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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Fitts 2 and 3 with Dr. Tiffany Schubert
02:09:28
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- [00:00]
A
Today on the Sin the Great Books Podcast, we're continuing our journey through Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by discussing fits 2 and 3 with Dr. Tiffany Schubert of Wyoming Catholic College alongside our friends from X George of the Chivalry Guild and Banish Kent. It's an excellent conversation on many different themes. We talk about time. We talk about the mysterious pentangle that's on the outside of Sir Gowan's shield. We talk about what's inside the shield, which is probably even more important. We talk about the balance of the chivalric and the Christian, which really kind of permeates the entire text. And we also have a lively conversation on the temptation scenes, the famous temptation scenes in Fit3. Also, we have a fantastic resource for you guys. So if you haven't checked this out already, we have a 30 page 50 question and answer guide to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It goes into deep, deep detail about this beautiful poem. It has preliminary questions that you should ask yourself before you read each fit with citations of where those answers can be found. So you can use this for you and your small group as you guys have these conversations. And then it has question answer drawn from the wisdom of the podcasts to help you read this phenomenal text. So if you want a little bit of extra help, go check out our Patreon page for this 50 question and answer guide to Sir Gallon and the Green Knight. But today we're gonna have a wonderful conversation with Dr. Tiffany Schubert of Wyoming Catholic College and our two friends from X on fits 2 and 3 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Welcome to Ascend, the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlic. I'm a husband, father of five and serve as the Chancellor and General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We're 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. Check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon. We appreciate all our supporters who have access to community chats and also to written guides. A whole library on the Great Books. Visit thegreatbookspodcast.com for a reading schedule and more information. Okay, great. Now we again, we're taking our break from the Platonic dialogues and reading Sir Gallon and the Green Knight for Christmas. Last week we had an excellent conversation on part one or fit one of the poem with Dr. Justin Jackson out of Hillsdale. And today we are discussing fit 2 and 3 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And we have an excellent guest to guide us through this text. We have Dr. Tiffany Schubert, who is the associate professor of humanities and the trivium at wyoming Catholic College. Dr. Schubert, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:51]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to discuss this poem.
- [02:55]
A
Yeah, this is. And also fit two and fit three. They were excellent. I have lots of questions. I really love this poem, but maybe before we begin, tell us a little bit about your own scholarship and also your familiarity, your history with this text.
- [03:10]
B
Sure. So I, I am an English major, graduated from Hillsdale College. I did my undergrad and then I studied literature at the University of Dallas. And my, my particular area of focus is actually kind of the long, the long afterlife of the Middle Ages. I'm fascinated by the way that medieval romance shaped the modern novel and especially interested in the relationship of Jane Austen tune. The medieval romance is kind of my kind of absolutely right. Very particular scholarly, scholarly niche right there. But like to say I'm, I'm, I'm sort of a divided soul. I, I love the, I love the modern Georgian novel and, and then I love the Middle Ages. I kind of straddle, straddle both of those, both of those worlds. I first read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as an undergrad at Hillsdale, actually with, with Dr. Jackson, whom you all had on, on the podcast last week. And, and then I taught it quite regularly at the University of Dallas. It's part of the, the core curriculum for, for the freshmen. It's a really wonderful text to pair with, with the ancient epics. It's kind of a fun addition there. And then I also taught it at Wyoming Catholic College, where, where I currently teach right now. I taught it in our medieval course and that was a course that had Boethius, Augustine and, and Dante. And then we would end the course with Sir Gawain and the great knight. And I was, I, I love to have Sir Gawain in that, in that course because. Right. Dante, Dante and Boethius and Augustine. They take us on these incredible journeys out of, out of sin, darkness, confusion, disorder, chaos, right into virtue and perfection and, and order and beauty and light and the unity with God and the divine. But for example, right by the time you get to the end of Paradiso, you know, the air up there is really Thin. It's. It's kind of hard to breathe. And I always loved ending with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight because this is a poem that brings you back down into this world. Which is maybe a funny thing to say about this poem given the fact that we've got the magical, the marvelous, the wondrous and the eerie. But I think this is a poem that is very, very attuned to this life and living this life well, at least by confronting the fact that you are a being in an incarnate, murky, confusing kind of a world. I always loved that, that sort of pairing there and then. I've. I have drawn some on Sir Gown and the Green Knight for my own scholarship. I'm. I'm fascinated by the use of. Of irony. The use of irony in. In medieval texts and also in, in novels. And so I've looked at Gowan to think about the way that irony works. It's a deeply, profoundly, kind of endlessly, wonderfully ironic poem there. And so I, I have appreciated it as a scholar for that reason.
- [06:22]
A
Yeah, beautiful. Well said. Ashaz will mention this week we have George of the Chivalry Guild from Chivalry Guild on X joining us again and also banished Kent, go check out his account on X as well. Before we get into the text, I just one preliminary that I always have to mention. So George on Chivalry Guild has a lot of really excellent quotes and posts because he's always posting about the chivalric about horsemanship and Wyoming Catholic. I can't let it go without mentioning that you all have horsemanship built into your core curriculum. So if you come to Wyoming Catholic, you have to learn how to ride a horse. Like, is this. Do you participate in this? Is this. Do you have to learn how to ride a horse to become a professor at Wyoming Catholic or why do you guys do this?
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B
Yeah, it's.
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A
It's.
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B
It's actually part of the job interview. You have to lasso and then. And also then. Yeah, and simultaneously mount a horse in full armor.
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A
Good.
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C
That sounds good.
- [07:20]
A
I actually could really see the good Father Deacon Kyle wash it out there, judging you and marking you up on your horsemanship as part of the interview process. But this is like, this is really interesting. We had Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos on a little to talk about the Odyssey and we've also talked about the. He's already recorded with us, actually Elder Republic as well, because we're jumping into that next year. But one of the things I just, I'm just really Fascinated is like when you look at, particularly like, the raising of children. Like, my daughter is involved in barrel racing, right? So she goes to, like, rodeos and does the barrel racing. And for a child to actually grow in virtue. Like, if you read any of the texts, it's horsemanship. This is before sports, this before these kind of things. It was horsemanship that taught you, like, how to have the prudence, the fortitude to control another animal, to get it to do what you want it to do. That kind of intuition. Like, why do you guys have horsemanship as part of your curriculum?
- [08:16]
B
So we're so focused on not just the. The intellectual life, but also helping our students take ownership for their own intellectual life and. And also just write ownership of their own lives. And so what does it mean to become a leader, a leader of souls, right. In the kind of the intellectual realm. A leader of souls and bodies. More so in our outdoor program. But also, I think horsemanship sort of asks our students to not just meditate on, but actually just experience what it is like to be a leader of an animal. And here I'm drawing on many things that our horsemanship instructors say nothing of my own. There's this unique relationship that. That you have between the man, a man and a beast, a man and a horse, that is very different from one man to another man, that also really wildly different from the relationship that a man has to a machine. And so what is it. What is it like to govern and lead a being who has a soul, not a rational soul, right. But who has a soul, who has a. A will, has desires, right, but is not right. Is not. Is not human, is not rational. But then is not the machine, right. Where you can just easily manipulate it. And so it requires a confidence in your own authority as a human being, while simultaneously a deep and profound awareness of the nature of the horse. Right. That the horse has a nature that's. That's pushing back against you and that you're. You're working with.
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D
With.
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B
And so it's a. It's really profound leadership experience for, for the students. It also does fit so well with our Western ethos. We are, we are a small college out, out in the west, have, you know, the gorgeous Wind River Mountains surrounding our town. So many of our students have ranching, livestock farming kind of experience there. And, and so something right. About the horse speaks to that. And, and, and of course, the, The. The literary, the. The. The poetic kind of dimension. Right. Of horsemanship, too. It's a nightly quality, right. Or attribute or association, right. That. That we have there. Of course. Right. Even. Even in the Iliad, we have. Right. Hector, who is the breaker of horses. Right. Then that's the last line of the Iliad. So that. That. That epic enter into so early at Wyoming Catholic College, then they're having a kind of experience of that with. With their horses. With the horses.
- [11:10]
A
Beautiful. Yeah. No, very well said. I actually really like the juxtaposition that you gave between the man's relationship to a horse, to a beast versus, like, a machine. Like, that's a fantastic juxtaposition to present. George, anything on horsemanship? Real fast before we jump into the text. Cause I know you comment a lot about this on X.
- [11:29]
C
No, I just found that incredibly stirring and just want to say God bless you and everybody at Wyoming Catholic. That is so wonderful.
- [11:38]
A
Yeah. I can't really imagine going to a college like Wyoming Catholic. I think about, like, what I was doing in high school and college and then, like, having a place like that. It's just. Yeah, I. I very much appreciate that a place like Wyoming Catholic exists. I have heard, like, stories about the camping that freshmen have to do and like, going out in the winter and, like, you know, you only can have so many of them die in the Wyoming winter every year. That's great. Like, it's a. It's wonderful retreat that you have.
- [12:02]
B
Thus, we have a really great success rate. Thank you.
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A
The retention. The retention rate of freshmen and the camping retreat is. Is decently high. That's good. I would love to do insurance for a woman Catholic that. This sounds fantastic.
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D
Okay.
- [12:16]
A
Anyway, we're getting into the text. Okay. So fit two. And so one of the questions that I had is. One of the things I'm trying to track, particularly after the conversation last week, is the relationship of time. So we have this time throughout the text, and we get a lot because the art, the. The poet here gives a lot of commentary not only on the passing of the seasons, but also, you know, there's kind of a thick liturgical veneer on the time as well. We get Michaelmas and a few other things. And so within this context of time, like, one of the things that I was really curious about is that Gawain lingers. He stays here. It says at the beginning of stanza 24, it says that he lingers with King Arthur. I didn't know, like, exactly how to read that, like, whether we take that as he should have left because he doesn't know where he's going. He has to go out and find it. It's not like he actually knows, like, oh yeah, it will only take me 90 days to ride my horse, you know, over to the Green Chapel. He doesn't actually know where he's going. And so I thought it was really interesting that he lingers there. And whether or not, as we see this kind of passing of the time, whether or not that's something that we lay at his feet as a critique or not.
- [13:36]
B
Yeah. My first, My first thought is that that's so connected to the, the lingering that we see in. In Fit three where he's. He's lingering in bed, he's at his ease and it's that condition where he is tempted or he's most. Is most in danger is when he's in. In the castle, in the bedroom, in the sumptuous bed. Right. In his. In his sumptuous clothing. Clothing. You see the lingering and, and at ease there. So there may be. Where there may be a kind of suggestion that he's right. Yeah, maybe. Maybe not quite as zealous as he should be. Although the rest of the court is so hesitant to let him go too. Right. We're told that they, They're. They're deeply saddened by this. The court at least actually thinks. Right. That, that maybe there was something, something off in Arthur's willingness to agree to this game. Arthur's quickness to interpret the ambiguity of the Green Knight as clearly a. Like a martial threat. Maybe it was some sort of pride in Arthur and it's kind of a waste of Gowan to. To allow him to be sent off into, you know, or on. On this quest. So at least from the court's perspective, they don't. They're not actually seeing this lingering necessarily as. As problematic because the whole, the whole quest game engagement contraction between him and the Green Knight seems unnecessary. It didn't, it didn't actually have to happen. Unnecessary and, and perhaps even. Even wasteful. So I think there's. It seems to be right that there is some, some ambiguity here. Yes. You would want Night to go out immediately, so to speak. Right. Right away on his quest. And yet is this actually a worthwhile quest for the knight to be engaged in?
- [15:41]
D
I would also say that. I think that the first couple of stanzas here in this fit point to the possibility that there's some significant symbolism in the timing of his departure. Right. He's leaving on all Hollows, naturally. A point in the liturgical calendar that's going to point towards thoughts on, you know, considering one's mortality, considering that death must come. We have this beautiful segment where we're describing the weather in the world over the course of a year, Right. And we say that, you know, the harvest hurries in and it warms before winter to wax to ripeness. And then we're told after that that, you know, then that prompts Galilean to give grievous journey thought. And so I think that the poem kind of points towards the symbolic timing of his nature. Yeah. Just as nature has points that point us towards remembering our coming doom, our coming death, that the liturgical cycle also points us towards that. And I think the timing of his leaving points towards there's seasons in one's life where we're going to naturally start to ponder on the fact that we're. We're not gonna look forever, you know, and we have to kind of memento mori a little bit.
