so many different levels. It is jocular, it's disturbing. It is really fun.
- [12:21]
B
It is.
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C
It just. It just works on so many levels.
- [12:29]
D
If I may. If I may just interject here very quickly, you mentioned Malory, but Malory is, you know, later 15th century. Gowan is the English knight. There are 11 different romances with Gowan in it, in the English tradition. So the earlier English, the 14th century, and even earlier that English tradition, they're pulling from old Irish texts, specifically the Mabinogian. And I'm not going to try to anger any scholars who watch your channels. I'll just say it's from maybe the 12th century to 14th century. Some of them want to make it earlier. So Mallory took on Creatien du trois and the French tradition as kind of his default. And. And, you know, that's where Lancelot is the main knight. But at this point, Lancelot is not. Not in the English tradition, Gowan, in fact is. So when you read it, it's just another, it's just another Gowan tale. But that's what our poet's playing off of, is this great tradition of, of Gowan the knight. And he's actually, he's all over the place as a character. If you've ever read the Wife of Bath's tale, the Knight who Rapes the Young woman, most likely based on a Gowan tale. So he's all over the spectrum with regards to the English tradition. So it's not. When you read British knights tales, yeah, they're about Gowan the, The Knight of the sword, whenever. Which is clearly what the poet is borrowing from. That's a, that's a 13th century old French tradition known as the Knight of the Sword that are. That our poets bought borrowing from. So he does borrow from the French tradition. But Gowan is the kind of English night it always throws my students off because they don't understand, like, where's Lancelot in all of this? And it turns out that was, that was something Mallory picked up and brought into the English tradition for us.
- [14:30]
A
I will say, the first time that I, I read Mallory's text, I had read all of these other ones that actually had like, very noble knights and et cetera, and I was not ready for it at all. I actually really did not like the text the first time I read it because I didn't understand its purpose or anything. I just really dropped the ball on that one. But, Kent, what about you? Like, what's your familiarity with the text? How'd you come to discover it?
- [14:50]
B
Yeah, similarly to George, I mean, I, like, I grew up on piles Arthurian tales, so really read that a lot. And then I, you know, when I first started college, I came across White's Once and Future King and read that, and that really resparked my interest in Arthur and kind of went back down the rabbit hole of pulling out Mallory. And then I stumbled across Tolkien's translation of Galilean and it just really blew me away as, in a way, like it's, it's shorter than a lot of other texts, but it's. So there's so much compacted into that. Right. And it almost reminded me, like I read through it and I felt like I was almost reading something out of Shakespeare, you know, like where there's so much depth of theme going on in this, in this poem. And so, you know, I read through here and I can't help but make comparisons to Hamlet or to Henry iv. Part one from a couple of different places in there. And so, like, I feel like this poet is maybe taking some of the chivalric literature and elevating it into unexpected places throughout the poem. And that's why I fell in love with it.
- [15:59]
A
I appreciate that. I also appreciate earlier what Professor Jackson said about needing to reread the text. That's something that we see with almost all the great books, is that, you know, what's the best commentary on a text? What's the best commentary to understand the Iliad or the Odyssey or Sir Gawain and Green Knight? Literally reading it a second time is probably the absolute best thing that you can do, because then once you understand, like, the whole scope and you go back, it's amazing how many other things you pick up. So for everyone listening, like, if this is your first time reading this text over Christmas, this is a beautiful, beautiful tale. Very happy to have you guys with us. But then also read it again once you're done with it. And it's actually not that long. We're reading it over three weeks. And so if you probably. You could read it multiple times during that time period, it's amazing how fruitful that will be. So maybe kind of just jumping into the text itself, right, because the opening of it really sold it for me. I loved the opening of this text. But, Professor Jackson, do you want to kick us off and maybe either read some of it or maybe even understand, like, it's written, I think, in Middle English? I'm not sure. I have a great appreciation for what that actually means, but I think hearing some of it would be very helpful.
- [17:05]
D
Yeah, I think so. It's an odd Middle English. It's contemporary with Chaucer, but it does not sound like Chaucer in any way, shape, or form. It sounds hundreds of years older. So if your listeners don't mind, I would like to read to them something from Beowulf, which is, we'll just say around Old English is a pretty stable language. So we'll say it's between. It doesn't matter. Eight hundred and one thousand. Then I'd like to read from Chaucer, his contemporary. And then you'll see how Sir Gawain sits right in the middle of those two. Because Beowulf is the alliterative tradition which Sir Gawain's trying to recapture. And then Chaucer, he actually mocks the alliterative tradition and a couple of his tales. So he. He. Chaucer's the. He doesn't invent the Iambic. Pentameter, but he makes it prevalent and it's just beautiful in his hand. Your students will see how mellifluous the language is with Chaucer, which is different from the alliterative tradition. So here's Beowulf, first 25 lines in Old English. So again, between 750 and 1000 sod kuninga thrymye frunon hutha athelangus elin fremidon O shield shaving. He thus frofre ye bard works under voknum werth mundom tha order that him I wiltch order Thumsetendra overthrown ran show the Gomban Gyldan. That was good kuning. So very Germanic clangy, that alliterate. And the poets of Old English, they do things with alliteration you can't imagine. They can. They can literally poeticize incarnational theology between half lines that you've never seen in your life. It is. It is miraculous. I. I dare say it's clearly inspired. I think it is. I think these monks were moved, like you can't imagine, to try to sing Christ, but actually doing it through the formal qualities. So that's Old English. So say. And that was stable till around. It doesn't matter. Even 1080, 1100 still would have been stable. So here's, you know, almost 300 laters, Chaucer influenced by French. Access to Romance languages. Here's what it looks like. So for all of you have ever wondered if you've ever studied a Romance language, French, Italian, Spanish, and you go, why doesn't English sound like that? My argument is always. It used to, when we weren't so precise. So here's Chaucer's English again, contemporary with Sir Gawain. I'll just read a few lines. Wander April with the shortest ota the draught of March hath pierced to the rota and bother every vine and switch liqueur of which verto engendered is the floor. When Zephyrus ache with his sway to breath in spirit hath in every holt in heath the tenderer crop, as in the younger son half in the ram as half horse iron in smaller fools rulers mock and melodea the sleep and overnicht with open ear so pricketh him natur in here garages, then longen folk to go on pilgrimages and palmeri's for tosaken straunger stroudes to fern hallways couth and sondre londes, and specially from every shearer's end of angelone to counterbury they winde the holy blissful martyr for Tosacus that him hath open when that they were sacred. I. I find it stunning. It's musical. We've lost it, but it's musical. Some of our greatest poets, maybe today can recapture. But that's as close as we get to French, and I love the French language. That's as close as we get. All right, that was Chaucer. Just remember, right, when the rap shooters with the sway to soter the draught of Martha March hath pierced into the rota. Here are the opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, same time as Chaucer, going back to the alliterative tradition with the half lines. Sithen the sage and the assault to assesed at Troy, the burg Brinton and Brent to Braundes and askes the talk that the trammes of treason der rods triad for his tricheria the truest on air to the. It was Aeneas the Athol and his Hekinda that Sithen deprases. Provinces and patrones become well, nay, of all the well in the West Ilies fro reach of Romulus to Rome reaches him sweether with great bobonce that bird keep biggest upon first and Nevinis hit his own home as it new heart Tisius to Tuscan and Tyldus beginis longebaired and Lombardy lifted of homus and fair over the French flowed Felix Brutus on many bonkers full broad Not Chaucer, not Chaucer in any way, shape or form. So that's. That's what you get thrown into. And it. I give my students, in Old and Middle English, I give them a translation of Sir Gawain in the facing page, but a translation nonetheless, so they can get through it. Chaucer, they read in Middle English. Chaucer's Middle English is pretty much our mother tongue. That London dialect is what eventually came to America.
- [23:10]
A
Yeah, that was beautiful. I appreciate that. And as far as, like, just the. The English translation, because I think one that's really interesting about Sargowan and the Green Knight is I rarely actually recommend audiobooks. I just typically don't, particularly if you're trying to actually get into the text. But to try and hear the alliterative of this, like, even when you were reading it, I've actually recommended the people like, yeah, go check out the Tolkien translation for the audiobook. Go check out. I also have the Armitage as well, which I realize is a little bit more broad, a little bit more poetic, but he really leans into a Lot of the alliterative. And it's not really until you read it out loud that I think you have a great appreciation for what that alliterative sounds like.
- [23:48]
D
May I suggest one more translation for you? It's actually from the Broadview Press. It's a. It's an inexpensive translation. It's by James Winnie. It's also facing Paige, but he transliterates all the weird Middle English letters into our modern letters so you can see it in the Middle English. And then he has a translation on the side, but he does a very, very literal translation. I appreciate it. When I used to teach it to really lower level undergrads, I would always use James Winnie's translation. It's not beautiful poetry, but sometimes I will forego beautiful poetry. So, you know, you guys have done Homer. I'm a. I'm a Richmond Lattimore guy. Not the most beautiful translation, but I know Greek relatively well. I like his translation. If I want something where I'm trying to show off for an audience, I'll use Fagels every day of the week. If I want the students to be engaged even more, I'll use Fagels. But if I'm really trying to get a sense of what's going on, I'm just a literal guy in class. You know, they have a facing page translation with all the Middle English letters. And so I just translate on the fly in class, trying to convince them to get onto the left hand of the page and not the right. And they can see where. Where the discrepancies and translations happen. Happen to be.
- [25:15]
A
I'm sure that's actually incredibly, incredibly fruitful. Okay, so let's look at this first. What do we want to call these? These stanzas, because the parts are called fits, which is an interesting term. What does that mean?