- [17:03]
C
Have a different departure time in mind. When would you have left if you had to go on this quest to find this place that you don't know the location of?
- [17:13]
A
Well, that's. Yeah, these are all good points. So I like. I like Kent's reading, or at least suggestion that there are seasons for things. And so there's a liturgical year, then that lingering is not necessarily like a negative, but rather there's a fitting time for him to leave. And the liturgical year provides this, like, structure to time. Time, right, is not simply the seasons, but it's also the liturgical year that Christ has actually given a certain infrastructure to time itself because of the Incarnation. And so then every year is this cycle in which we participate in the life of Christ. But then it's also moving forward. I think Professor Jackson last week talked about it as like a spiral going forward. So I like that. I guess what struck me was really just a mundane thought of, you have agreed to do this quest. You don't know where you're going. And so he seems to be lingering when really you would think for him to accomplish this thing, he really has to just leave almost immediately to go on his journey to figure out where the Green Chapel actually is. Right. This isn't Frodo going to Mordor. He doesn't actually know where he actually is supposed to go. So that was this one thing that struck me. I'm not in a huge rush to lay it as a heavy critique at, you know, Sir Gowan, but rather, it was something that. Because of time. And I really liked Two things that Dr. Shubert mentioned, which is one, can we tether it to the lingering that we'll see in fit? Three of him and his bed. I think that's really fascinating. So the second point that Dr. Shubert made that I thought was really fascinating is tethering it to the court's critique of Arthur. Because that's something that I wasn't really sensitive to until last week's podcast. When we're reading back through this, looking at that critique of, you know, is he lingering then? Should he be in a rush to do something if that it. At least that would in part, it's a folly that this is kind of a, an errant quest. This is something that's actually disordered in the quest itself, that he's made this promise to something that maybe wasn't completely well ordered to begin with. And has Arthur kind of led him astray to a certain degree. I'm still pondering last week's critique of Arthur, simply telling him to cut the green knight's head off. I think, you know, I think George, you made a comment too, and I think I pushed back a little bit that just like nicking him or something. There's no rule of proportionality in stroke for stroke. So like he could have just, you know, nicked the green knight as a sign of mercy, but nothing would stop then the green knight from cutting off Sir Gawain's head himself a year and a day later. But would that have been the chivalric thing to do that also aligned then with Christian morality not to simply kill him because you win the game or you presume you're going to win the game because typically people don't get up and pick up their heads. But now that his own king has told him, hey, cut off his head and you win the game. Was that the right advice? So I really like the tethering of the lingering to the critique of the court in. That's in I think Stanza 29 is when we get that critique. So these are all good things, I think. I don't have a locked and loaded answer here, but just trying, I think, to ferret out Sir Gawain and really where is he himself on this quest.
- [20:26]
B
There is something so funny about Gowan's maybe actually not Gawain's reluctance to fight, but the poet's reluctance to fight or the poet's reluctance to depict Gawain actually fighting. You're like, right, Gowan actually on this quest, the poet. We have this incredibly dramatic buildup of, not dramatic exactly, but an extended build up description of Gowan getting on his, his armor and getting ready to go. And then we don't actually really see him use that armor right. Or do anything. Anything really very exciting with it as far as we, as, as the readers of the poem actually see. And so we have these chivalric expectations that are continually deflated by the poem. And, and I've never, I've never really thought about this lingering very, very much, you know, in, in previous readings of the poem. But, but it does, it is striking me as, as a kind of deflation too, right. It. Instead of the, of the night kind of going out right, immediately and, and, and seeking and wandering and us getting three or four fits of this grand adventure in the wilderness, instead we get. Well, he just stayed in his. He just stayed to the court for a year and then he went out and we get a couple lines of his journey and then lo and behold, he's in another court. I know that our, our, our poet really wants to put Gowan in court in the. Both the court of Arthur and then the court of, of Lord Border, of Lord Borlach.
- [22:06]
C
On top of that, in stanza 31, the poet explicitly says this is not that kind of story. He talks about on his journey, Gawain actually does encounter worms, wolves, wood trolls. He battles with bulls, bears, boars and ogres. But then the poet says basically so many a marvel in the mountain he met in those lands that it would be tedious the 10th part to tell you thereof. So like I said, he's explicitly saying, yeah, I could tell you all this exciting stuff in which he uses his armor and his weapons, but this isn't that kind of story. And I, I don't know. I. There's a lot to talk about there as far as. I'm really fascinated in the, the difference between Carolingian, the French chivalry and the English Arthurian chivalry and how the, the Arthurian definitely leans more towards courtesy, manners, the, the, the treatment of ladies. And it kind of seems like this, this little passage is, is kind of a commentary on that drift in Arthurian chivalry. I really.
- [23:31]
A
Oh, go ahead.
- [23:32]
B
I would say. Yeah. I mean, I think so much of that is what's happening in the, the bedroom scenes when we get to, when we get to the castle, right? Is this, these, this competing vision of, of chivalry or at least this, this possible tension in, in chivalry Is. Is chivalry a code of conduct that exists between men directed towards the use of, of martial violence in service to God? The kind of a Crusade crusader as the pinnacle of knighthood? Or is knighthood this courteous and eloquent way of speaking? This, this extremely elevated and ritualistic and even. Even kind of socially rigid vision of, of love. Right. Of the knight's relationship. Right. To the lady. Or you could put that a little bit differently. Right. Does. Does the knight fight for. For other men? Right. Or does he fight. Right. Does he fight for God or does he fight for. For the lady? Yeah. What is, what is the. The motivation for his. For his violence? So much of that is all kind of caught up in. In the bedroom scenes and, and this poet is sort of exposing this, this tension within chivalry. I. I hadn't quite thought of putting. Putting it in terms of the English and, and the Cara Carolingian, but yeah, I think that, I think that's right.
- [25:04]
A
One thing you said that I have, I find really fascinating is because again, stepping into the author's intent, what's he trying to teach us? He's the teacher here. We're trying to understand his lesson. I think George pointing out that he actually kind of tells us. Hey. What the story is and is not. Because I can imagine the. Or I can remember the first time I read this particularly expecting kind of, I think just a typical Shalarik tale because the Green Knight. And like it starts off, it gets its head off. This is great. This is wonderful. Then we get this little bitty snippet that's like, oh, yeah, he fought trolls and bears and whatever else and then gone. What I really like that you said that I think also starts to peel back a little bit of what is the author doing here is why give us this huge buildup of his armor only to have him immediately take it off? And I think that's really worth digging into. And so I think that obviously one of the most famous passages, I think in the poem is the pin tangle. So he has this sign, this five pointed star that is on his shield and on his cloak. And it's very interesting because not only do we get a lot of stanzas about the armor, but we also then get a very detailed. And actually, I think going to kind of George's insight, I think that we actually get a commentary, don't we, of the. From the poet stating that it's worth slowing down to talk about this. Like, we get this kind of like commentary on it. So this is in stanza 27 and also 28, so maybe I'll just give like the little cursory neophyte gloss here real fast of the pentangle because I don't think it's a symbol obviously that people are familiar with. And actually it's so close to the pentagram that I think some people, most people are actually unsettled by it or put off by it. But we have a five pointed star which has its central point facing up, which I think is important. And each point on the five represents another series of five things. So this is in stanza 28. And so the poet tells us that there's the five senses, his five fingers, the five wounds of Jesus Christ, the five joys of our lady, of the Theotokos Mary, and then five of these kind of chivalric virtues, which is free giving, friendliness, chastity, chivalry and piety. It says piety surpassing all points. And so the poet really slows down the pace to explain this, I guess, what would you call it, this emblem that is on Sir Gawain's shield and cloak. What are we to make of this?
- [27:52]
B
I maybe just want to make one, one point about the, the armor. We get so much, right, so you're right, so much of a buildup and then he's going to take it off. But back, back in that passage where we are told that he goes out and encounters all of the beasts, the thing that the poet is actually most interested in lingering on is his experience of cold. And in that passage, we, we hear the icicles are, are kind of like descending from the crest of his helmet. And I wanted to, to start with that, right, because, yeah, you're right. We get such a huge buildup about this armor and this shield and we think, my goodness, right, he's just going to go and he's going to do the most amazing things with this shield. Now he's going to like kill five giants. Oh, what A single, right, A single glow with, with this shield. And then the thing that, that his armor actually does is, right, it comes off or it gets icicles on, just it enters, it enters into the very nitty gritty world. And, and then it, it, it, right, it, it, it's, it's removed when it's, when it's taken off in the, in the court. But clearly our poet wants us to linger on this image. And I think it's worth pointing out that the pentangle is on the outside of the shield, and then on the inside of the shield is this image of Mary. And so that's what, that's what Gowen sees when he, when he is carrying the shield, right? And then the image that he projects out onto the world is the image of the pentangle. So I think that that's, that's important in thinking about the pentangle. Is this sense of projection. This is the image that the world sees. And I think that idea of, right, projecting an image is incredibly important for what happens right, in. In fit 3 and the image that Alan projects into the world. I think probably the association with the pentagram, with magic, you know, maybe should make us a little bit, you know, a little bit uncomfortable, right? There's a lot in this poem that is just this kind of strange mingling of, right, The Christian and the magical, right? It could say maybe, right, The Christian and the Celtic and how to. How to put them together is kind of, I think is difficult and tricky and maybe even something the poet wants us to be. Wants us to be uncomfortable and uncertain about. But this, this. This image here, it's so rigid, it's so geometrical. It's five points, right? And each of those five points have this, you know, click down sub drop menu of five, right? Five divisual parts of those five fives. And then it's perfect. All of it is perfectly balanced, we're told, right? These five fives are just. They're all linked to another. That end was never. They're fixed. Their force never failed. They're never assembled all on one side nor asunder either, right? So there's never a lopsided quality to them. They're never divided, they're all fixed. They also have apparently, have never failed. Never failed, right, Isn't it? I think, what an incredible claim that is. Never failed anywhere at an end, but whole and entire. So an image of wholeness, of entirety, of balance, of perfection, of com. Competing. Or at least image of multitudinous. An image of the multitude, right, Held in. In a kind of unity there. Perfectly fixed and confirmed, we're told, in. In Gammon pressed into him somehow, right? He's actually somehow embodies this, this image here in Exit. At least. At least this is what which we are told. So that's this, that's the image, right, that he. That he's projecting out into the world. And it's a pretty striking combination of things, I think, right? There's the physical, the five senses, his five fingers that sense sort of, oh, just physical ability, martial prowess and kind of toughness. There, there's. There's the religious, there's the. The five winds of Christ and the five joys of Mary. And then there are those five virtues. And those five virtues are really pretty remarkable. Now they can have a very Christian meaning to them, but they are also very, very courtly and chivalric virtues. So the, the what is United. And what is whole in Gowen is say, maybe his, his physical prowess, his. His spiritual devotion and his chivalric virtues. So again, the chivalric virtues could have Christian meanings in them as well. But, but, but everything, everything is perfectly balanced. Everything just falls together with no. Right. No conflict whatsoever.
- [32:59]
A
Yeah, I think on that point, I think the, the thing you said that struck me was unity. So one of the things, I think that's this underpinning of the poem itself that has this like, internal conflict that the poet seems to be teasing out over and over again, which we certainly see I think, very clearly in the bedroom scenes is that the chivalric or this courtesy culture and authentic Christian culture sometimes are not aligning. And so what's really interesting to me here with a pentangle is that here he stresses that, no, all these things are balanced with one another. You have the Christian and the chivalric, and they're all here together, right. In this, these. This five pointed star with these, you said drop down menu or at least five subcategories to them, but they're all held here in unity and in balance. And so maybe, you know, it's an introductory comment, but it seems to me then that the pentangle represents somewhat of an ideal. An ideal that it seems is probably best embodied in Sir Gawain, but at the same time is one that I think is constantly becoming unbalanced. And we'll see that throughout the text, even in, I think, Gowen himself. They're not always balanced. And we'll. We'll kind of see that in the bedroom scene. There's times that, you know, there's part of me that wants him just to like, run away and courtesy holds him to something. You see this courtesy in this Christian in conflict. But Ken, did you want to jump in there? Yeah.
- [34:24]
D
I mean, along with. You guys are saying. I think that's exactly right. And I think that's really important that they call it the endless knot. And they say that there's no beginning or end to it. Right. So it's not like you, you can't cleanly say these are the Christian aspects of it and these are the chivalric aspects. It's all tied up together. Right. I think that that word not is very intentional here. And so it's not easy for. For G to separate out. Yes. These are my conventions of knighthood and these are my conventions of faith. It's all tied into one. The other thing that I was going to say about Stanzas 26 and 27 is that they're very similar to the descriptions that we get of the Green knight in the first fit when he rides in. If you pay attention to the descriptions of Gowing's clothing versus the green knight's clothing, they're very similar, except for gowans is red and the green knights were green. You know, down to the fact that they both have little birds embroidered onto their. Their clothing and their silks. They're. They're both decked out with silk and fur and armor. Except for. Well, the green knight didn't have armor. That's the, that's the other big difference. And so I, I think that there's intended to be some comparison, right, where the green knight is this inner intervention of nature into the, the courtly convention. And now we have Gowing, kind of the champion of that convention, going back out to, to fulfill his end of it.
- [35:55]
A
Yeah, really well said. And I actually don't think that's the last. I really appreciate you providing that juxtaposition because I, I did not notice that there. But there's another time after he gets to the castle that I think he is compared in his appearance to the Green knight itself. And I'm interested in why the poet's doing that. George, did you want to jump in there?
- [36:16]
C
Yeah, I, I would be remiss if I didn't say that. And Deacon, you were actually getting at this last week. I just want to put in a word for an interpretation of chivalry, which is not synonymous with courtly culture, which is not synonymous with courtesy. Courtesy will be a chivalric virtue within the larger scheme of things. But somebody like Christopher Dawson in this great book Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, actually makes this argument that those two things are very separate. And there's actually this really interesting point in history where chivalry is on the march as the Crusaders are on their way from France or Germany to the Holy Lands. And as they are marching, like, directly in opposition to that is what he calls the, the culture of courtesy making its way up from more decadent Islamic society into Europe. So again, and that's, that's a, That's a whole nother conversation. I don't want to derail this conversation, but I just do want to say that there is the good name of chivalry. I want to defend against this over emphasis on courtesy. And I don't blame anybody who has that association. I mean, that's what we've come to assume chivalry is nowadays. But again, just offering up that possibility.
- [37:59]
A
No, I think that's good. Maybe that dovetails into something I'd like to say about piety. So if we, again, we're trying to keep the lessons of the poet in mind, we're taking him and understanding kind of a subtle, attentive read, at least, you know, I'm trying to give that to the text. And he says on that last group of five, that piety surpassing all other points. And I think that's really fascinating and one of the reasons, if, if I can just give a slight explanation of piety, I think in the more traditional sense. So piety, like when we read, say like the Iliad or the Odyssey, or even like Aeschylus or Astaya, Sophocles, Antigone, piety gives an infrastructure to all of these different texts. And basically piety is threefold because piety, at the end of the day, I would say that what piety is, is it's a gratitude that is born out of justice, but it's for a debt that you can't ever pay back. So you come to be grateful about something that's been given to you that you really can't ever pay back. And the threefold piety, like the three points of our lives, that this really becomes true is you have a piety towards your parents, you have a piety towards the polis, and then you have a piety towards the divine. So in the, in the Iliad, right, We see this very clearly in Hector where he has a piety, you know, towards his parents, he also has it towards Troy and he has it towards the gods. What's interesting is that these things are supposed to exist within a hierarchy where the higher governs the lower. And you'll see this, you'll see this tension in Hector at times of like what his parents want him to do versus what he thinks is best for Troy, or what the gods are leading him to do versus what he thinks is best for Troy. And you also see things like, I mean, Aeschylus, Oresteia, and also Sophocles, Antigone, both use piety to set up the internal drama tragedy of their stories. So for instance, in the Oresteia you are supposed to be a blood avenger for someone who kills your family. And so obviously Orestes father has been slain and so he has to go kill the murderer. But unfortunately the murderer happens to be his own mother, so does the piety towards his father override the justice that needs to be done towards his mother, etc. And even the gods are in disagreement about how this will happen. Think about Antigone. It opens up. Antigone's brother is slain on the battlefield. The polis Creon says, don't bury him. She says, no, the gods want us to bury him. And there's a conflict between the familial and the political, both disagreeing on what the gods want. And so my point here is that this piety gives kind of like a cosmic structure to man. And you see this Aquinas picks up. I mean, Cicero picks this up and the Romans pick it up pretty heavily. And then Aquinas articulates it in his summa. So I don't think we have to jump from, like, Homer to this play. I think this is very much kind of percolating in Western culture. But what makes it really fascinating to me in this context with this poet, is this seems to be the central drama of the poem itself. Is, and this goes to George's point, is can the chivalric and Christianity always align? And is there a way that they become, you know, unaligned, they become disordered and disjointed. And I think we see that at several moments in the play. But the pentangle doesn't say to jettison the chivalric because it's not Christian. It holds it all together, but I think it has to hold it all together in hierarchy. What is the higher and what's the lower and which one governs the other when there seems to be some type of conflict. And it's just interesting to me that piety then is listed as the highest of the virtues when piety I think best understood, and I'm happy for pushback. But piety, I think best understood in the Great Books tradition, the Western tradition at this point is a virtue of a cosmic order. It is a virtue that governs the lower and the higher, as man understands, like his obligations and duties towards the family, the polis and the divine, which I think very clearly is something here that you can then map on to Gawain's trials is what duties does he owe to, say, his Lord and his lady for their hospitality and. Etc. Versus what duties does he owe to God? And when do these become in conflict? So I think it's just an interesting statement that he makes that this surpasses all.
- [42:21]
B
Yeah. And that might give some explanation for why Mary is on the inside of the shield and not on the outside of the shield. I mean, the. The five joys of Mary, right, are represented on the outside, but Mary herself is on the inside. This is the. At least from the imagery and the symbolism of the shield, what it is that that is governing Gavin, where and where we are actually told that when he's in. When he's in melee, when he's in combat, he is. He's. He's meditating on or thinking on the five joys of Mary. This is the thing that's actually leading him to. To. To fight. And. And may, maybe, maybe we could say that from Mary as figure, there is a kind of union of the. The Christian and the chivalric. If she is something of the lady who is to be fought for, but she is not the lady who belongs to another man. Right. Or she's not the lady, right. Fought for, to be. To be possessed in any kind of way. And she is not a lady who presents love for her as, in any way, at odds with love of God.
- [43:27]
A
Yeah, that's really fascinating, just practically speaking. Again, kind of just an introductory thought. You know, Mary being painted on the inside of the shield is very interesting because obviously what that allows him to do is that when he's in combat, he sees her as opposed to, like, if she was on the outside, he can't find devotion in her. Right. He sees it. Sees her on the inside. And so when he is tempted to cowardice or things like this, he sees the eyes of Mary. They lock eyes. And I think this kind of introduces or maybe reinforces a theme that we see throughout the poem, is the role of the feminine throughout this poem in the way that women play a role throughout it. And Mary has these, like, very important little touch points throughout the text. And I also think somewhat similar to the pentangle. And kind of going back to. To your thought, which I, again, I find very fascinating, that there's all this buildup on the armor and then he just takes it all off. The shedding of the armor also means the shedding of the pentangle. It's not on him anymore. And I think that's notable. And it's also notable, kind of as an adjacent idea that Mary's painted on the inside of the shield, which is, of course, like, you know, as like, George or Kent could articulate. This means this is a trial of fortitude. It's a. It's a trial of the thematic of being spirited. You have to have your shield, you're in combat, but that's not the battle that Sir Gawain finds himself in. And so then the shield is set aside, but he's still being assaulted. So can that Marian devotion survive? Can that Marian devotion come in and help him in a battle? Not of fortitude, but a battle of temperance. I think that's so. It's very fascinating to me that the poet sets up this drama of the armor and the shield and the pentangle but then transitions to a very different.
- [45:22]
B
Battle which again, yeah, I think that it's, it's supposed to strike us as, as kind of funny. It's sort of ironic deflation of it all. I have so much attention to this shield, so much attention to the armor and of the carpet that he's standing on. It is so ordinately described. But there maybe is right, something a little bit over the top even about his, about his armor. So much like really seriously, like this is the guy who's going to. He's going to go do battle or he's going to go wander around in the wilderness, right in this, this incredibly. Right at leopard and, and n. On H type of armor, right. But then he puts it all on and, and then, and, and then just nothing comes of it. And it's. I think it, it's kind of funny. This is a really, this is a really funny kind of a poem as, as well as exploring very serious themes. Right. But I think it's also, or could say, right, that that part of the way that the poet is doing this, the serious theme of redirecting our attention to what is actually the, the challenge or the danger, the, the test for the true knight, right, or, or for. For the Christian is by, by making things a little bit funny and kind of upending our, our expectations of how a chivalric romance should go.
- [46:43]
A
I think that. I think there are a lot of expectations that, that he is playing with expectations of what he builds you up to and then he shifts. And I think that's actually part of the whole trial of Sir Gawain is what he's prepared to face and then what he ends up facing in the intermediate and whether or not his virtue can endure. So just to push us forward but also to kind of track some of these themes. So he goes on his journey. And it's interesting to me, earlier you mentioned, you know, is there a blending or what is the balance that we're getting a lot of these juxtapositions between say the Christian and the pagan or between Providence and say like the Fae magic. Where. Where is this balance between these. And one of the things I thought was interesting is the question of what is actually guiding his journey. Because what's fascinating is that, you know, as we're, you know, trying to not, you know, for those who haven't read fit 4. Not giving everything away, but he has. At least at this time we know that there's this magical Fae creature, the Green Knight, who has precipitated this journey that he has to go on. And then it's very interesting to me that then it's Mary. And I think that's something we have to track very heavily is where does Mary, right, the Theotokos, enter this text and what is her role? And that role is like the feminine. Throughout this poem is that he pleads to Mary. So at the end of 31, he pleads to Mary. We start getting these prayers to her as he's been traveling through the wilderness. And then by 32, if I understood correct, it's Christmas Eve, I believe. And he prays to our Lord and to our lady of, you know, could he assemble upon a house where Mass, you know, could be heard? And he crosses himself three times. And the answer to this prayer is the castle. And he gives thanks, actually, he gives thanks to Jesus and St. Julian for this courtesy that's been extended to him. And I. You know, it's not something that we can fully unpack at the moment because like all great books, reading it a second time is where you start to see a ton of little connections. But as you ask, like what is guiding his journey? Providence. This Fae magic. It's fascinating to me that he prays to our Lord and Lady and it's the castle that is revealed to him, that it's. That the castle is an answer to his prayer.