- [25:25]
D
Yeah, yeah, they're called. They're called fits. And all of these are stanzas. And the stanzas are 12 lines. This poet, he was. He was pretty adamant about making sure his poems were all symmetrical and they all fulfilled certain kind of mathematical qualities. And so he abides pretty closely by these things. But, yeah. So we can call these stanzas the end thing. And I'll be honest. I haven't read. I couldn't tell you the last time I read a translation of the poem. So I even forget if I've ever even read Tolkien's translation. I don't know that I have, but I don't remember. Does he at the end, say around line 16, does he have, like a weird little stanza at the End of the stanza that it says with when, with joy, where war and vengeance. Does he keep that in his edition that it's almost a stanza taken away from a stanza.
- [26:25]
A
Yeah, each one ends with, like, five lines that are similar.
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D
So that's what we call a bob and a wheel. It's actually an old Scottish. Just something else the poet picks up and takes in. It's an old Scottish poetic form. And if, you know. Well, in the Middle English, it. It actually. It actually rhymes. It's the only thing in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that he makes sure that he goes through on the bobbin wheel. Again, that's its technical term, the bobbin, the wheel. And it actually rhymes, which is fun because he has those last little bobbin wheels. I find my students don't like to pay attention to them, but in some ways, they kind of will often give you a bit of a conclusion, slash, moral of the story to what just came previously, or a transition to. Okay, here's where we're going now. And especially this first bobbin wheel, I think, is absolutely critical to the entire poem.
- [27:23]
A
Yeah, I actually, actually really appreciate it where he has the alliterative and then the bobbin wheel has the rhymes. I actually very much appreciate the bobbin wheel.
- [27:31]
D
If you look in the Middle English, it's still. It's still alliterative, but then he rhymes it as well. I mean, this is a. This is a master poet to be able to alliterate and rhyme and keep those stresses in place. I mean, you have an ear that's beyond belief.
- [27:48]
A
Yeah, it's really impressive. Like you said, and like Kent mentioned earlier, this poem has depth and it just has layers. And the more you reread it, the more you pick up on different motifs and just, like, the impressiveness of it and just generally, again, like, how beautiful it is to hear. I think it's one thing that really kind of stood out to me is this, like, reading this out loud. I'm reading out loud to my wife and daughter for Christmas, and being able to read that out loud to them, you notice more. But I think you have a greater appreciation for what he's actually trying to do in the text and the technical skill behind it. So just, like, maybe just a few things in this first stanza, because it's just packed. So the first thing, particularly, like listeners here on the podcast, we spent a whole year on Homer, and so we spent six months on the Iliad, six months on the Odyssey. And this is one of the things that we talked about that I think throws us off because then when we jumped and did Dante's Inferno for Lent, there is a strong difference to Rome and also to Troy. And so one of the things that we talked about there is that, you know, the medieval age is, my understanding, very much saw itself in lineage of Troy. So here we see in this beginning of this, you know, Arthurian legend, it actually starts with Troy because obviously you have Aeneas that is able to escape from Troy and Aeneas goes on his wanderings and then his descendant Romulus does Rome. Rome is both the apostolic and imperial, you know, mother city. And then you have all these like, you know, medieval kings and Queensland are always track, you know, their descendancy always goes back down to Troy. Troy is this even. There's. There was a part that we looked at where Greece and Rome were like warring and like, I can't remember somewhere a couple hundred years before Christ. And even in those like correspondences, they're still contextualizing themselves with inside the Trojan, right. This, that Rome is a Trojan colony that needs to be destroyed by Greece. This is how they saw each other. So I think it's fascinating because I think in a lot of ways, if you're not used to reading Dante, I don't think we have that appreciation for Troy in the West. Think about Hector. I know George obviously knows much more about this than I do, but think about Hector as the first of the nine worthies. There was something about the Trojans that are very much, deeply needed into the identity of the West.
- [30:05]
D
Yeah, I mean, look, Thomas Jefferson was fascinated. So just to show you the American link, Thomas Jefferson was absolutely fascinated with the Hangston Horsa myth. In fact, Jefferson had a sort of proto grammar of Old English that he wanted taught in American schools. God bless Thomas Jefferson going, going for that, that sort of thing. So yes, there is something about England, especially as it, you know, by the 14th century, England is no longer a backwater country. In the mid 14th century, I think 1350s, Parliament said everything done in Parliament is going to be done in English now. Okay. So, you know, back in the early 1300s, if you wanted to learn Latin, you had to learn it in French. French. By the time we get to the 1360s, if you're learning Latin, you can actually learn it in English. So there is, this is the. For me, I think 14th century English literature is the crown jewel. I'm biased of course, but I think it's the crown jewel of all of English literature because it's fully conscious that we are a literary language. We have something to tell people. And it turns out we are historical. And so that's why I think it goes back to the beginning. But, and I mentioned slightly earlier, and I don't want to get into the weeds, but 14, late 14th century English political history is a disaster. It's just God awful. You have the Hundred Years War, peasants revolt. You're still recovering from the Black Death, where some places, you know, 50 to 70% of the people are wiped out, riots. It's an ugly time. And so I think they're thinking very much about themselves with regards either to the glory of Rome or you can see where this is going, the downfall of Rome. And so I think. I think the poem is sitting like it's telling its readers. Just look at the last bobbin wheel. If I can just read it in Middle English and I'll just translate it quickly for the. Your, your listeners. Where, where, where? And I'll just translate it where, where and otrack and wonder where war and vengeance and wonder at times has lived therein. And of both bl. And I'll just do it literally. Bliss and blunder, good things and bad things. Full skate, full quickly has skipped. It has shifted sin ever since then. In other words, the history of Britain is one that simply knows bliss and blunder. That's why he begins with the fall of Rome. That's why he begins with Aeneas. And it's very clear that Aeneas is the traitor. If any of your readers have questions about that, just know it is in fact Aeneas. It's part of a medieval tradition. In fact, Tolkien. So Tolkien was a great medieval. Just so everyone knows. Incredible.
- [33:21]
B
Hold on.
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A
A ness is the traitor.
- [33:24]
D
It's. Yes, it's Aeneas who is the traitor.
- [33:26]
A
I thought Antenor was the traitor.
- [33:28]
D
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Tolkien actually makes this very, very clear in his scholarly edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which for decades was the. Was the scholarly edition. No, it's Aeneas. Aeneas in a medieval legend, actually worked with Antenor to let the Greeks in. So Aeneas is. Yes, I'm. I hate to tell you this, but this is going to change your reading of the poem completely because Aeneas is held up on a pedestal and he still is, by the way, but he is the traitor who is here. And guess who his great grandson is. Do you know his great grandson is Felix Brutus, who founded England. So it's great. In the medieval legend that the founding of England from Felix Brutus, the great grandson of Aeneas, who Was the traitor is where we're beginning our history as we move into Arthur's England. It's right there in the back, alternating between bliss and blunder. And you have to ask, like, what's this relationship between bliss and blunder here? But it's not Antenor, it's Aeneas. It's. It's very, very. I don't know. I don't know of any scholars anymore who tried to argue for Antenor anymore. It used to be you could find it, say in the 20s, 20s through 40s, you could find it. But after that, once we started discover all of these other medieval texts, we, with regards to Aeneas is that legend of the traitor. Then you're, you're really kind of often, often running there. Let me just, Let me just think. What is it? Oh, yeah, that's right. The destruction of Troy. A great medieval, it turns out, alliterative poem, lays it at the feet of, Of. Of Aeneas as well. So. So for your listeners, put that in context. You can have Aeneas, the. The greatest, I think, who also betrays, who is the great grandfather of the founder of England. I think that's where this poem is going. I think the poem in many ways becomes a cautionary tale of countries and what they do when they're being founded and the way in which they're being founded and the way in which they're. Pride plays out, because that's what this poem becomes really a meditation on is what is. What does pride look like? What does fidelity look like? It is a very Christian poem at its foundation, and it wants to think on virtues and vices. And so it's a very. It doesn't want virtue on one side, vice on the other. I think it's a very realistic poem to ask, how can virtue and vice be founded in one person? The greatest virtue and the greatest vice, how can they be found in that individual? I think that's what it's meditating upon.
- [36:27]
A
Kent, were you going to jump in?
- [36:28]
B
Yeah, I was just going to add that along those lines. I think that the, the origin of that Aeneas as the traitor comes from a guy called menecrates of Xanthus, 4th century. I think he's Greek, but he's writing under the Romans.
- [36:43]
D
That's right.
- [36:44]
B
And he specifically says in his writing, which obviously diverges from Virgil quite, quite widely, but he says that Aeneas gets spared and the reason why he's able to leave and found Rome is because he betrayed Troy and flew through open the gates. Right. And so he the founder of Troy, basically, according to this Greek writer, his whole entire family is spared specifically because he's the traitor.
- [37:14]
D
There's a 13th century text from Guido de Colomba that just lays out that Aeneas was the traitor there. We can't, we don't know that he had that as a source. But you're right, that's got to be found there from. That's the problem of being a medievalist. You see all these things creep up and what you really want is a source critic. You want to find, oh, where did you see it? Oh, where did you take your notes? Did you have access to that on.
- [37:41]
B
Like maybe like more of a literary side? I think it's really interesting that it does connect back to Troy. I was also going to say that I think that part of the reason why they're always connecting back to Troy this way is because they didn't really have Homer through the Greek sources at the time because Byzantium hadn't fallen yet. So everything that they have is filtered through Rome and through Virgil and these Roman sources to them. And so they're always constantly looking to that because that's where they get all the information. So you see a lot of everything about Greece is kind of filtered through Virgil and Virgil's lens in this time.