- [49:06]
B
Right. And what kind of answer is it to his prayer? Again? Right. What expectations do we have for what the answer to a prayer would look like or, you know, pray differently. Right? That's the reason that Gowan, Gowen wants a place where he can hear mass and matins for Christmas. And that's. Right, that, that's, that's his, his expectation for, for this prayer being answered. His expectation for finding. Finding a place. But maybe to put it, you know, differently, right, what is it that Gowan maybe actually needs. What does he actually need to be confronted with in order to. Again, I think that's a question too. What. In order to do what? In order to live out perfectly the vision that the, that the Pentangle projects. Maybe, maybe to become more aware of the, the unsettling tensions that are involved in the Pentangle or some. Right, some. Something. Something else that he needs to. To. To confront in, in himself. So it seems, it seems as if there, there might be some cross purposes here of what Gowan thinks and expects or get Gowen imagines is going to be the answer to this prayer. And then perhaps what the actual answer to this prayer is. I am. I am right now kind of leaning a little bit heavily on the idea that. That it is Providence ultimately shaping the events of this poem. But if it is Providence shaping the events of this poem, it's certainly not in any kind of straightforward way. It's not. It's not following the expectations of. Right. Of. Of the chivalric world. Right. Perfectly and precisely. Nor is it following the expectations, sincerely right of Gamma. Here. He's not. He's expecting this civilized place to be safety, comfort, to affirm him and confirm him in his piety. And instead what he gets is this. This place of temptation and testing, and testing in a way that he never has been tested before. And that's. That's what he gets. And I'm just sort of maybe, maybe wanting to stake a claim here that even though he doesn't get what he asks, nevertheless wouldn't want to rush to say, well, somehow, right, Providence is not involved or Mary is not involved. But. But if Providence and Mary are direct this show, they have their own really kind of. Kind of very sneaky and surprising purposes that are not. Not available or known, perceived by the poet or, excuse me, by. By the pilgrim, by. By. By Gowen, and maybe even not really us, by us as readers, you know.
- [51:54]
A
Yeah, no, well said. Yeah, because I. I agree. I think Providence is what's guiding things ultimately. But how that actually accords with Sir Gawain's expectations and what his soul actually needs in the trials he's actually expecting is very disjointed. But that is certainly a pedagogical lesson for all of us on when we pray for things, what types of answers we expect versus the answers that we need. So I want to push forward. So just maybe just like rapid fire comments on the rest of this fit. Just like a few things that I would point out for those who read the Iliad and Odyssey with us. I think the hospitality of this text tracks really well with guest friendship that we saw in the Homeric age. Knows how long they take care of Sir Gawain without ever actually asking who he is and his name. Now, there's some layers to that that I don't think we fully appreciate, but it's one of the parts that we saw with guest friendship and hospitality. I also thought, going to what Kent mentioned is that when after they dress Sir Gawain, his host does right in the castle, they say he's like a vision of spring. And I was really curious as to whether or not that was a reference back to the Green Knight, because obviously, if you're a vision of spring, you're going to be dressed in green. Green is the number one color of spring. So I was wondering if there was some juxtapositions there. And the other thing that really caught my attention outside of the introduction of the lady, was that here, once again, we find ourselves on Christmas. We find the Lord wanting to play a Christmas game, but the first one that he wants to play is so innocent. And if you compare that back to Arthur's desire for a Christmas game, which could end up in, like, bloodsport, there's a really fascinating comparison between those 2. That's stanza 40, in which the Lord desires this Christmas game. Then obviously there's this. This fit ends with the new Christmas game. Just like, oh, we're going to have this trade. I'm going to go hunting and I might have this reward, or whatever I gain, and you're going to stay here in the castle and whatever you gain, and then we're going to trade. I think kind of building upon a lot of the comments that the four of us have made about. Is there a tension between courtesy and virtue? Not necessarily. And I agree with George, and maybe I should be more precise in my speech, maybe the courtesy, but also just the chivalric of having that deference toward your superior. I would be a big fan of the pentangle, but I don't think that these two things are actually disjointed with one another, but they can become imbalanced. And I wonder if this is an example of being imbalanced, where here again, Gawain agrees to a Christmas game that he doesn't quite understand all the terms to, because he's doing what his liege, his Lord, wants, when him doing that is the whole reason he's on this quest to begin with, because he stepped into a Christmas game and did what his Lord desired of him. So from, like, the virtue Christian side, you'd be like, brother, why don't you pump the brakes a little bit on agreeing to these things that you don't fully understand? This hasn't worked out well for you. But on the courtesy side, this seems to be some deference to your superior. Kent, did you want to jump in there?
- [55:17]
D
Yeah. So I have a lot of thoughts on this 45th stand and the last one of fit, too. And I don't know whether this is just crazy camp thought or whether this is accepted by general scholarship. So forgive me if this is out there, but for me, when I read through this, I think that we could possibly come to see this second agreement, the second game as. As a type of symbol for the new covenant that Christ makes as outlined in the New Testament, right? We have the first Christmas game that by all rights leads to going, should be dying, right? That's the expectation. Everyone's expectation as he's leaving is he's going off to his death. And now we have the second Christmas game that we know from the end of the poem is going to determine the outcome of his judgment in the Green Chapel. Spoiler alert. And so I think that we could maybe come to see this as an example of the new covenant, offering ourselves as a living sacrifice under the terms that Christ sets. And we see here in the exchange that whatever, you know, he's going to go out hunting. Whatever he finds, he will give to Gallain, and Gallain will find whatever he finds in the castle. So, you know, he's exchanging with the Lord of the castle in the same way that, you know, we're supposed to take upon ourselves the yoke of Christ, as Christ said in the New Testament. So I. I wonder if that's a way of seeing the second game. I know there's been some criticism Dr. Jackson mentioned last time of, you know, that the. That Gowing's end judgment is reliant not on the first, not connected to the first game, but on the second game. And I wonder if that's a way of reconciling that. That this could be seen as symbolic of, you know, Christ's intervention through a new covenant offered to us.
- [57:10]
A
I think it's fascinating. I would like to give that probably more thought. I think it's interesting to tether that to. I've seen Christological reads of the Green Knight in the beginning. So he, like, comes. So, for instance, like, if you're gonna do a Christological read of that one, then he comes forward and offers himself and Sir Gawain takes his life. But then we see that the Green Knight is actually not dead. He comes back. But then what Sir Gawain has to do in response to that is that he has to go on this, like, penitential journey. He has to go on this pilgrimage to actually be perfected. So it's the death of the Green Knight and the Green Knight's resurrection that then precipitates Sir Gawain going on this pilgrimage of virtue, imperfection, but also of trial and temptation. It's interesting because I don't think that. I don't think that there's a. It's not allegorical, I guess I would say. Like, I don't know if it's. If the whole poem's like, no, I.
- [58:08]
D
Don'T think so either.
- [58:10]
A
But there's like, these analogs that pop in the certain scenes that have a lot of depth to them. So I think, yeah, that's a, That's a lot of food for thought there that you've given us.
- [58:20]
D
And, and, you know, just to touch on your, your. What you said about an allegory versus symbolism. I. Nick Eurek, in the essay on Pearl here in Tolkien's copy, his introduction to Pearl, he goes really nicely into this. You know, there's a distinction between allegory and symbolism and basically says that, like, allegory. For it to be allegory, it has to be throughout the entire work. Right. The whole poem in and of itself and all parts would have to point towards that versus a poem can have parts of it or characters that have symbolism without tending it to allegory. So I think that's right that you said that it's not necessarily an allegory, but there is some symbolism to be seen there.
- [59:02]
B
I, I wonder what to do with the remark that the Lord of the castle has for Gowan. He tells him, Gowan comes in, he says to him, right, to this house, you are heartily welcome. What is here is wholly yours to have in your power and sway. I'm looking at a different, a different version than you all are. And it's around line 835, 8:36, I guess I'm. I'm wondering how that, that, that passage really jumped out at me this time. My goodness. Right?
- [59:35]
D
The.
- [59:36]
B
The Lord has actually given Gowan power in the house in a way. And, and, and there will be moments when Gowan will acknowledge the Lord of the castle, right, as a lord of the castle. But, but at least here at the beginning, Gowan is kind of given this. I think he. In a. In a heady rush power here. And I, I'm wondering how to put that together with seemingly maybe him entering into some sort of second covenant with the Lord that is akin to him entering into a covenanted gain right at the behest of. Of Arthur. He seemed in the first, in the first, Arthur was clearly the one who was in charge and has the power. And it's, I think, to a large extent, Arthur's interpretation of the game that gets Gowen into the game. And here I'm wondering if it is this promise of things being in his own power. That's. That's kind of maybe misleading him here. Right.
- [60:40]
C
Can I add really quickly that. That line that you read, professor, that actually sounds a lot like the line that the lady gives Gawain when she is at his bedside. I mean, I can hold off on this until we get into fit 3 proper, but Tolkien's translation is a lot more vivid, let's say, than a translation I had read previously. So we can talk about that in a second, but if anybody has any other Comments on concluding fit 2.
- [61:14]
A
No, why don't we. Why don't we use that as a. Why don't we use that as a segue to get into fit 3? So lead us in there, and then I'm gonna maybe just give us a little overview of the fit as a poll.
- [61:24]
C
Well, so what I was referring to was. Ah, shoot, let me, Let me find it here. Stanza 47. When we find the lady at. Or rather 48. I'm sorry, 49. 49 at the end. So a previous translation that I had read says has the lady saying to Gawain to my company, you are welcome, but Tolkien's translation has it to my body, will you welcome, be of delight to take your fill.
- [62:08]
B
That.
- [62:08]
C
That's a pretty jarring way of putting it. We're really pushing the. The boundaries of PG 13 here. And anyways, Professor's line that, that does. Does that not sound like what the. Or does it at least not echo what the Lord was saying to Gawain?
- [62:28]
B
Yeah. My house is at your. At your command. It's in your power. My body is at your command and in your power. And so what do you do? What will you do now, Gowen, with this, with this power that we. That we have granted you? Sort of not just maybe the. The nephew of the king, the. The hero on the make, but suddenly. Suddenly the man in the position of. Of power there. And that's. That's a really different kind of challenge. Thinking about the kind of challenge that he's actually facing in this poem, it's not. He's the. The vulnerable warrior out in the wilderness battling against the wolves and the bears and the giants and, and, and, and the wild men. But here the powerful man with a whole castle seems just to exist, apparently to please him and apparently. Right. Also the lady of the castle who, you know, is married to the Lord, but whatever.
- [63:30]
A
Yeah, details, detail.
- [63:31]
B
Yeah, exactly. Minor detail also is. Is here to please him. Right? The sort of like the, the temptation maybe, of. Of power that that's being presented to him here. So that just. Yeah. Strikes me as. As a kind of something. Something different about Gowan's state as he is about to engage in this. In this contract and in this game. And. And then. Yeah, of course, right.
- [63:57]
D
The.
- [63:57]
B
The role of the lady in this game. Right. Is something. Right. Extremely important and. And distinct.
- [64:04]
C
This is also fascinating because now that I'm looking at this, stanza 49, prior to her saying to my body, will you welcome be. She uses militaristic language about having caught him and having, uh, she's going to bind him in his bed. And she uses the line, I will govern you better. So that. That mixture between, like, I've got you trapped, you. You are in trouble now. But then again, the. The very descriptive lines about what he is welcome to do to her. That's a. That's a pretty wild variation there.
- [64:51]
A
Yeah. And I think maybe just to give us like a little bit of a lattice work as we kind of talk about the details. So obviously what we get here in fit 3 is we get three distinct temptations between Sir Gawain and the lady of the castle. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, this is what's so jarring, I think, even for Sir Gawain, the character, because he's prepared. He's preparing his soul for a certain type of test, fortitude. Am I going to be able to be beheaded? Can I do it without, you know, flinching? Whatever I'm going to have to do here? And all of a sudden, and this is a danger, right, in any kind of, like, quest or journey, all of a sudden he is faced with a very different type of test, one not a fortitude, but one of temptation. And so we see three then distinct movements throughout this. And there's two parallels. And I think this goes into George's insight as well. So the lord of the castle will go hunting. And I think very much Gowan is then being hunted in the castle. And I think that's where a lot of that imagery comes from. So particularly like in the first one, I think it's really fascinating because in the first hunting it has this very explicit thing that the males are not touched. It's just the females, it's the does. And so here we have the men seeking the female deer and just details about their capture and butchery. And again, we have to ask ourselves, why is the poem, the poet, giving us so many details about this? And that's then juxtaposed to our poor Sir Gawain, who I think very much is also being hunted inside the castle. And I think that's where a lot of that imagery comes from, that hunting imagery as well. And probably, to be quite frank, the butchery that wants to happen to Sir Gawain, right? What would happen to his moral life? What would happen to him as a person, his purity, his reputation, if he actually fell into this trap? So the first one has the deer and this temptation, and he gets one kiss. Then we have the second one in which it's a boar, and he has this temptation and he gets two kisses. And then we have the third one, which is the fox, and then we get. Sir Gawain has three kisses. But also this, like, mysterious thing about the girdle. And I think overall, this is where I think Tolkien talks about this too.