- [38:18]
A
Okay, so we're on line three and I have to rethink everything. So this is good, this is going well. This is great. I can't. Anias as the trader had no idea. I just, I thought it was Antenor. You know, we read Dante for lint. There's Antinora. I was like connecting it. Okay, great. Any. What else do we need to know? Because I want to be able to get to everything else, but anything else though, in this first stanza or George, anything.
- [38:41]
B
Sorry, can I point one more thing? And this is a little bit out there, so I, I realize that I might be a little over my skis a little here, but he mentions Tyrius, that goes to Tuscany and I, I think that's a really interesting one because I haven't really heard that one before. Too much. But that's where Dante is, is born. Right? And he lives there for his whole life. And so I almost wonder if that's a little nod there. I know that I think if I remember right, in Dante, isn't there a little mention of a couple who's in one of the circles and they, they committed adultery together after reading the Arthurian legends at one point, did they read about some Arthurian knight that had an affair and Then that's why they, they had their affair and that landed in there. So I, I almost wonder if there's multiple different little nods here. Just in this first paragraph. You know, we're nodding to Troy, we're nodding possibly to Achilles that way. I think we're nodding to Aeneas and then maybe a little nod to comparing the tests that Gawain's going to go through to other Arthurian legends by way of Dante as well.
- [39:49]
D
Yeah. So you're referring to Canto 5 and Dante's Inferno. Paolo and Francesca. Yeah. And she calls the book that she and her. So it was, it was her husband's younger brother that she had an affair with and he was. And her. It's just such a delicious story. Her, his younger brother was a stand in for their marriage because he couldn't make it. And, and she calls the book that they were reading of an Arthurian legend. She called it their Galahad, their go between there. So you're exactly right. And just to give you a little more inside baseball with the pearl, I call him The Pearl Poet McGowan Poet. In his pearl he refers to Dante's Divine Comedy at least twice. So he knew of Dante. So I think you're, I think you're right here. I think that is a nice little nod and we know that he in fact knew of it.
- [40:48]
A
That's a great insight, George. Anything on your mind in stanza one?
- [40:52]
C
No, I got nothing. That's all very fascinating though.
- [40:56]
A
Yeah. Aeneas as a traitor had no idea, didn't even know that was like part of the tradition. But you said that came from like a Greek source to get. Are we allowed to do that? We're allowed to take the Greek source on Roman history?
- [41:07]
D
I didn't say Greek source. That's where it ultimately is. But it comes up through the Middle Ages from. At least there's another alliterative tradition. Again, it's the destruction of Troy, which is based on guido Columbus early 13th century text that they pick up. I'm not a Guido de Colomba scholar, so I don't know what access he had to anything. I know the further east you go, the more access they actually have to some of these Greek texts. So I don't know where that comes from. I just know that eventually Aeneas as the traitor actually isn't that problematic in, in England or in the West.
- [41:49]
B
And it makes, it makes sense because you look at like Chaucer's version of Troilus and Cressid or even Shakespeare. Right. And it's very different than Homer. So they're obviously going with very different sources here.
- [42:00]
A
So is the takeaway here, then, that England or Britain is like Aeneas, that there's this interesting juxtaposition between them where Aeneas is both the traitor and, like, the historical example of, like, piety? I think when you were reading Professor Jackson, right, It was blunder and bliss. So is this. Is that what he's painting then, in Sansa 1, that you have this. This people group, this country that has this interesting, like, juxtaposition, these two things that are in tension that then produces these mysteries, these wonders, this unique people group?
- [42:31]
D
I think that's precisely it. When you guys finally get to fit2, the very beginning of fit2 will. Will be a long meditation on the seasons of the year. And he'll say things like, everything repeats itself, but the beginning never matches the end. Whatever his frame is, whatever his phrase is, form definissment. The beginning and the end never match up and are never the same. Which is, in some ways, if you're beginning with Aeneas, this was a traitor. Then, you know, well, if you're in bliss, stay the course. But you can always fall into blunder. That's the bad news. And that should sound Boethian to everybody. The good news is, is if you begin in blunder, you can always end in bliss. That's the good news. The poem kind of, I think, begins in blunder. Your students are going to have to figure out, does it actually end in. And bliss? And what is that bliss? And how do we define it? So the poem is meditative on a look. I think, because it's a Christmas poem, it's very meditative on a liturgical cycle and how we live our lives in that liturgical cycle, because those of us who live by a calendar. And I do. You do. When you live by a calendar, every year is the same, but every year is not the same. You. You just go through it, and as you get older, things maybe get easier, things maybe get more difficult for your kids. Things get easier, things get more difficult. You just do it again and again, but it's never the same. I always like to do a spiral thing for my students. It's always spiraling. It's not in the west. We have a sense of history that is just a straight line across the horizon. I think a deeply liturgical tradition and its meditation on time is not the horizontal waiting for the eschatological, but. But the. The spiral that is waiting for the eschatological, as it keeps moving towards that. And I think it's precisely what this poem is actually up to.
- [44:36]
A
Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, it's a spiral moving forward, right. It has both the circular and the forward movement. Can you say a little bit more though about. Okay, so when we get into stanza three and four, even though I do have a question about stanza too, we do lean very much into the time. Like, what time is it? Right, so it's Christmas time. They're celebrating New Year. Like, okay, those are those things on their face. But how do you think this actually plays into the fabric of the poem? Like, what should we know about how time is actually particularly Christmas time? Informing this? Because one thing that's interesting to me is there's all these little comments here about the. You know, Christmas is a time for these types of things. It's a time for marvels, it's a time for mysteries. And so what do we need to take away here from say, like the Christmas season, right? This being New Year's, how does that inform the actual narrative?
- [45:27]
D
Well, you know, this is the hard thing, I think, for my students. I, I teach at a Christian college and, and they're all very pious, observant students, Protestants, Catholics, and the poem always strikes them as weird because it keeps talking about fasting and there are these great feasts. And I have to remind students that in the west you had what was known as the St. Martin's fast. It was a 40 day fast in the Nativity season. Okay, well, if you don't know anything about fasting, which contemporary America, we know nothing about fasting, you don't realize how important joyful a feast is because you've been right. I mean, now what is it? The day after Christmas, people throw all their trees out. Like their, their idea of hard work is getting through all the busyness, getting ready for Nativity, where those of us who fast, you tried to take care of that before Nativity so that you can actually meditate and have a good solid fast. But when that fast is over, man, it's time to feast. So what you see here is actually a time of feast. It's the, it's the yule. Once you guys get into fits 2, 3 and 4, it'll be fasting time again. It'll be the, it'll be St. Martin's fast one more time. I think it's crucial to understand this, especially the meditation. If everything is cyclical and you have a liturgical poem and it's talking about fasting and feasting, when is it appropriate to have a good time? When is it not appropriate to have a good time. When. When he gets to the castle later on in the poem, his host will actually apologize. He'll say, oh, we don't have the best food for you, because it's still the fast. Although it's still quite the spread. I think that's incredibly important to think through here. Is. Is thinking about what is fasting and feasting actually mean to a Christian's life? You know, what are the ways in which fasting can make you too dour? We don't have that problem much anymore. What. What are the ways in which feasting can make you slack? We have all of those problems. So I think that has a lot to do. Students need to know when they're taking this. It is a liturgical poem in the Nativity season, and this is during the feasting time, but the rest of the poem will be taking place during a fasting time. And they took their fasts seriously. And I think that's pretty important in a fast is just a time of self control. You know, how do you cut things out of the. This world?
- [48:23]
A
Yeah. Very well said. Yeah, it's. And we see that particularly now with, like, Advent. Advent as a penitential season has lost almost all meaning in the Christmas season. We've already been celebrating for all this time and doesn't even seem to have that same, you know, wonder to it. Hopefully, you know, Lent still holds somewhat in the West, a time of. Of penitential season. But even those. Anyone who's done a really hard fast, and I know George has talked about this a lot on X, Anyone who's done a really hard fast knows the actual joy of, like, the Easter vigil and knows that it's not even. It's not, you know, it's not gluttony. It's not this. But even, like, being able to consume that one thing or sit down, just have a normal meal where you really haven't been doing that for 40 days. It changes everything, and it changes the dynamic as you kind of conform your body and your bodily needs to the spiritual flow of the year. Like, it's incredibly beneficial. I appreciate you pointing that out in this text about when is feasting and when is fasting. That's really fascinating.
- [49:25]
D
Look, I. My favorite. I know I shouldn't rank them. This is probably perverse, but my favorite Eucharist of the entire year is on the first Wednesday during Clean Week during Lent because I haven't eaten for like, three days. And so I'm empty. And do you know what? My first meal Is it's the body of Christ. Can there be anything more? And that's the whole point of any fast, right, Is to understand how much you rely upon God. And by the way, this isn't a religious discussion or theological. It really is about the poem because you'll get to ask later in the poem. Does. Does Gowan kind of lose sight of this during the fasting season whenever he goes into a courtly? Remember, this is feasting time. This is a time we can have fun. But the rest of the poem is not. The rest of the poem is a fasting poem. You got to figure out what. What's going up to. Can he compartmentalize too well? So I think it's beautiful that they set it up for us and bliss to blunder, and they've gotten the circularity already baked into the poem for us. It is very much a. A Christmas poem for that very reason. But we always think of Christmas poems must be celebratory. What if. And this is important for your. Your readers, what if a Christmas poem is actually about temptation? What if a Christmas poem is actually on the meditation of the incarnation of Christ, the incarnation of God? What if it's about that and it takes you through that fasting season to get there? I think that's pretty important to the structure of the poem itself.