- [67:00]
D
That this.
- [67:01]
A
That he actually. Tolkien makes a really fascinating comment that he thinks the entire poem is basically set up for the third fit. That this is really what the poem, what the poet wants to talk about. The whole beheading, et cetera, is a fantastic book ending. It's really kind of interesting, the Green Knight, all these things. But really, it's fit three that the poet really wants to dig into. And I think that here where kind of to play my cards on this. This is where I think you very clearly see the. The friction between this. I keep calling it a courtesy culture because I see it. I do see that as distinct from chivalry overall. But this, when I say that courtesy culture, where you can't be discourteous to your host, you can't be discourteous to your superior. Because what I'm reading this, what I'm thinking of is Joseph and Potiphar's wife. I'm thinking, sir Gawain, you're an idiot. Run. Get up and run. If you understand, you're in this situation. I mean, by this, you know the first one, yeah, he knows what's going on. The second one has some lines that you're like, okay, you know, you're being hunted, clearly. Why do you keep staying? Why do you keep agreeing to the game? It seems like, again, the courtesy is holding him there, that he can't be discourteous. But the more he then adheres to the courtesy culture, the more he jeopardizes his own soul and his own virtue. And this seems to be just a constant tension in fit 3.
- [68:28]
B
The way that I put it to my student site is why doesn't he just pull a Thomas Aquinas here? Why doesn't. Why doesn't he just shove the prostitute out of, out of, out of his room. Why doesn't he just push her out, say, no, thank you, I'm not interested. You're married. This is, this is never going to happen. See you later. Let me get, you know, some really heavy duty locks for my door because apparently, right, she could just come in at will. Yeah. Why, why doesn't he. And why can't he. He simply do that? And, and I think, I think we have the, the courtesy culture, right? The courtesy culture is, is part of the, it's part of the romance tradition, right? It's part, it's part of, at least in some stories, the way that the knight is supposed to behave. And you could see where the lady keeps, she keeps using that, right? She keeps saying, well, the stories tell us this, right? All those stories say that the knight should do this and the knight should act for his lady, right? In this way she at least has a very, she has a very definite idea of, of chivalry, a very definite idea of what it means to be a knight in her version of chivalry is very much the courteous treatment of ladies. But even, even, right, beyond kind of general courtesy, it's the intense devotion of the knight for his own lady and this sense, right, that maybe not, not piety as that virtue that, that governs all, but rather devotion to one's lady. That is, that is the virtue, right, that governs all. And that's her, her version of chivalry is that. And, and she, she continually weaponizes that against him and says, you are not living up to this version of chivalry, right? You're. I thought Gallon was supposed to be this great knight and you're not doing the things that this, that the great knight ought to do. So clearly, you know, you're not, you're not going. You're not who you are.
- [70:37]
D
Yeah. I think it's really important that she specifically tells him in 49, right. That he's known for his courtesy, specifically. And he says, you know, you, you're known for wherever you ride. Your courtesy by the courteous is praise, right? And so that's, like you said, setting that up for him, that this is.
- [70:53]
B
How you're supposed to be acting.
- [70:55]
D
You know, you're supposed to be giving me this kind of courtesy and setting him up to, to, to not reach that standard. I think.
- [71:02]
A
George, what's on your mind?
- [71:04]
C
I'm wondering is, is there not also a strategic judgment here that if he, if he takes the Aquinas method and is too unsubtle with his with letting her down, that he risks offending her. He risks her going to her lord and telling on him.
- [71:29]
B
Did.
- [71:30]
C
Did you all see something of that? Is. Is there not something of that going on as well?
- [71:36]
A
Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, but I think that's part of the. I mean, there's two things there. I think one is part of that courtesy culture has that become disjointed with virtue. And so you can't actually, like, do the virtuous thing. You can't push away this sin in a clear manner. We keep referencing Aquinas. For those who don't know, Aquinas is brothers put a prostitute in his. They locked him in the tower. They put a prostitute in there because they didn't want him to go off and join the Dominicans. And so they were just going to ruin his vocation. And he grabbed, you know, a hot poker out of the fireplace and chased her around the room until she left. And then he made a sign of the cross on the door. And by the way, now there's the Angelic confraternity, which is a group of men and women that join, that pray for each other. Impurity that's predicated upon that story, that decision. And Joseph with Potiphar's wife makes a lot more sense to me because that's what I'm thinking here, is that he's jeopardizing his soul. And I think George is correct. There are reasons to do it. I mean, for instance, he. I think we kind of glossed over it, but he. The. Why is he even staying so long? And why is he quote, unquote, lingering, to use that term again? Well, it's because he's been told that the Green Chapel is only a few days away, but he doesn't actually know where. So I think maybe the bolster George's point is, what if he's discourteous? What if he makes her mad? What if the Lord gets mad and then he doesn't tell him where the chapel is and he ruins his quest? But again, I think the pushback there is okay, but is any of that worth your virtue? Is any of that worth you actually being configured to Christ? And I think the poet does a really phenomenal job here of actually putting Sir Gawain between two female characters. Because I think it's very strategic when Sir Gawain brings up Mary. So I'm looking at the temptation and the first. I think. I believe this is still the first one. This is stanza 51. And so she. Right. She's kind of laying this on thick. And how does he respond? He responds by talking about Mary, madam. He said, mary rewards you. And then later on, Mary is mentioned again. If you're falling into the temptation of lust, you're not going to mention Mary. Mary's the last thing you're going to mention. And so I really see him, because what part of the question is, is does the Marian devotion he has on his shield, is that actually imprinted on his soul? And can he call it up in circumstances that are not about fortitude but about temperance? And I see here kind of two different things. Go. Gawain is doing. He, at one point is trying to still be courteous, which means he's engaging in a lot of rhetoric and a lot of dancing. I think at one point it even says fencing to somehow deny her but remain courteous, which in a certain way is a credit to his rhetoric, to his capacity inside this courtesy culture, his capacity to still do his quest and not be discourteous to his host, et cetera. But then at the same point, he does have these moments in which he mentions Mary, which I think is very much trying to draw probably both him and the lady back to some type of, like, virtuous plane, which she won't do. But I think that's what he's trying to do.
- [74:47]
B
You guys think that he's actually tempted by her. And one of the reasons that I. I'm asking that is there. There are moments that. That do. Do suggest or that he is. He's. He's noticing her and he's seeing that she is be. And he is having a response. But the tactics that she uses that seem to have the most effect on him are those tactics when she says something like, I don't think you're actually the Gowan that I have hurt. Right. I don't think you actually are living up to. To your reputation. You don't. You don't seem to be exercising that courteous speech or you don't know how to love a lady. I don't actually think that you are. You're the Gowan. And those are. Those are moments where we're told by the narrator that he. He's bothered and troubled. He thinks, what do you. What. What do you. What do you mean by that? So I. I guess I've always wondered how much. Right. Is this actually. Right. A temptation of.
- [75:50]
D
Of.
- [75:50]
B
Of lust, of temperance and versus how much of this is kind of going back to that. The projection on the shield there, this projection of perfection. The thing that he seems most Weaken. Most likely to fail is his desire to be perfect. Or at least. Right. His desire to. To be thought of as perfect. And when she suggests that he's not as perfect as she thought he was, that's when he's most bothered.
- [76:18]
D
Wow. I think so, too. And I was just gonna say, you see that in the exchanges, right, that at the end of the day, he's willing to exchange the kisses and give those to the host. But the last thing that he gets. And, you know, skipping ahead a little bit, he gets the green girdle from. He's not willing to give that up. He's going to withhold that from the host. And that, I think, is telling of what the real temptation is for Gowing. And it's not lust, it's not chastity, but it's the temptation to hold on to his own life.
- [76:52]
A
Yeah, I wonder. That's a great question. I'm really glad you asked that because I guess maybe it shows my own depravity. I just assumed that it was a temptation for a gal. I mean, here's this woman that also we kind of glossed over. She's more beautiful than Guinevere.
- [77:05]
B
Yeah, that's.
- [77:07]
A
And that's. And what does that mean? I mean, we got a few bits ago, we got that Guinevere was just like, you know, the female figure par excellence. And then the second one we run into, it's like, nope, never mind. This one's greater than Guinevere. So, yeah, that's really interesting because at one point you could say, well, you don't want to take away from Sir Gawain, that this isn't really like a quote unquote temptation for him. So it's just a game that he's just doing this. He's not really tempted. But at the same time, if Sir Gawain is as virtuous as he is, you know, renowned to be, it might not be a temptation for him. Not because it. It's not. Not because she's not beautiful or anything like this, but simply because I'm. I'm thinking of, in Aristotelian terms, that, you know, there's a distinction between being virtuous and just being continent. And so, you know, the continent man is one who would want to engage that actually would delight in the error, the sin, to use Christian terms, but can actually control his appetite and not do it. Or the virtuous man, in certain ways, is not actually even tempted towards disorder because he would not delight in the disorder itself. It's not actually Appealing to him. And I think that's really fascinating to ask. Ask which one is Sir Gawain in this? And I'm tempted, after you pushing on this and me thinking about the text, I'm tempted to think that he is truly virtuous in this. That he's not just simply being continent. Because I don't. Do we get any. I mean, I could be wrong, but do we get any textual evidence that he's giving in to this temptation or that he would like to take the lady or anything along those lines?
- [78:49]
B
There is a comment back at fit2 and again, I don't have the same version here. It's around line 967 in mind where he sees the older woman and then he sees the younger woman. And we're told that the younger woman is more twosome to his taste. Was the beauty by her side. My. My translation tends to be also pretty, pretty, pretty vivid and explicit about those things. So there's. There seems to be some maybe, right. Some. Some attraction, perhaps some. Right. Some sexual attraction that he feels towards her. But I. I guess maybe my, My sense has always been that he's so distracted by his quest. That's the thing that's so preoccupying him. He also is aware that he needs to be loyal to the Lord. He's not as vulnerable as he maybe could otherwise be. But the thing. And so when she says, you can have my body, he doesn't then respond, my goodness, I'm so afraid of. Of this offer here. I have to run away. I'm shrinking. Or it doesn't hit him in the same way that when she says to him, I don't think that you are, Gman. And then that's when he is afraid. He's afraid that he's failed in some way.
- [80:10]
D
Yeah. And to add on to what you're saying, Dr. Schubert, I think that's right. And if you look on foot, 70. Right. Speaking to that distraction that you mentioned by his quest in between the two days, right before the last temptation comes, he's dreaming about the Green Chapel and about this beheading that's coming to him. And so you see that that's what's on his mind. You really don't see that indication of she's on his mind, that he's worried about her coming in? No, as he's doubt dreaming, he's worried about, I gotta get to the Green Chapel. This is coming. This is, you know, the sense of eeriness was lurking beneath the surface there.
- [80:49]
C
If I recall correctly. And I'd have to go back and look at this. But Tolkien's essay argued that it's precisely because she has worn at, worn him away like psychically with this offering of her body that she weakens him enough that she can foist the girdle on him and then secure the promise to not tell her husband about it. That would suggest to me that indeed he is really tested with the, the sexual temptation. I took, I mean the question's a really good one. I took the, the way he really is concerned with the, the questions about his courtesy to be a really charming, a really charming aspect of him as a knight that of course he is struggling with the, the temptation. I guess maybe I'm just taking it for granted that he is, he is really straining his capacity of chastity here to, to not take what she's offering. But that also on top of that the, the calling of his character into question. I took that to just be a really charming indication of not only is he a red blooded man, but he's also a red blooded man who is very concerned about his character. So I, I, I want to, I want to believe that it's both of those but I, I need to go back and look at it a little bit more closely. It is a really good question.