- [51:16]
C
Can I ask, professor, does the St. Martin's fast coincide then with Gawain's trip from Camelot to Bertilax Castle?
- [51:29]
D
When you read fit2, it actually takes you through the whole liturgical cycle. It will say, when you get through winter, then you get to Lent. It just takes you through all of the bliss and the blunder, all of the struggles and the joy that you have. I think it's meditating on it. Berlac, when you get to his castle, he apologizes for, I've just got to feed you fish. I don't have anything better for you. At the end, he'll say, come back to my castle so we can really celebrate, because this has all been this fasting stuff, and I want you to taste of the joy of this season. So I think it. I think it's. I think it's actually very crucial to the poem.
- [52:09]
A
No, I really appreciate you pointing that out. That gives us another theme to kind of track as we're working through the poem itself. I'm interested in, if we could jump to stanza four. I'm very fascinated in the character of Guinevere. So incredibly, again, I'm a neophyte here, but incredibly complicated character in the legend that is King Arthur. But here it really stood out to me. And this is the Tolkien translation, so it might be a translation issue. And I'll defer to you, professor, but he talks, or it translates here as that she has gray eyes. And anyone who comes off of, say, like, reading the Iliad in the Odyssey is going to notice that immediately. So I'm interested if it actually plays the same way Homerically. And this is why there's been good conversations. Kent's jumped in here, too, about what text they have and not so. If I remember correctly, Fagls has a really good explanation in his copy of the Iliad, in which he explains that whether he says that Athena has fiery eyes or whether she has gray eyes, it's the same word that's actually underneath there. And it's like he gives the example, which is probably why she's connected to it, of like an owl at night. So there's like this, like, grayness, this glimmer, but it's also like a fire. And I thought it was really fascinating here that. That Guinevere has gray eyes. So how are we supposed to take her eyes? And I'm just curious, how do we receive the character of Guinevere in this poem?
- [53:29]
D
All right, so I can't answer that question fully just because of plot spoilers. Just. Just so you guys know, but please do know. Women loom large in the margins of the poem. That's all I'll say. They're in the margins, but they loom incredibly large. From Guinevere to the Theotokos. I'll say that that's as far as I'm gonna go. Now, to answer your question with regards to the gray eyes, that's much easier. Gray eyes in medieval literature, clarity, wisdom of circumspection. Those are all the positive attributes which I think are being attributed to Guinevere here. He uses that. That same phrase, gray eyes, in his poem called Pearl. And it is one of the brides of Christ that he sees, and she has gray eyes as well. So I think he takes it as a positive. Although in the Middle Ages, just know this. Everything that can be taken as a positive is. Can also usually be taken as a negative. The Middle Age weren't as obsessive about the right answer as we are in modernity. I think we like our morality to be pretty clear. In the Middle Ages, I think they. We're worried of subjective readings. We're worried about what's the objective truth here. In the Middle Ages, every reading was a moral or ethical act. Which always meant it was subjective, and then it meant, how are you reading this will reveal something about yourself. So gray eyes could also mean a sort of coldness and distance as well. I don't take that from Guinevere here at all. Just so your readers know, I do take it in the positive way, because later in the poem, you'll have another reference to Guinevere about how she's the highest and most beautiful of all women. So I take her as a. As a positive character here, prudential, wise, and clear. I don't take the negative reading. I have no evidence for it in the poem at all whatsoever. But just so your readers know, women loom large in this poem. Again, marginally. But if they pay attention to it, they'll start to put the pieces together. The way in which the poem actually brings the women to the center of everything.
- [55:59]
A
Yeah, well said. Yeah. I'm actually looking forward to the role of Theotokos in fit2. I find that to be very.
- [56:04]
D
It happens quickly, so pay attention. It's not there very long, but I.
- [56:09]
A
Think it's actually crucial before I push on. George Kent, anything on your end?
- [56:15]
B
I would just say that. I think that this little reference to Guinevere, really, it's very short, but they do call her the loveliest lady. Right. And they say that no one has ever found someone more fair to summarize. Right. But later, when we get to FIT three, we're going to go back on that. Right. And we're going to say, actually, you know, there is somebody who's as fair, if not more fair. So I think that's a really important setup here. And, like, I block Dr. Jackson, I don't want to spoil anything later, but I do think that's an important note here that she's first exclaimed to be the most beautiful, and later we're gonna get somebody who's actually even more beautiful.
- [56:51]
A
Yeah, that's a good setup.
- [56:52]
D
Maybe. Maybe because. And this is the difficulty of all chivalric literature, they play stupid games, really stupid games. So it could just be part of the courtly game that you actually have to name that woman more beautiful than Guinevere. And so then it becomes a question of, well, is this. Is he just being polite? Does he mean it? Is he really sucked into this courtly game? And, you know, you bring up Tolkien, this will be important for your readers because they need to know that Tolkien's reading of Old English, because he was a Old English scholar and a Middle English scholar, his reading is essentially the same. If you Want to know his hermeneutic. It's very simple. He always saw that there was a dominant worldly culture. I don't want to call it secular, because that's not a right term for the Middle Ages, but if it helps you, great. A worldly culture. And then there's a Christian culture in the. In the Anglo Saxon age. It was a Germanic heroic ethos, a warrior culture. And he wants to know what's the way in which that culture trips up? A Christian culture? How is it seductive? How are you torn between those two in this one? Tolkien's reading is straightforward. There is a Christian culture and then there's a chivalric courtly culture. And he wants to know, how does that trip you up? Can you play those courtly games that actually go up against the Christian ethos in which you were raised? That's part of the temptation that's going on here. So. So I think that's absolutely correct to pay attention to the reference to Guinevere. I just don't know that he means it. Sure, maybe she is more beautiful, but I know he's playing the game. But it also gives me pause because then I think, well, where's your trout? Oh, that's an important word. Trout. Truth. Where's your fidelity to Guinevere? That. That's always my. Like, you're already torn. How can you say another woman is more beautiful than. Than, you know, the king's wife is beautiful? Are you really going to play that game? So there are just these two tensions that just permeate the poem in ways you can't ever imagine once you start to get into kind of the granular things there.
- [59:11]
B
Yeah, I think you're right. I think that seems to be a major theme in the poem. Right. Is that perhaps a critique of chivalry in general is that there is a potential for a lack of integrity between what's shown and what's on the inside or what's said and what's meant. Particularly, like when the green knight shows up into court, he's burying a holly bough of peace when he has really no intentions, really. Right. It's a trap. And I think that's really thematic throughout the whole poem, is that there is this potential. And that's the test. Right. Is what's on the inside matching what's on the outside and being presented.
- [59:48]
A
Yeah, I appreciate that distinction and that comparison. Tolkien mentions that in this edition. It has an essay by Tolkien, and that's one of the things that he really stresses, is that you basically have These two different, like, moral orders, if you will. You have the kind of courtly and courtesy, and it has certain things you're supposed to do. And then there is the Christian, which is supposed to be the higher. And what happens if these two become intention with one another? And I think that's a great motif to watch as we read through this is does this kind of courtly behavior ever become intention with, say, what we would expect from Christian ethics? Because I will say for me personally, like, as. And I'm still kind of a neophyte on this text. Fit one, fit two, maybe not so much, but when you get in a fit three, fit four. I was like, why? Why is he even doing this? Like, why. Why doesn't he just do X, Y or Z? Because I'm thinking from, like, a Christian ethic, like, brother, what are you doing? And I think that that tension really shows then how he's trying to navigate two different moral standards, if you will, or worlds that sometimes come into conflict. So that's a great thing for us to watch. Okay, so we talked about Guinevere. Can we talk about Arthur? Because he's one of those characters I feel like we all kind of know, but maybe we don't. And so there's a few things about Arthur that really stand out here. And so I'm particularly looking at, let's say, stanza five. So Arthur's presented almost like, boyish. He has young blood. He's very just. He's kind of vitalistic, almost just like. I don't say high on life, but. And he has these, like, interesting rituals. So the first one is he's not going to eat until everyone's been served. Okay, that's nice. But then the second one, which is fascinating, is he's not going to eat until he hears some marvelous story or sees some kind of strange sight. How is Arthur being introduced to us, and what should we know about his character?
- [61:36]
D
Well, this is kind of the question. As I mentioned before, I believe this is a Ricardian poem. And so I don't know how else to put it. I don't know if your readers want Arthur to be held up on a pedestal. I just can't do it. I think he's young. I think he's a young king, which should make sense if we have, you know, King Richard was 10 years old in 1377, and poets went after him. What does it mean to be young? What's the. Literally, I don't know how Tolkien Translated, but line 89, so busied, so stirred him in his young blood. That's simple enough. Young blood and his brain wield his restless wild mind. And also another minor custom maven influenced him ache as well. But it's even worse than what you've said. It's not just he needs a story but it says later it says on line 96 if you just. If you just went one line more. This is disturbing order some sage until some man him be salt of some sicker connect who beside of some true knight. This is what he's waiting for. To join with him in jousting. To join with him in jousting. And that doesn't just mean on the horse jousting. That can just be mean army play in y to lay in jeopardy to to go at one another later. For a man leaf look at this line. Leaf for leaf, life for life lave uchon other to allow the other one as fortune wold fulsen as fortune would help home them the fitter to have. Let's see who fortune. Not God, mind you. And I don't know how Tolkien. Tolkien's translation is Tolkien's translation. He creates a fairy world. I think he probably over Christianizes things at a certain point.