- [82:35]
A
Yeah. One distinction too that I would want to think further on is one of the things that Professor Jackson said last week that I thought was quite intriguing is that the poet is also testing the reader. And so the poet is presenting certain juxtapositions and if you're an attentive, subtle reader, you're going to hold them intention together. But we're tempted then to take one path or the other and overread one section.
- [83:04]
D
Right.
- [83:04]
A
So for instance, he talked about with King Arthur wanting a Christmas game. The whole first part seems to be very jovial. Yeah, Okay. I don't eat because everyone else is served. That's great. And then I just want a strange story or something and then there's like one little line or basically life for life. And I think that I even did what Professor Jackson was critiquing, which is. Well that sounds really harsh. I don't know how to read that and I just kind of dropped it. And then I read Arthur as this like very jovial good king. I couldn't hold those intention. And so one thing here with Gawain that I'm really interested about is we do get some like very vivid descriptions of the women. Particularly I think Dr. Schubert, your point was well taken back in stanza 39, Tolkien's one has done stanzas. This is where he's comparing the old and the new. But I, I be. I would be careful not. Not to you just in general, like as the readers. When is it Sir Gowan speaking and when is it the narrator speaking? And do we conflate those. So the narrator does you. The. The kind of four lines at the end of each stanza, like he's very explicit. Short body, thick waist with bulging buttocks spread more delicious to the taste was the one she by her lead. So there is. And I think Armitage has. And I realize his is quite broad because it has a lot of poetic license, but his says something along like more men would like, you know, the younger that it talks about that they're drawn to her. So I think it's really interesting to make a distinction. Then when is it the narrator speaking who's pumping these images into the mind of the reader and setting up this temptation versus what is Sir Gowan given us directly in his own words, where is he at in this temptation? But again, to echo George, I think that's a fantastic question because I just assumed that for Sir Gowan this, this was a significant test.
- [85:03]
D
You know, George brought up. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Dr. Schubert. If you had something you wanted to say.
- [85:10]
B
No, go ahead. I would wanted to kind of go back to the Tolkien's point about why he gives into the gifts, but continue.
- [85:17]
D
Yeah, well, I think that'll probably be along this line because I was gonna say he brought up Tolkien's essay and interpretation. And I really think that's outlined in stanza 71, right, where we're getting to the end of this, the end of the line for Gowing, you know, he has to kind of choose between that Christianity and his, you know, the teaching of his faith versus the courtesy of his knighthood. You know, it says she keenly imperialists pressed him so close, led him so near the line that at last he must needs either refuse her with offense or her favors their tape. He cared for his courtesy less a catef or, you know, a contemptible coward. He proved yet more for a sad case if he should sin commit. And so I think like Tolkien's point, and I think it's justified here in the 71 would be that that's the real temptation, right? That's it's a double trap. Either he has to commit this sin of adultery, which he's less likely to actually commit, but the bigger trap is he has to offend her Right. And so it's a. It's a breach not of the temptation, really isn't so much a breach of his Christianity per se, but a breach of his herbal seed, if that makes sense.
- [86:30]
A
But do you think that, Ken, going back to your point, but do you think that his Christian virtue, though, is in jeopardy here? That if he. Because she says there's a line then at the. At the end of one of these stanzas, where. Yeah, I think George had mentioned this. The lady. This is the end of stanza 58. The lady did not forget. She came to bid good day early. She on him set his will to wear away. So the way I read this is, and particularly as the overall theme of the poem is that by engaging in this game of courtesy, he is jeopardizing the higher things, like his own character, his own virtue, his own salvation, really. Right. Of falling into, you know, a mortal sin. And obviously, like, he's very skilled in being able to do this, but we also see that he can falter. So, for instance, like, she's been trying to poke and prod him to understand where is his weakness. And again, keep in mind, he did not agree to three days of this game at one time. So he already knows that she is hunting him when he agrees to the game on the second and third day. And to me, what that means is, is that hit. The courtesy culture is very deeply jeopardizing his own Christian culture. And if he would have pulled, let's. So let's put it this way. If he would have pulled, you know, Joseph and Potiphar's wife or St. Thomas Aquinas, then would he ever have made the mistake of taking the girdle? Would she not have figured out by that point, after two, three days of testing, that this is where his weakness was? If he just would have pushed away, because we're going to find out like this. This becomes like a significant fault on his end. And so is this like the. This is the tension that I see the poet is building is that by keeping and adhering to the courtesy culture, he's actually jeopardizing. He ends up jeopardizing not only his. His Christian soul, I think, but also in a certain way, losing the game in general. And feel free to push back.
- [88:43]
B
Yeah, I wonder. I wonder, though, what you make of the fact that he is able to deny her request for a gift. Right. She says, just give me, give me, give me something. A glove, perhaps. It says, you know, no, I don't have anything, anything worthy enough to give you. I Didn't come here with gifts to give, you know, to give way to lovely ladies who come into my bedroom unasked. Right. It's in my other suitcase, left. And. And then he's also able to say no to the ring. She says, well, here's my ring. This is a. Quite a beautiful ring. It's, you know, it's an amazing. It's an amazing gift. Here, why don't you take it? Why don't you take it? Why don't you take it? And he's able to say no to that. And then the thing that he cannot say no to it is, is the girdle. And I mean, maybe, maybe this is to your point where she takes. That she takes the girdle off. It does seem to be this very erotic kind of moment when she. When she offers it to him. But it seems like the reason that he's takes the girdle is because she tells him that whoever wears this girdle, whoever has this, cannot be killed. Will make him. He cannot be killed. Right. By any. By any craft on earth. I. I think I'm. I'm struggling maybe to see how the temptation of. Of lust makes him maybe more vulnerable to taking that gift. When he is. He seems able to resist the temptation to lust. He does. Maybe it is a genuine temptation for him. That's. I think that's probably. But he resisted, right?
- [90:22]
A
I do think he takes the girl for a completely different reason, which I think he. Which I think he's also at fault at. Um, and so let me see if I can articulate this, which. These are just raw ideas. Me feel free to pushback. Very happy to receive it. So he. My point here is not that necessarily the lust itself erodes his will to the degree that then a different type of temptation becomes more palatable to him. So, for instance, you could make the claim, well, what if she just would have offered the girdle in the beginning? What if that was her first temptation was, hey, by the way. Because why is he like the girdle? Let's talk about it.
- [90:58]
D
Right?
- [90:58]
A
So why is he like the girdle? Well, it's not because he just likes girdles. It's because it has this Fae magic about it. And you can't be harmed if you're wearing it. So all of a sudden now he has a pagan out this like, Fae magic out to the problem of the Green Knight. Because he thinks he's gonna have to go and find the Green Knight in the chapel and we're gonna figure out how that works. But his assumption is the Green Knight's going to cut off my head. And unfortunately, my head does not go back on. I can't go pick it up. So he cheated. If you want to look at it that way. Right. The Green Knight cheated by this Fae magic. So. Oh, great. Now look, I have an opportunity to cheat the game with my own Fae magic. And actually I. I have lots of questions about that because I read that negatively. Not simply that he, you know, is it a fault for him to take it? I don't know. But the intent of him taking it, the question is, is again, it goes back to the question of who's actually guiding this journey of his and who should his trust be in? So if he's calling out to Mary and Providence and these types of things, like shouldn't he trust in Mary and Providence and our Lord to carry him through the trial, not rely on this Pagan artifact of Fae magic to maybe cheat the game? I have a lot of questions about that, about whether or not the acceptance of it itself is falling into something that's subpar for a Christian night. The Christian knight should not fear death like this to accept a pagan artifact that will do this. But my point wasn't that the, the lust erodes to where that becomes, but rather that he keeps putting himself back into a situation with someone who he knows is disordered and is inviting him to disorder. And so what does she do?
- [92:42]
D
She.
- [92:43]
A
She is tempting him constantly. Yes, he seems to be doing great with not temptation. And again, what's he doing? He runs off. He goes to mass, he does these things. And also the, the narrator, the poet, gives us several comments that seem to help us interpret Sir Gawain, where he says he remained pure, he was faultless in his speech. I mean, he gives. He gives us some commentary, I think, to interpret the intent and whether or not Sir Gawain has crossed a line here. But where I. On the Christian side, where I tend to lend more towards the Aquinas option, is how long do you keep putting yourself back into a situation with an interlocutor that you know is disordered is inviting you to disorder. So, yeah, he didn't succumb to the lust, but then she realized another path by which she could invite him into disorder. And she did that and she won. She got me to accept it.
- [93:36]
B
Right, okay. Yeah, yeah, I know.
- [93:38]
A
I mean, I mean, George can't push, you know, push back here, but I just, I don't see his. At least I read this as the critique of the of the poet, too, that this is an area where this courtesy culture jeopardizes just general Christian prudence and that he should have removed himself in some capacity from this, even though he's very skilled with rhetoric and etc, to be able to fence his way out of these problems.
- [94:04]
B
Yeah, I think that suggests that he's. He, meaning the poet, is offering some kind of critique of. Of chivalry. I'd rather we want to distinguish martial chivalry from. From courteous chivalry, but there. There does. There does seem to be within this poem some kind of. Some kind of critique of some of the standards of. Of the chivalric rid. Or at least some questioning of. Can they actually be. Can they be reconciled to Christianity, but also can they be reconciled to each other? Right. Can he be both courteous to the lady and loyal to the Lord? Right. That's a really tricky and delicate kind of balance that. That he's trying to strike there. And. And then. Yeah. Is courtesy to two ladies. Is that. Can that be reconciled with Christian purity? Right. And Christian piety? I'm also wondering, though, if that part of the reason that Gawn keeps. Keeps putting himself into this position is because it's so. It's so murky. I mean, you're right. Yes, she does tell him, you know, here's my body. You can do. You can do whatever you want to do with my. With my body. But. But, you know, he's not. He doesn't have his armor on. He doesn't have his shield. He's not out fighting the wolves and the wild men. He's not enduring physical suffering. He's not in a melee. All of the traditional and conventional markers of. Of temptation and the occasion to exercise virtue aren't there. He's in the. He's in the court. He's at ease. He's. He's dressed nicely. He's fed well. He's in a bedroom. Right. He's. He's from a courtly, chivalric, romantic perspective. He's not really in a place where he would be challenged and tested and tempted. Right. And where he would have to be virtuous and courageous. Right. Where he would have to display that. You know, it obviously. Right. He is, but it's really, you know, it's really murky. There's this subversion of expectations there. I think even that's maybe part of the reason you have all those juxtapositions with the hunting scene too, right? In the hunting scene, right. Well, of course, what happens in a hunting scene, you have a prey and you have a predator. And, you know, this is the prey and this is the predator, and this is how it works. And then in the bedroom scene, that's not where we expect prey and predator to happen there, right? So the. You know, it's the. I think of it as. It's. It's kind of akin to Othello, actually, Shakespeare's play, right? Othello is this great hero, and he can do really well on the battlefield. He's a great leader of men. But then when it comes to the domestic. When he's in a relationship with Desdemona and he's trying to sort through, right, the complexities there, he's just. I mean, he's. He's an absolute idiot about it. He. He can't. Right? He can't. He can't actually negotiate and survive in that realm. And I wonder, right, there's something. Something akin to that, right, that just. The poet shifts the source of danger, right, from the typical. Right, to the atypical. And maybe that's part of what's, you know, catching Gam off guard a little bit. It's. He's not faced by the giant.
- [97:31]
D
Yeah, yeah.
- [97:32]
A
No, I think, like I said. Yeah. No, like we've mentioned previously, I think the shift from a battle of fortitude to a battle of temperance is one that can take a hero off guard pretty quick. George, what were you gonna add?
- [97:43]
C
It's just worth adding that when she extracted the promise from him that he wouldn't tell her husband about the girdle, she has. She has checkmated him and guaranteed that he now has to betray one of them. He either has to go back on the promise that he made to her to not tell or he has to break the covenant with the Lord. So in any consideration of his character and how well he handles this situation, it's. It's just worth adding that they have trapped him.