- [63:50]
B
I think the poem say fortune as well.
- [63:53]
D
It says that's wonderful. Great.
- [63:54]
B
Yeah.
- [63:57]
D
But what we see here with Arthur is it's not just I want a good story. So I'm not going to eat until everybody eats and we go, oh, oh, that's a really nice king. We all have learned. My mommy taught me that like, if you're at a table until everyone served, you do not pick up a fork in any way, shape or form. Great. That's. That's what Arthur's position is. But then it's. He wants a good story. I'm good with that. And it turns out with the Green Knight, he gets everything right. And then it's or else to watch one night go after another. A life for a life. This. This to me, and this isn't a Christian reading, this just seems over the top to me. Like, is this really what we're going to do? Maybe that's what they're imagining. But is this what we do in. In the Nativity? Is this what our fun is all about? And it turns out everything's fulfilled because he's a young man. Isn't this what young man want to see? I'm an old man. Everyone can see the gray in my beard. I don't want this anymore. I. I dislocate a shoulder slipping on ice for the love of God. I don't, I don't, I don't want any of this stuff. I pull a hamstring tying my shoes, I want nothing to do with this. That's why this is not the old gray, wise Arthur, this is a young Arthur who actually, he likes this stuff. He wants this stuff and he gets all of it. He gets a life for life and a good story.
- [65:23]
A
That's a fascinating read. Oh, go ahead, go ahead Ken.
- [65:25]
B
Sorry. I was going to say I would love to hear George's thought on this stanza because when I read through this my mind instantly goes to Lewis's essay on chivalry that George talks about quite a bit, right, because the first line is he wouldn't eat until they were served and there's the manners, the chivalry customs and then as Dr. Jackson talks about, then he wants the more thematic, the most part of it, right? He wants the, the challengers, the, the jousting, the great stories. And so I think that you see both elements of Lewis's chivalric ideals there, right? You have the manners and the fierceness presented there for Arthur and I thought George might have some thoughts on that too.
- [66:08]
C
Well, as professor was speaking I was reminded of what he said earlier about this unresolved relationship between certain vices and virtues and this seems to me to be a really good example. So yeah, there are clearly some problems, as the professor pointed out in Arthur's custom here but at the same time, is it fair to say that these are the kinds of vices that do lend themselves to virtues that might be really necessary when you are living in a really dangerous world? I mean, you want a highly spirited king at the helm, do you not.
- [66:58]
D
In the Hundred Years War? No, this is why you get a peasants revolt. Are you kidding me? I don't think so, but I agree with you George. I think there is praise. Look, look at what it says about him. It says, but Arthur would not ate till all were served. Of course he was so jolly, he was so lively of his jolliness, his youth. But here's the line and somewhat chilgared, somewhat childish there that the poet can't help but to give us always two stories of these characters. So on the one hand I agree with you, Arthur is, is great. Do I think he's right? And we'll get there eventually but just to answer your question or your objections, do I think he's right to stand up to the Green Knight who's come in here, talk trash and insulted them? Yes. What else do you do? Some knight Cannot come in there and talk like that. I get it. Do I think he's somewhat childish in the way in which he's going to deal with it? I do. I think it's completely unchivalric by the terms of the pentangle that you will find on Gowan's night. So I think this is part of the poet's whole game plan. I think this is an entire poem predicated upon temptation. It wants to give you two readings throughout and then it wants to see which one are you going to appropriate. So in some ways, George, I agree with you 100%. And then on the other hand, I disagree with you 100%. But that's kind of the difficulty of the thing that gets thrown into our lap. And it turns out that if you're a king of a nation, if you're any politician, and you have to abide by one principle, we'll just call it a Christian principle or another principle. A principle of the state, man. Good luck with that. This is. There's a reason why clergy for the longest time haven't been allowed to take political office. It's for that very reason. They don't want to put us in that situation. There was a reason in the ancient world, Christians weren't trusted to be in the army because you're asking them to do one of two things and they're afraid they're going to choose the Christian over the earthly. I think this is actually what the poem is setting up for for us, though. I agree with you 100%. And just so everybody knows, so I can put my cards on the table, I think Arthur and Godwin mess up everything in fit1. It will be revisited in fit4. I'm sad I can't come back to talk about all of this after everyone's read everything. I think it'll all be resolved for us that there's maybe a slight mistake. Eve, pay attention. In fit 2, notice the court's criticism of Arthur. The court has a criticism of Arthur. Please pay attention to that. I think it's really actually quite important, but I'm not disagreeing with you.
- [70:00]
A
I think one thing that I'm coming to appreciate here as you. As you talk, and George's comments as well, because I also would be drawn to the thematic side to praise that, particularly because of all the challenges that we have now in our own culture of just a complete lack of thumos, of being spirited in any kind of satiation towards, like, nobility and victory and glory and these types of things. One thing, though, that I'm coming to appreciate as you speak is the character is being presented as conflicted, as not being able to be black and white, as having these kind of. This internal tensions, whether it's Aeneas or King Arthur or even Guinevere. There's something intentioned here. And I think as you presented it, there's a temptation of how then are you going to read this character? But holding them, I'm assuming, then holding them. Intention and also being able to see what the tension is is also where the pedagogy is. What is. Where's the lesson that the poet's trying to teach us?
- [70:58]
D
I think that's it. And we're not. I'm not looking for an Aristotelian, gray, golden mean. I'm not. I'm looking for that tension. And how do we look, man, as Christians, that's. For me, you guys are probably far better than I. But for me, that's my entire existence. I can go this way. I can go this way. I don't choke. I do not choose that middle route. I don't buy the middle route. So I get the praise of Arthur. I get the. The desire for and the need for that glory, but only it particular times in which it's appropriate. I'll go one step further. I think what Arthur suggests now I'll just scandalize everybody, which is fine. I think what Arthur suggests is both unchristian and unchivalrous by the very terms of the poem. What he suggests that Gowan do, I think. I think our Arthur suggests cowardice through and through by a chivalric ethos which ties itself in the pentangle and fit two that it all has to be brought together. The pentangle represents for your readers the blending of the chivalric and the Christian. I think what the poet's asking is, can you do it? Tolkien says, absolutely not. I think Tolkien jumps on one of the black or white sides. I'm interested in asking, can we actually do this? And if we can, what does that look like? I would obviously tend more towards the Christian than I would the chivalric, because I think the chivalric gets us in all sorts of messes. But I think we have to be careful with regards to abelicosity in late 14th century England because they're taxing for foreign wars. And you have poets who are fighting against it completely. William Langland absolutely, positively goes after the king because he's taxing English people to go kill other Christians in France. He throws up his hands, like, what are we even doing here? Like this isn't the Crusades any longer, like we're fighting our own. So I just leave that simply because I don't know how to resolve it in the poem other than to talk about temptation and to think about what are the temptations. Perhaps ready. Perhaps my temptation is to violate or to be too much of one who's a Misericordia according to Augustine. Perhaps my temptation is to be too merciful. Perhaps my temptation with regards to the. The pentangle is pite, pity, which also means piety. Great. I will abide by that. I will abide by that accusation. But what we're given in this poem, I think is really a darn near impossibility of how to live as a Christian knight. That's why I find it so delicious. I would love to think it's just a step by step process of a life to virtue. And I think it is, it just means you have a step, but then you have crocodiles, you have another step and you have king cobras. Then you. In other words, those are difficult steps, man. You got to work through those things.
- [74:27]
A
I'll stop in, in your critique there. Are you using chivalry in the chivalric as a synonym for this kind of like courtly behavior and courtesy? Are those, are those two the same when you speak?
- [74:40]
D
Yes, I, I can, I can uphold that because one of the five virtues of the pentangle actually is cortia, like how do we interact with one another? I, I, Let me just say this. If I were rude to George just now, I would beg for his forgiveness. I didn't mean that. Please forgive me. That's all, that's all courtesia means. If he's higher up than I. You're my host. I defer to you. You, I, I feel like. Oh, I'm talking too long. Shut up. Defer to your host. That's cortisia. You understand the rules of the house, the rules of the Lord, and you abide by it. I find that really fascinating that this poet wants to bring cortisia into the Christian tradition, the Christian virtuous tradition even, because all of his other ones are very easy. Franchise is generosity. Fellowship is love of fellow man. Clanness is cleanness is spiritual purity. Pite is pity. But he throws in cortacea and he means it. That's the perfect image of that pentangle. And that's where we start. And this is where I think Tolkien taps into it all. I think it's with, with Tolkien, he, I think he really wants to know what does that virtue of cortosia actually look like in a Christian tradition? And can it uphold the chivalric tradition? I think Tolkien's quite dubious of that. I may be dubious of these other virtues that can actually be held up in the chivalric tradition as well. And I think Gowan or I think Arthur clearly demonstrates, I don't know how many of these virtues he actually upholds, holds in any way, shape or form.
- [76:27]
A
Yeah, my own. My own inclination there is. Or what I would hope is that. Because I think we see positive examples of the chivalric as well, that the higher always perfects the lower. So you would hope then, right, that the. The Christian ethic, this virtue, this. This moral realm, when it has attention with, you know, cortosia, with this, like, chivalric side, that it would then perfect it and take it up into itself. Right. Like, you see this with, like, for instance, Saint Maximus the Confessor will talk about that. The Christian has to also be thematic, but his thematic has to be tempered by gentleness and kindness. But that's very different than saying, don't be thematic. Those two things are very different. To be thematic and then be bridled by a certain kindness or gentleness is very different than saying, well, the thematic is incompatible. So it's interesting as you talk about these two kind of moral codes, my hope would be is that the Christian one can take up in the chivalric, which is things that actually, at times, I think it really needs, if that makes sense.
- [77:35]
D
Well, you're quoting Maximus, so now you're just speaking to my heart on this one. In the monastic tradition, you either have the Stoic tradition, which is a suppression of the passions, or the Maximian position, which really is the conversion of the passions towards those things which are good. I think that's exactly what this poem is about. How can you take the Christian and work it into the chivalric? I think it can be done. I don't know that this. Well, actually, I think this poem does it beautifully in manifold ways. I don't know that Tolkien thinks it can be done in this poem in particular.
- [78:15]
A
So I want to be cognizant of time. So do you. Do you want to lead us into then, obviously, the appearance of the Green Knight?
- [78:23]
D
So obviously we need part two, but I will try to do it as quickly as possible. Here's what I would tell your readers to pay attention to. When the Green Knight shows up, all I need you to do is meditate. And if you can read it in the Middle English, you'll see how the poet's doing it, you have to think in two ways. Either his greenness or his nightliness. Those are the only two ways to read him when he shows up. Even our narrator, he says bizarre things. It's all these dualities. That's why I take dualities as temptations. You can choose one or the others. It will say, you know, I believed he was a half giant half a time. I think, is the Middle English half giant? The next line. The next line. But he was a man, just taller than everyone else. You go, so which one is he? Is he a giant or is he a man? Okay, that's the first step. We know what his clothes look like. He's decked out, man. He's got ermine fur. I mean, he's in soft clothes. This dude is loaded. He's clearly a noble. He is walking into a castle as a nobleman. And guess how he ought to be treated as a nobleman, full stop, if he's not. If you see his greenness, you do not treat him as a nobleman. If you see his nobleness, you will treat him as a nobleman. Now, I'm gonna probably irritate George here because guess how Arthur sees him. Arthur sees him. The first word he says is we, which means sir, man. He does not see the greenness. He says, step down. Come sit down with us. Talk with us for a little bit. There's your franchise. There's your courtliness. There's your generosity. Hang out with us, man. Like you just kicked in our doors on your green horse, decked out, barefooted, for the love of God, barefooted. And you came bursting in here. Please step down and talk with us. Okay, how do Arthur's men respond? It says the poem, makes it explicit. Again, I don't know according to the translations, but I know what the Middle English says, says when the men saw him. And this is just his upon his entering. He hasn't said anything. The poet doesn't even make us aware of his battle axe. It just says, when he walked in, the men wondered who could ever withstand a blow from this man. Well, what are they already thinking about? They're already thinking about violence. So now what am I trying to do? I'm trying to create actually a separation between Arthur, who's somewhat childish, bold, in the brain, reckless. They see him as a monstrosity. This is a green guy, not Arthur sees him as a knight. Let's treat him as a knight. And he does. I think that's really important. And as you guys go through the language carefully, just know that the narrator is tempting you the entire time. He's giving you these double visions the entire time. Ready? Think about this. Someone brought up the holly bob. How many lines are given to The Holly Bob? 2. In one hand, he held a holly bob, which we know, he tells us is a symbol of peace. Great. In the other hand, he holds up an axe. That's 18 lines of a description of the axe. Which one, as a reader, are you focusing on? And remember, please go back. As a medievalist, I know how they read texts. They. They read them as moral tests. Which one do you focus on? The holly bob or the axe? I know, for me, I'm looking at the axe. It's beautiful. One of my favorite lines at the end of it, it says, it's made this way in full gracious workus. Full gracious works. It just means beautiful works. But I take that gracious again, quite literally. You readers pay attention to that line. All right, so how are they understanding it? Well, what happens? The green knight tells them, you can know by this holly bob, I come here in peace. I want nothing to do with you. I don't have a helmet. I don't have a halberd. I don't have a spear. I don't have a sword. I'm here in soft clothes. That's it. Were I were, I gathered, like this. Nobody here in all that war apparel, no one could match me. Like, this isn't even a contest. This is where Arthur goes off a little bit, I think, because he says, you want to fight? I'll give you a fight. And the green knight, and I think he's goofing on him. I think this is part of the temptation. He's talking trash just to prick him, egg him on. He's like, what? I didn't say anything about a fight. I don't want to fight. I just want to come here to play a game. It's a simple game. If. And then that's whenever he tempts them all. If I wanted to come here for a fight, it would be no fight. I would destroy you all. I always think of this scene as like the Terminator when he goes into the biker bar. That's what the green knight would do to all of these guys. It wouldn't even be close. That's what he's letting them know. And Arthur's men say nothing. That's cowardice. They do nothing. They sit there. I hope you guys see what I'm doing. They're not being chivalrous. They're not standing up this guy's talking trash in their house. Now. You got to say something. You got to do something here. And it's up to Arthur. It's up to. Yeah, yeah. One of the questions.
- [84:29]
A
Yeah, One of the questions that I had here, not being familiar some of the culture, is, is that how we read that, that. That the Round Table is. Is being cowardice in the face of the Green Knight? And then Arthur is the only one who has the bravery, the. The Thumas to step up and say something? Or are the knights supposed to defer to Arthur to respond? Does that make sense? I was trying to understand. How do you read. How do you read the silence of the Knights of the Round Table?
- [84:54]
D
They're cowards. They see this big green knight. Their first thought was again, before he. They even mentioned the axe. Their thought is, when he comes in, no one could abide by a blow from this man. And it's true, he's bigger than they are. We're told he could be a giant, but he's just a really big guy. They want nothing to do with him. And now he's talking trash. Well, who, who's going to stand up for this? None of them do. And then it says the, the blood shot to Arthur's face. Like if you're a knight, like, you do everything in honor of your king. And these guys all sit there quiet like it would be like some. I don't know. I. I don't know about you guys, and maybe I'm too drawn into this world, but if someone talks trash to my wife, I don't care how big they are. I don't care. I don't care what they're wielding. I'll go down, but I'll. I'll go down in flames, baby. I'm not abiding by that. And they all cower out again. I think Arthur's right to step up and say, we're not doing this, not in any way, shape or form. And I think the Green Knight is just packing a fight. I think he's egging them on. Totally incomplete. So don't get me wrong, I think he's tempting them to go and do the very thing they're about to go and do. He wants that. He needs that. But I also think it has to be freely chosen. That's why I don't think this is a beheading game. He never says, come, cut off my head like they do in the old Irish Bricus feast. He doesn't do that. His. The terms of the game are very clear. Let's play stroke for stroke. He never says, cut off my head. The game is clear. You give me a blow, I give you a blow with whatever weapon you choose. That's his clarifying term or Gowan's clarifying term. Stroke for stroke. That's it. But that's a brutal game that he's asking him to play. He's sucking them in. He's got him. I think he's got him. And again, I don't want to keep going because we know how the poem ends, but not all your readers do. When they're done, please go back and read fit one and go through these lines very, very, very carefully and keep temptation on the back of your mind, because he knows exactly what he's up to.
- [87:13]
A
George, are you going to jump in there?
- [87:15]
C
Yeah. I was just curious. So, professor, you had said earlier that you were very disapproving of, and I don't recall exactly what you said, but you were very disapproving of something Arthur had done in the first fit.
- [87:31]
A
But what was that?
- [87:32]
C
Specifically? Because you say that he is correct to respond to the Green Knights challenge here in some way. What was the particular thing that you were critiquing earlier?
- [87:42]
D
I don't know that I'm disapproving, but I find it an odd thing that he wants to wait for everyone to be fed. He wants a good story. Avantur. But then he Sundays, or for two men to fight life for life out of fun. I'm sorry, I, I just draw a line there. I, I think that's. I think that's excessive. I think that's a very. I think that's a very childish king. I'll let you continue.
- [88:09]
C
I, I thought you had referenced that you disapproved of a way in which he handles this challenge from the Green Knight. So if I misunderstood, I just want.
- [88:19]
D
To have that clarified.
- [88:20]
B
I thought you had meant earlier that when he tells Gallein to chop his head off. Right. Because you mentioned that he doesn't. The knight doesn't make that as part of the terms. But Arthur tells G, hey, if you just take his head off here, you won't get a. A wound next year. And I, I thought that's what you were referencing when you were disapproving of unchivalrous activity.
- [88:39]
D
I'm doing both, actually. Yes. Because what do you get if Gowan cuts his head off? It's a life for life. I hope you guys see what I'm trying to do here. On the one hand, Arthur wants life for life. He Can. He wants everyone to be fed. He wants a good story. He wants. Or a game in jeopardy. Life for life. The green knight shows up. Great story. Now let's have at it, baby. But the knight only says, let's play stroke for stroke. You give me a stroke, I give you one back. And he uses that. The poet uses the beheading game as a background, I think, to tempt readers to think it's a beheading game. But you gotta show me where the green knight ever says a beheading game. I don't think he does, but I also think he's tempting him precisely towards a beheading game. So. So banished. Kent, you're absolutely correct. When. When Arthur starts warming up with the ax and then he says, hey, cousin, I think if you cut through him smoothly. No, I'm sorry. If you read him right. If you read him. Read him Richt. If you read him right. Or it could mean. If you deal with him justly. But that's a part of irony, and no one will get that until you read the entire poem. But if you read him correctly, if you understand him in his terms, just cut off his head and we'll be done. Insert coin. Game over. We're finished. Don't show him any mercy. Cut off his head and we're done. That's Arthur's response to a knight who talks trash but who simply asks for a game. Stroke for stroke. That's it. Do I think. Ready?