- [98:21]
A
It's interesting, too. I mean, one thing that I think people like to play off a lot of is, like, how anagogical are the hunts? So the first one you had, like, the male seeking the female. And then meanwhile, at the castle, the female seeking the male. And then you had this boar that seemed indestructible, not going to fall, et cetera. In the third one, you get this sly fox. Can the fox kind of, you know, be clever and escape? Well, none of the animals do. They all get caught. It's interesting that then the narrator, the poet, talks. At the end of stanza 70, Mary comes back in, and there's this interesting commentary. They spoke then. Speech is good. Much pleasure was in that play. Great peril between them stood, unless Mary for her night should pray. So it's, it's curious to me that as we kind of talk about where's the level of temptation here and the danger for him that the poet seems to state that he is actually in great peril. And I'm not sure, I guess, you know, I'm just thinking out loud kind of as we play these things together in the iron, sharpening iron. I'm not really sure great peril includes just a breach of courtesy. Is that really great peril? Is that something that Mary's like, terribly worried about, or is there a greater temptation here, whether that's to sexual depravity, whether that's adultery or whatever? Like, is Gawain, right? Is his virtue being eroded here by continuing to be in this situation? How long can you, you know, fence this? How long can you actually engage in this rhetorical game before you make a mistake? And the George's point, he ends up making a mistake. But to your point, professor, it's because, again, she shifts. So we have a shift from the green knight and fortitude to the temperance of the lady. And then the lady herself shifts the temptation and he falls for it.
- [100:10]
B
Yeah. You know, and I, I, I think, I think you're right that he really is in danger here of maybe giving into her sexually. I suppose I just the fact that, right, the, that's the, the girdle, that's the temptation that he actually gives into. All right. Is striking to me and fascinating once, once again. Right. With this poem, you just, you feel, you know, you think, okay, this is what's. It's going to be, this kind of poem. It's probably going to be a romance. There's gonna be lots of adventures. Except for. Then the poet tells us that, no, it's not going to be that kind of poem. And then you think, oh, okay, and now it's actually going to be about his chastity, right. And can he withstand sexual temptation or anything? It's about, right, about courtesy. Is it going to be courteous? And then the thing that gets him is this temptation to save his life, right? That's the thing that, that actually leads him to get into the double bind, right. That George is talking about. Right. We're here. Either he is discourteous or untrue to her, makes a promise to her or keep something from the Lord, but it's that, that temptation there.
- [101:25]
A
Well, what do you take of One thing we haven't mentioned is lines, Stanza 71. So this is right after the poet gives this commentary that he's in great peril unless Mary intercedes for her night. The beginning of Stanza 71 is the first and only time that the term sin is used. And so I think that, you know, as we kind of work through this, I don't know, I think I might be really hesitant to say that Sir Gawain is not actually tempted by the lady in some capacity, because what is the great peril? What is the sin that he's going to fall into? Which, again, I think the. At least you know, the way I do read it, is that there are. There are courtesy, these two moral realms, if you will, right? There's the courtesy, the chivalric, and then just Christian virtue. And I personally think these two should align. The pentangle, I think, is great, right? That's the ideal. They should align. But can courtesy become disordered? Can it become bloated? Can it go out from the boundaries of Christian virtue? I think the answer has to be yes. There. Here we see then, the first and only use of the term sin. And is this something that he is getting close to engaging in? Because he is. His courtesy is keeping him in a dangerous situation. George, were you going to jump in?
- [102:46]
C
Yeah. I'm sorry to be parroting Tolkien's essay here repeatedly, but it's such a good essay. I would highly recommend to any of your readers or any of your listeners to, to read this essay. But Tolkien actually says that there are three planes, the first three levels on which Gawain has to. To prove worthy. Mere jesting pastimes is, number one, the kind of things that knights do. Number two is courtesy, the. The code of polite manners. And number three, then, is actual real moral virtue. So, so it's, it's not just the, the courtesy and virtue, but also then the. The pastimes. And how much, how much does Gawain actually owe to this madman who came in and made this really strange challenge to him? And then how much does he owe to the Lord who came in and had this kind of strange, jocular, hey, let's make a covenant. Whatever you win, I get. Whatever I win, you get. It is a really fascinating interweaving of those three things. And at the end of the day, Gawain passes the test. I mean, I have to think in any real.
- [104:15]
A
He's.
- [104:16]
C
He commits certain errors, but those errors were. Have to be taken in the. The context of he was expertly trapped, but at the end of the day, he does pass the test on the real plane where it matters. Do you guys agree with that?
- [104:34]
A
Yeah, I think I. I will say that I, Yeah, I read Tolkien's essay and, you know, far be it for me to push back on Tolkien, but, yeah, he has. He has a very charitable read of Sir Gal. And I think one of the. If I understood correctly, and please push back on me, one of the maneuvers that Tolkien does is by creating, like, these various planes, then what he can say is, is that certain errors by G aren't, Aren't actually like moral errors and therefore G remains pure. Because I think this is what you're getting point to. What, what is. Like, what is the actual moral error? If I violate a game, like, what does that actually mean? If I just. Is I just violate this game, does that actually mean that I've fallen into some type of, like, error? And he. And he kind of does this. He says, well, yeah, Sir Gawain could. Could accept the girdle. There's. There's no reason that he can't accept this from the woman. There's no reason that he would have to tell the Lord that he has this. It's hers to give. Yeah, so he does. I think he does run a lot of interference for Gawain there. I think one thing that I don't remember him talking about that I tend to be somewhat more negative on, is why he accepts it and whether or not I think that ultimately is an error in moral virtue simply because it's a lack of trust in Providence to get him through this. And so he has a rely on this, like, fey magic object, etc. But Tolkien also does a lot of work because I think something that's tricky in the passage is that after he accepts the girdle, correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm going by the fly here, but after he accepts the girdle, then he. And he gets his three kisses, then he goes to confession and he gets absolved of his sins. And the narrator, the poet, seems to give us a very optimistic understanding that Gawain has actually made a good confession. And I think Tolkien points this out, is like, well, he's not lying to the priest. He's not hiding the girdle, but him keeping the girdle is not actually really a sin of any consequence because it's actually just part of a game, if I understood him correctly. And I'm not entirely sure how well I follow that, to be honest. And again, far be it for me to Critique Tolkien. But as I try and work through these own moral issues, because even if it's just a game, right, Gowan has given his word to do this. I mean, has he not. Has he not said, yes, okay, whatever, I win, you give that. So by not giving the girdle, I think the reason he accepted it is disordered. But also by not giving it to the Lord, I don't know how I wouldn't contextualize that as a lie or being deceitful. Now, is the gravity. Is the matter of it quite serious? No, I don't think so. But is it still a moral error? I would think so. I don't think just because it's a game you can chalk up to the idea that then Christian morality doesn't actually still govern it. Does that make sense?
- [107:40]
D
I think that's shown in fit 4. I mean, not to get ahead. I know we're not doing that today. But he gets the nick for keeping the girdle and for not giving it up in the game. And so there is. That's. He gets a consequence for that. That's the only thing that he fails in. That's the only consequence that he gets for it. So I do think that there's textual evidence to say that this is seen, or supposed to be seen as at least somewhat of a moral failing. It just might not be like a mortal moral failing, if that makes sense.
- [108:15]
B
But for a character like Gawain, whose symbol is the pentacle, that is expressive of who he is from his perspective, you know, at least, it is a really big deal. But, yeah, I think of a Klein to see it as. It is a moment of imperfection from a character who has maybe thought of himself as perfect and whom the pentangle inclines us to think him as. As perfect. Right. And as. As perfectly confirmed in all of these virtues. And this is a moment in which. In which he fails. It's not clear to me that when he goes to his confession, if. If he's actually confessing the girdle, if he. If he's actually thinking the girdle is in fact a thing to be confessed.
- [109:04]
A
Because we're told that he hasn't lied yet. Because I do think the confession scene is complicated. So he goes to confession, he's accepted the girdle. Is accepting the girdle from the lady a sin of some sort, a violation of, like, Christian moral order? I think on its face, no, there's no reason. I don't know why he couldn't accept it. I do think his Intent behind it opens him to critique. And we'll see this kind of later in the poem. It's loaded. Why are you relying on this girl? Tolkien pushes back on that. He downplays it a lot. He says, oh, well, he keeps it. But then he doesn't seem to actually rely on it. And that's something I'd have to think about more. Because if he kept it and then realized, oh, this is not really that reliable, then I don't know why he doesn't just give it back when the Lord asks for it. So he at least has to want it to desire it to the degree that he's not willing to give it up. To what degree we want to assign that of desire, I'm not sure. But it is very fascinating to me that he receives it. Maybe his intent is to be questioned. He goes to confession, receives absolution. We're led to, I think, in the text to say this is actually a good confession. So he's not withholding sin. So for non Catholics, if you go to confession, you can't withhold certain sins. You have to say all the sins. Withholding a sin is a sin itself. It's not going to show true penance and forgiveness for your sins. And then he retains the girdle. Correct, because the retaining of the girdle comes after the confession. That's at line. Because he doesn't kiss in line. So the confession is in stanza 75. And then the Lord of the house, whose name, by the way, we still don't know. Correct. Which is fascinating to me. It's something to note. The stanza in 77 is where he gives him the three kisses that he had won that day. And by the way, it's the only time that Sir Gawain goes and gives his gift first. Sir Gawain seems to be somewhat in a rush to get this over with. So usually the Lord comes in and says, hey, this is what I got you this day. I got you, dear. And he gets a kiss. Oh, I got you a boar. Then he gets two kisses and it's like, oh, now he comes in with a fox. But he's not told that Gowan, the template changes, which I think we should take note of. It's probably intentional that actually Gawain wants to give him the three kisses and move this along. And then he gets the fox and retains the girdle. The question then, is retaining the girdle and deceiving the Lord of the house a moral error?
- [111:46]
C
I would just want to say that if it is an error. It is not only the most understandable error, but it's also an endearing error. And I don't know. I. I like to think. I want to talk about this a little bit later, but I like to compare Gawain to Lancelot, and then following from that, you can even compare Gawain to Galahad. Gawain is not a Galahad, but I like Gawain more than Galahad. I. I am attached to him because of how he does his best in this situation, even if his best is not. Is not perfect.
- [112:31]
D
I.
- [112:32]
C
There's something that I. I just can't put into words how much I am endeared to him through this. I don't know. Do you guys have similar reaction or. Not really?
- [112:43]
D
No.
- [112:43]
A
I. I think I love his character and I. Sorry, I. Maybe for the sake of the argument, I've been overly negative on Sir Gawain, but. No, I love his character. I think his capacity to keep his virtue throughout these temptations. I think he has a certain innocence to him and purity. He's not naive, though, to a certain degree, but I do find him to be innocent. No, I think he's an incredibly endearing character and it's. It's a. It's something that I greatly enjoy reading. I just. I'm a little concerned and I'm happy to be corrected, and I might think about it more between now and our next episode, that I also don't want to run too much interference for him and keep him in some kind of level of perfection where I think that he does actually error and just simply say, well, this was just a game. Therefore, because it's a game, you don't actually have to obey it. I don't. I think that's very rare, particularly in Christian virtue. We do have, obviously, if you make some kind of deal or whatever, that's a sin. The deal itself is disordered. You can get out of that. You don't have to bind yourself to something that is disordered. And maybe someone can make an argument that that's what has occurred here. But I do think that the giving of the. The not giving of the girdle back is a critique. And I think what's underneath it more is not simply lying to the Lord, but the reason that he wants to keep it, which I realize, again, Tolkien runs a little bit of interference on, but he has to desire it to the degree of not giving it back. But, George, what were you gonna say?
- [114:10]
C
Just that I can imagine the priest having said, and I'm not sure that this passes mustard. But nevertheless, the priest must have said, or I imagine he said something like, you were drawn initially into this game with the Green Knight, not knowing that the Green Knight had Fae magic. So therefore the. The initial covenant is kind of called into question. And if you are given this opportunity to bring your own Fae magic into.