- [90:18]
A
I'll.
- [90:19]
D
I'll just say this. Do I think the green knight wants them to cut off his head? I do, but I think there are certain pedagogical reasons why he wants them to cut off his head. I think he wants to. I think he wants to catch them. And I'll. I'll stop there in. And. Deacon, you can see why I'm trying to hesitate here in the poem. No, I.
- [90:41]
A
No, I appreciate that. There's two things that I note. One is the green knight's posture. So when King Arthur takes the axe, the green knight does not kneel and does not put his neck out. And so I think that's really interesting, the making distinction between a beheading game and stroke for stroke. Because then Arthur makes his comment. And then the green knight, when Gawain has the axe, does kneel and offer his neck. Right. And then there's a fantastic line on how that works. But I guess I. I'm. I'm. Maybe I've fallen into the temptation that Arthur falls into. Or maybe I just don't understand the Literary trope. But is there any. Is there any limit on stroke for stroke? Because you're correct. He doesn't say beheading game. He doesn't say like, cut off my head. But obviously, if some guy walks in full of Fae magic, this green guy and a green horse, etcetera, and says, you get to hit me first and then I hit you, is there any limiting factor that they're like. For instance, it would make sense to me if it was like, I'm going to hit you the same way you hit me. And then they cut off his head and then it's like, oh, guess what? I'm not dead. You gave in that some kind of temptation to kill me, and now it's coming back on you. But my read is that Gawain can't just go up and like, you know, knock the green knot on the head and say thanks, because then he might get killed in return. Correct? Or is there any limiting factor here?
- [91:55]
D
Okay, great. So you guys have all felt my students frustration because you're reading the poem literally. Do you know how many translations actually render it? Come cut my head off. They all do. But it doesn't say it anywhere. Not only that, but it says, I want to play a game, stroke for stroke. Whoever plays it, come take this axe from me as a gift. It's clear in the Middle English. It's a literal translation I'm giving to you. Then three lines later he says, who's ever brave enough, leap quickly to me and take this weapon. I hope you guys understand what I'm trying to do here. There's a doubleness. On the one hand, the ax was supposed to just simply be a gift for even playing the game. Who's brave enough to do it? Whoever's brave enough to do it, take this gift from me. It's your battle axe to keep forever. Whoever's brave enough, come take this weapon from me. What do you think the Green Knight wants him to do? Use the axe as a. As a weapon. The gift as a weapon. Okay. When Gowan repeats the contract to him, and they make sure they do this, which is also part of the Fae magic that you refer to. Contract is always in there. Always. Growth, healing, temptation.
- [93:13]
B
Contract.
- [93:13]
D
Okay. Gowan says, I will give you a blow. And in one year's time, you will give me a blow. Ready with whatever weapon you choose. Which. That means Gowan's part of his deal. He can use whatever weapon he wants. So I propose to students, and Deacon, you've already seen the problem in all of this. Is that I tell the students, so what could he use? Like, give me something that we can do in the. In the student. I'm like, be creative. And the students will say, well, just take the butt of the ax and hit his bare foot. I'm like, yeah, that's a great idea. Some students will say, well, just be a smart aleck and take the holly bob and a sense of irony and smack him across the face a little. Since we're here at the eve of St. Nicholas, just pull a little arius on him. Just smack him with it, right? Whatever you want. Hit him in the belly with it. But you bring up the point, Deacon, to say, right, but then he gets to hit you back however he wants. Correct? You have to have faith in a chivalric order. If I show you mercy, are you going to show me mercy? You came in here talking trash. You insulted my king.
- [94:22]
A
I see the night.
- [94:24]
D
You're clearly of the chivalric order. I have certain chivalric deeds I have to abide by. There's a certain ethos here. And Arthur says, cut his head off. The green Gowan has multiple options. But what does it mean? I hope you guys understand. I'm not trying to disparage Gowan. Maybe Arthur, but not Gawain. Gawain steps up for his king. Gallon puts his life on the line. He puts his life on the line for him. And then what does it mean? If he wants to be a smart aleck and smack him, then you're. You're right, Deacon. The green knight can take an ax and cut his head off by the terms of the contract, you're absolutely correct. So the question becomes, would you rather die with Pite franchise a chivalric order and a Christian ethos and put the burden on the other individual? Or do you want a preemptive killing that violates those things? Because he actually has it, in any sense of the contrary, said he's going to kill you. It's just simply stroke for stroke. I hope. I really do hope your audience understands what I'm trying to do. Here's a long meditation.
- [95:36]
A
No, I appreciate the juxtaposition because it's helping me to recontextualize, at least from this perspective you've presented, that where does Arthur error and so him just telling Gowan, then just cut his head off and be done with it. But what's interesting about that, though, is, like. Is that a failure not only of, like, the Christian ethic, but also of the chivalric right? That would be an error of Both.
- [95:58]
D
Because it's an error of both. I agree. And Gawain commits an error of both from his king. Again, if I want to be political, which I don't with this poem, I'm more Christian than I am political. But that's a strong political statement. A king will lead you down it. Not any king, but a bad king will lead you down a bad path. They will tell you to do things. You ought not be doing that.
- [96:22]
A
So this contextualizes your comment earlier to George about where the thematic. I guess the way I would phrase it is where the thematic overrules prudence. So just cut off his head is a very thematic statement, but maybe it's an imprudent one by both the chivalric code and the Christian ethic.
- [96:43]
D
But just again, I think it's an impossible situation. I tell my students if I'm Gowen, I do exactly what he did. I guess I'd be a coward and unchristian. But if I've got this big green guy in front of me who literally lifts his hair and shows you his neck, he wants this. And what I want your readers to understand is the green Knight wants this. He's not really giving him a way out here, though. He's giving them ways out here. He wants them to cut off his head. He needs them to cut off his head. I just don't know that they have to cut off his head. They'll get it by the end of the poem.
- [97:20]
A
This is wonderful. Okay, Kent, what did you have to say?
- [97:22]
B
Sorry, I just had a couple of thoughts on this because I really think this is the heart of the first fit here. I wanted to note that he does say to Gowing right before Gowing makes his swing, as they're kind of re. Summarizing. Right.
- [97:37]
D
Give me the line.
- [97:39]
B
Sorry, I don't have line numbers on my version, but this is in the 18th stanza, kind of. Kind of halfway through the 18th. Stand. No, towards like a third.
- [97:49]
D
I'm good. I got you.
- [97:51]
B
Okay. So he says to him, at least in the Tolkien translation, that he's going to. When he tells him to come and find him. Right. He's telling him that he can go ask around for him, and then he'll fetch thee such payment as thou deliverest me today. And so I do think that there is maybe some reciprocal note there, Right. That you're going to get what you give me here. It reminds me of Luke 6. 38. Right. That given. It shall be given unto you good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. Right. Measure for Measure shall be committed back to you. And I think that's part of the theme here, is that whatever Gowing meets out here is going to be meted back to him and the judgment that's coming towards the end. The other part that I was going to say on this section here is I do think you're absolutely right that he doesn't have to cut off his head here. And I think that that connects back to the Troy reference that we have at the very beginning. Right. Achilles has a choice to make. He can go to Troy and have glory, but a short life. He's going to die. It's going to lead to his death, or he can not go to Troy. He won't live as gloriously, but he will have a longer life. And so I do think that there's that connection here. I think it's a nod between Galleon and Achilles that Gallian, like Achilles has to make a choice in this instance. And I think part of the meditation of the poem here is what. What can be done in a Christian framework for demonic men who do want to make that choice. Right. And reach out for that? What hope is there for them within that?
- [99:27]
C
Right.
- [99:28]
B
I see you shaking your head.
- [99:30]
D
Well, I just mean, I don't know, except one of the five virtues is pity, Pity, franchise, friendliness. I just. And again, Gowan's in an impossible situation. If he exercises pite, there's no guarantee it's reciprocated in one year. Take his head off. And that's just simply what we know. And I want your readers to pay attention to this. And I'm not giving anything away. I want you to mark next to line 425. And if you have any access to the Middle English, and you should online, please look it up next to that line. I want you to write in the line 23:13. I'm not going to say anything other than that. Other than this poet is obsessive about symmetry and about reciprocation, because this poem is all about reciprocation. It's about giftedness and what that actually looks like, I think, in the Christian tradition, not the chivalric tradition. In many ways, I just align with Tolkien on these things. I just have taken Tolkien, I think, to his logical conclusion as I go through the entire. The entire poem and it irritates people.
- [100:50]
A
Kent or George, Any other comments?
- [100:54]
C
If we don't want to jump to this point, then just let me know. But I was wondering, professor, do you have thoughts on the, the. The new requirements that the Green Knight Places on Gawain to find him. What in the world are we to make of that? Because that's a pretty wild demand to attach to this game. Now, it's been taken to a whole nother level at this point, let me say.