- [114:47]
B
Just.
- [114:47]
C
It just seems that we need to go back and reconsider the original terms.
- [114:53]
A
Yeah.
- [114:53]
B
And again, it's just, it's. It's not entirely clear to me that during that confession he has actually brought up the girdle. Maybe, maybe, maybe he has. I mean, we are told, right, that he confesses his sins from the largest to the least. But I'm not, I'm not sure that he actually thinks of the taking of the girdle and the promising to not give it to the Lord. Right. Or to keep it a secret from the Lord. I don't know that he yet sees it as a sin or as an error. I think that he is making an error. I think he is. He is not a perfect character. And I think the whole of the story, in a sense, right. Is. Is really about him discovering that he is not a perfect character. He. He. He thinks he is perfect and he projects an image of perfection and, and not just of any kind of perfection, but. Right, yeah, of course.
- [115:44]
A
Of.
- [115:44]
B
Of a wholeness, of an integrity, of a unity of the Christian end and the chivalric. Right. And he thinks that he has that. And what he has to discover is that he doesn't have that. But when he confesses, I guess it's just. Yeah, it's not clear to me that he yet perceives or realizes that he's made. That he's been untrue. Right. Or unfaithful to the Lord in some. In some way.
- [116:10]
A
Yeah, no, I agree. I'm not. Because I'm not clear that again, the taking of the girdle does not seem to be, on its face, disordered. Like, why could the. Why could delete it, right? Et cetera. But the. I agree. When she has him promise, don't tell the Lord, then it's. It's trapped him to a certain degree. I do think that the intent of him taking it can be critiqued. Now, whether or not in that moment that constitutes a sin or whether. So Sir Gawain has to be aware. You can only confess sins. One, that you've done and two, that you're even aware of, you have to be aware that it's actually a sin to actually confess it. So I, I think it's just very fascinating that the poet puts it at this moment between these two acts. And I think it raises these questions very intentionally. Kent, what were you gonna say?
- [116:54]
D
Yeah, no, I just totally agree with you. I think that it's the intention behind taking the girdle and potentially the intention behind not telling the husband, right? That, hey. Because if he told the husband, he'd have to give it up and he wants to keep it. And that just makes me think of Matthew 16:29, I think, is what it is, right, that he who gives his life for my sake shall find it, and he who keeps his life shall lose it. And I think that's really what the poet's driving at here, is that element of Christian virtue, which is that you are supposed to be willing to give up everything and even including your life. And that's the. The ultimate point to which yaoing is tested and I think found at fault, which is really the extreme of Christian virtue.
- [117:40]
A
We're really building ourselves up for next week and fit forward, untangling all of these knots that we've created. Can I. Can I ask a dumb question? Because I. I get this every time I read this text with people. So I just want to, like, throw it out there. But it bothers people, probably because we're moderns. But I just want to throw it out there. It bothers people because Sir Gawain receives these kisses from the lady, which are very much, like, packed with kind of an eroticism because of the language and these types of things. But they seem to still be like courteous kisses, like some kind of greeting or something like that. So that's how I read them. So when he gives them back to the Lord, my understanding there is that the kisses that he's giving to the Lord would have been customary greetings between men or not. I guess the question is, like, what? These kisses that he's giving back to the Lord, are these. Like, is there anything disordered or odd or weird or outside of convention about these? Or are these just like, courteous kisses that would have been given to him would have been weird for a night to kiss a Lord in this fashion? Does that make sense? Like, where is the cultural. It's hard to judge the oddity of the act if we don't understand, like, the cultural norm that has occurred. Because I read them as, you know, courteous on the cheek kind of kisses, but then I don't. When he gives those to the Lord, would that have been very odd or not? Does that question make sense? Because that question comes up Almost every time I read this text with anybody.
- [119:13]
B
Right. It seems like surely in the cultural context, not so. Not so weird to greet your Lord, right? In. In this way, that kind of affection between men. Because we as readers are aware of where he's gotten the kisses, then it reads as very. Right. Is very weird for us. Wait a minute. If these are kisses that you have received from another man's wife, you are now returning to that man, having just spent a great deal of time in, you know, in a bedroom with. With another man's wife. And so. Right. So we're. We as readers are aware of the. The incredible strangeness, the discomfort, in a sense, of. Of the origin of these kisses, right. In the night, then. I mean, the night responds. He thinks, wow, wow. Well, well done, Gowan. It would be great if you could tell me where you got these from. Hint, hint, wink, wink. Judge Gowan says, well, no, that wasn't part of the deal. We didn't wear the. You didn't. It didn't demand that I tell you the source. So it does seem like, yeah, the weirdness is the fact that he has gotten kisses from the wife that he's giving back as opposed to the actual kisses themselves. But it does. I mean, you know, I don't even think you have to be modern to see that it is a. It's a weird exchange of kisses. Even if kisses. Hua. Kisses wouldn't necessarily be odd or strange, right. Between, you know. Yeah. A lord and his knight.
- [120:40]
D
I also think the comedic part of it, right, that's. We're meant to find that funny. And it is kind of funny, right? It's funny to picture that. Oh, here's. Here he is, and he's giving him kisses, and he's shocked by him. The Lord even laughs every time that he gets them, and he's like, whoa, where'd you find moles laying around? You know? And so I do think that it's meant to be shocking and strange and funny for the reader.
- [121:03]
B
Yeah, I think so. I think so. And then. Right. It's also funny because he hasn't actually won these kisses, Right? They have been given to him or. Right. He's been tricked into them or extracted, you know, but by the. Right. The lady, she's the one who has actually done the winning. She's the predator who has won something, Right? But Gowan then is giving the kisses to her, says, you know, oh, here are my winnings for the day in the way that the Lord is saying, oh, here are my winnings from. From the Hunt. And so that. That's. I think it's also another level of. Of the comedy too, is that Gowan is. Is sharing kisses that he hasn't actually really even won.
- [121:43]
A
George, are you gonna jump in there?
- [121:45]
C
Just that this. This goes back to what professor said earlier. This is a shockingly funny poem. And I was just thinking about my. My favorite audiobook. There's an actor named David Rintoul who reads this, and he just. He performs it so well. And that moment where the. The knight is asked, Gawain is asked about where the kisses came from. He makes it really quite. It's masterfully done. Gawain responds with this spiritedness, like, no, that was not part of the deal. Be happy with what I've given you and stop asking questions in this. In this jocular way. It's just a great moment. So, yeah, I mean, the more we talk about this poem, the more I just. I love it. And it's got so much going on, not least of which is how funny.
- [122:40]
A
It is because there's a lot of questions that are raised there. Right. So there's the Lord. We've really only been introduced to, like, two women in the castle. I'm assuming there's other ones that are servants. And he keeps getting kisses during the day. You think at some point the lord would, you know, engage a bit or be like, hey, by the way, like, who's kissing you? Or like, is this maybe. Should I keep going and hunting? Is this something I should keep doing? Right. There's like. And so I think. And what that does, is it kind of slowly to the reader, if the reader's paying attention. Attention to these things. Showing you, I think, the depth of the trap that Sir Gowan has actually found himself in, that this trap is. Is actually much more treacherous than I think he even, you know, much more than he actually realizes and much more than even the reader, I think, realize this right now as well. Yeah. Okay. So final. Any kind of final thoughts, comments, questions on fit3, but I just want to add.
- [123:31]
B
Yeah. To your comment there. The danger. Once again, that danger is coming in the form that you don't expect it to come in. And. And it involves. Yeah, it's. It's so. It's so funny. So funny from our perspective in this perspective too. But there's. There's so much laughter and ease within the poem itself self. The characters themselves are, Right. Laughing and at ease and playing a game. And so even in FIT Right. FIT three, so fraught. Right. It's so much moral danger that he's facing, you know, genuine. I'm sorry, genuine temptation to his chastity. He's in peril unless Mary protect him. And yet simultaneously, he seems to be having the time of his life with the lady. They're just chatting away, laughing, you know, engaging in courteous banter, having. Having fun and at ease rate. So. So that. That juxtaposition in tone. I.
- [124:25]
D
Is.
- [124:26]
B
Is. Is just so, so strange to me. Yeah. We have the deer being ripped up and Gowan being tempted, and then simultaneously we have. This is a really, like, lovely and fun experience for everyone involved. And everyone is constantly laughing and speaking jokingly and lightheartedly. Right. And so. So this is a. It's a hilarious poem. And then writing. But even within the poem itself, that, that laughter or that ease or that hilarity is. Is something of a blind. Right. Or at least ready. It's obscuring and making it difficult to see the real. The real danger, the real test, you know, that's here, that's at hand when you're out in the woods facing that danger. No one is. No one is laughing and no one is playing games. Right, but we're in the. The murky world, right? And that's where. That's where the lady. Right, can come in and seize him and grab him playfully, I guess, but. But pretty seriously. Right.
- [125:28]
A
You know.
- [125:29]
B
Right. Which. Which one is it? And I think. I think that murkiness is a huge. Keep saying this, right. But I just. I think that is a huge part of the challenge that's confronting a hero whose shield has an emblem that is not murky in the slightest.
- [125:47]
A
Yeah, it's a good juxtaposition. You know, it's probably a depravity of my. Of my own read, but I actually, I haven't really laughed at all reading this poem. I haven't found you guys mentioning this. You know, I always tell people on the podcast, like, if you read one of Plato's dialogues and you don't laugh, you've read it incorrectly because Plato has these, like, really funny lines. I'm really worried now that I've, you know, I'm not reading the poem correctly because I don't find this humor, but I think it's because I'm overly critical of the culture that courtesy creates. And so, for instance, like, the juxtaposition between him being hunted in the bedroom, him knowing it, running off the mass, and then just going and having pleasantries with the same woman all afternoon and then agreeing to the same game the next day to Me, I just see that as. Just like it's, it would be like Joseph just going right back to Potiphar's wife over and over and over again expecting that he's going to be okay. And at some point, that, that seems to be very disordered to me. But, you know, maybe my lack of levity is, is probably a misread on my part. So, George Kent, anything. Final thoughts on fit 2 or 3?
- [126:48]
C
I would just say that I don't know if, if you all had a similar experience, but I can't quite remember reading a book and having a moment like the moment when she tells him the capabilities or the virtues of the girdle and the way in which, I mean, if you have like a cinematic imagination, you. You can just see a really good director doing something subtle with the camera at that point. There, there's. There was a, there was a realization that was dropped on the reader that Gawain has come all this way, he's facing all this danger, and then lo and behold, he's being offered this thing that is the solution to his problems. It was for me, a really wild and memorable experience. When reading that, I just, I will never forget.
- [127:53]
A
Yeah, that's beautiful. Probably also a fruit of. Just a deep, attentive read of being drawn into the narrative. Ken, any final words on your part?
- [128:02]
D
I, you know, I think we've pretty much covered it for the most part. Just I really. That FIT three, I think is the, the meat and potatoes. But FIT four, I'm really looking forward to because I think for me that's where the symbolism really comes home from this story. And I think it's the most powerful, even if it is the shortest of them. So really looking forward to our next session as well.
- [128:23]
A
Yeah, no, it's going to be good. I'm looking forward to. This has been great. Dr. Tiffany Schubert, you have given us a lot to think about. A lot of fantastic insights, asked great questions, stirred a lot of conversation. We deeply appreciate you being here today.
- [128:36]
B
Thank you so much. It was, it was a delight.
- [128:39]
A
Where can people find out more about, like you and your work?
- [128:42]
B
So I have a book on Jane Austen's medievalism that has been published and some. I also have some articles in Mythlore too, looking at the medievalism of C.S. lewis.
- [128:55]
A
Oh, fantastic. Okay, very good. Well, thank you again for being on the podcast. We really deep, deeply appreciate it. Next week we'll be finishing up Sir Gawain and the green knight with fit 4, so go check us out on X, YouTube and Facebook and check out our Patreon page where we have guides and also a community chat on Sir Gallon in the Green Knight. And we will see you next week. Thank you.