- [101:25]
D
I'll answer that in two ways. One is the cheap way, which I don't buy, but that's okay because it's part of the quest genre. You got to give him a quest and you can't give him a blueprint for it. He's got to go into the wild, blah, blah, blah. And do I think it works here nicely? I do. And that's fine. But I think the other half of it has to do something with. My students are always taken aback because the first question they ask is, why does he even go to go do this thing? Like, if you're fighting a green guy who can pick up his head after you've played soccer with it, like, do you really have to abide by those words? If you want to talk about Fae magic, do you really have to participate with Fae magic something that can regrow itself? Like, why are. This is demonic? Why are you even doing this? So my students ask that. And for me, my response is, you have to realize how important just the word in Middle English is forward. It just means agreement or contract. Look at how many times it's been being used. There's a real sense of fidelity in this text. And so I tell my students, Gowan cannot be a green knight if he's not going to be faithful. He made his word and he kept it. And even unto death. Gowan's a good knight. I'm sorry, I. I just. I reject criticism that is just overly harsh with Gowan. Does he make mistakes? Yes. Can I give you all the virtues that he does in this poem? Absolutely. Can I show you his mistakes? I can do. I think beheading the green knight is a mistake. I do. Do I understand it? I do. Would I make the same mistake? I would. I hope you guys all understand that the poet is bringing up an impossibility for us that I don't know how we handle. But that to me seems to be the whole ethos of a medieval way of reading. Because we all insert ourselves here and we read ourselves into the text. I can see the way in which I would make manifold mistakes because it sets us up for that. So. And without giving anything away here in the text, this. This is just how I go about reading it. I'm sympathetic with Gowan and this is going to sound terrible. I actually admire the Green Knight. I think he's a great tempter. I think. I think he is about as noble a tempter as one. He is the most chivalric tempter I could ever imagine. I'll say that and then I'll leave it at that. With regards to the Green.
- [104:09]
A
Can I ask one question here towards the very end? The Tolkien one does not have line number. So in the. This is the 20th stanza. I'm really interested in the response. Right. So he's. He's cut off the Green Knight's head. The Green Knight then goes and picks his head up and he, you know, calls out to him. He has to come back to him a year and a day. I'm really interested in the response of both Arthur and Sir Gawain. So it says at the end of 20, in that kind of like five line section at the end, it says, meanwhile, the King and Sir Gawain at the Green Knight laugh and smile. That's not the reaction that I think most of us would have. They laugh and smile. And then 21 starts with. Though Arthur, the High King, in his heart marveled, he let no sign of it be seen, but said then aloud to the Queen, so comely and courteous words, Dear lady, today do not be downcast at all. Such cunning play well becomes the Christmas tide. How do we take the response of Gowan and Arthur here at the end? I found them both fascinating.
- [105:20]
D
I take Gowans, that the king and Gawain there, at that grain, they laugh and they grain, they grin. I take that laughing and grinning in two very different ways. Ways I. I take. I take Gowins is like, oh, God, no. Arthur's is slightly different. I think Arthur's is probably something along the lines of when you laugh and grin because you're embarrassed, you're trying to cover things. And I think the text makes that pretty clear to us. And it was that Tolkien's translation. It's a very good translation. That's a very good literal translation, by the way. That's great. Yeah. The courteous. The hand of King. The courteous king in heart had wonder, like, he doesn't know what's going on here, but he wants to do one thing. He wants to talk to his queen to say, don't be bothered by this. I can't say any more again. Maybe after you guys get done with all four fits, maybe we can come back and do another one after we finished it, because this is all just completely delicious. This is a poet that you can't you can't not read his poems but twice. You can never read them. One time, it's like the movie with the surprise ending and you just go back and you go, oh, there it is. Oh, there it is. Oh, there it is. Once you get through the quest and all of Gowan's tests, you come back to this and you're like, oh, I see it. So I'll leave this with. I think it's very important that Arthur is consoling his wife, Queen Guinevere. I'll leave it at that. With his laughing and his grinning.
- [107:07]
A
Okay, very good. Yeah, you've given us a lot to think about with motifs and little hints of what to look for in fits 2 through 4 as we continue through this text for either the good professor or for Kent or for George. Anything else, any final comments on fit1 or anything that you think that we should be looking at as our readers kind of move on towards fits 2, 3 and 4?
- [107:30]
B
I would just say on these lines we just talked about, you know, I think that really they really encapsulate what we were talking about earlier with the difference between what's shown and what's on the inside. And I think that's really the temptation that the knight is setting up here. And that's the test. Right. Is that on, on the, the surface, Camelot and Arthur's knights, they seem like they are the best of the best and they have these chivalric virtues. And the question that he wants to get at is, is, does that go beyond skin deep as well? Right. Is it just an appearance or is there something beyond that? And I think the, the fact that we've let in a little bit that they're, they're smiling and laughing on the outside, but on the inside, Arthur's heart marveled shows that there is maybe a discrepancy there. And I think that really plays importantly into Galwain's trials later in the book.
- [108:22]
A
George, any, any final comments on your end?
- [108:25]
C
Yeah, I just wanted to, if I could read a passage about Gawain from Tolkien's essay, which I think is a, is a good way of.
- [108:40]
D
Just thinking.
- [108:41]
C
About Gawain as we go into the rest of the play. Says he takes up the challenge to rescue the king from the false position in which his rashness has placed him. Gawain's motive is not pride in his own prowess, not boastfulness, not even the light hearted frivolity of knights making absurd bets and vows in the midst of the Christmas revels. His motive is a humble one, the protection of Arthur, his elder kinsman of his king, of the head of the round table, from indignity and peril, and the risking instead of himself, the least of the knights, as he declares, and the one whose loss could most easily be endured. He is involved, therefore, in the business as far as it was possible to make the fairy story go as a matter of duty and humility and self sacrifice. And since the absurdity of the challenge could not wholly be got rid of absurdity, that is, if the story is to be conducted on a serious moral plane in which every action of the hero, Gawain, is to be scrutinized and morally assessed, the king himself is criticized both by the author as narrator and by the lords of the court. Yeah, I just, I think those are. That's a, that's a lovely description of the hero who we're about to follow into this really unexpected, wild, crazy adventure.
- [110:13]
D
I agree 100%. I agree 100% there. That, that's. I think that's all spot on. I. I love Gowan. In my youth, not so much, but as I've gotten older, yes, I love him. I think everything he does. Here's the only thing I would ask your readers to pay attention to at the end of the poem. Pay attention to what Gowan has to say about himself with a revelation, and then ask yourself, how does that comport with FIT one? Gowan is going to do something wrong. Gowan will admit to do something wrong. And then I would just simply ask you, does that play out in FIT one? That would be it. But I agree with George a hundred percent. With everything he just read there, I think it's spot on. But that's also. That's a very delicate, nuanced reading that Tolkien has there.
- [111:08]
A
No. Well said. Well, I, I deeply appreciate it. I appreciate all of your comments, Professor. I appreciate the comments from Kent and George. George as well. You know, I am a neophyte on this text, but it's a text that I love. It's just one that captures my imagination. I love reading it around Christmas time. But as we know, knowledge is an antecedent to love. So the more you guys have shown me what's in this text, the more I actually just find myself being drawn into it and wanting to really experience it. I think you guys have given us a lot of things to think about as we move into fit 2, 3 and 4. I'm actually really excited to read those over the next couple of years weeks as I'm kind of keeping all these Things in my head. So again, Professor Jackson, I just want to say thank you so much for all of your insights and for being with us today. Where can people find out more about you and your work?
- [111:56]
D
I'm at Hillsdale Edu. You already announced my substack. I have a bunch of online courses in biblical lit. I have one lecture at the online course on Sir Gawain of the Green Knight. Don't go watch it until you finish this one because it will be plot spoilers the entire. It's just one. Like they gave me, I don't know, 30 minutes to do the entire poem. Yeah. Thank you. I tried my best but. But that's about it. I hope everybody loves it. I. I just find it to be a phenomenal poem and just. Just great spiritual food for us. Especially in this time of season now.
- [112:31]
A
Yeah. Again, thank you so much, George. Anything on. On your end? Where can people come and find you.
- [112:35]
C
And your project.com chivalry guild?
- [112:40]
A
You also have a good substack. Yeah.
- [112:42]
D
Yeah.
- [112:42]
A
You have really good things. You've brought a lot. Again, I'm in your debt because I think you posting about a lot of these things showed a gap in my own kind of Great books tradition and so kind of reading these things. I'm very much in your debt for bringing some of these amazing texts to my mind.
- [112:55]
C
Well, I. I'm late to them myself so I am just trying to.
- [113:02]
B
Share.
- [113:02]
C
Some things that I wish had been shared with me for all those years that I was miseducated.
- [113:09]
A
That's a beautiful way to phrase it.
- [113:10]
C
I'm.
- [113:10]
A
I'm reading a lot of these texts now to my children and it's amazing to me to think that they're getting exposed to these texts at a young age because again, yeah, I. I did not know. I did not really even understand the great Books tradition at all. Not any particular text, just in general until I was probably in my mid-20s. Maybe going through graduate school was my first real exposure to them. Kent, obviously you've got an excellent account on X. You're sharing some esoteric quotes, some Christmas memes. Anything else that people can come and find you.
- [113:40]
B
Yeah, like. Like Deacon Garlic said, mostly I'm on X. I do have a substack. I haven't posted anything on there. It's kind of up and coming. I've got a bunch of essays that are part way written that I just need to tie off and start putting on there. People would probably find interesting. Some of my. My older threads that I used to post on there. So if you just go on to my exit account and search for Beowulf or search for Shakespeare, you know, things will pop up that might interest you. But yeah, for the most part, I'm pretty light hearted posting on there.
- [114:08]
A
All right, Very good. Well again, gentlemen, I deeply appreciated the conversation this evening. I learned a lot. You invited me to a deeper love and gratitude for this text. Next week we will be discussing fit 2 and 3 with Tiffany Schubert of Wyoming Catholic College. So we'll see everyone next week. Go check us out on x and thegreatbookspodcast.com YouTube, I think, or even on Facebook if I remember that it exists every once in a while. And check out our Patreon page where we have written guides to the great books and also a community chat on Plato. We will see you next week. Thank you all.