The haunting literary landscape of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Michael Smith
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a key element of the story is the hero’s crossing the threshold from the known (the court at Camelot) to the unknown (the lands of lord Bertilak). But the poet's real genius is less in how he manipulates a known literary landscape and more in how he weaves the narrative into a real, physical landscape to create a place of horror at the edge of human endurance.
Landscapes of the dreamt imagination
Landscapes in Middle English alliterative romances take two forms: they are based on real places known to their audiences or they are dream landscapes used by the poet to evoke an almost spiritual engagement in the world. The literary landscape of Sir Gawain, and of the Alliterative Revival as a whole, is an extraordinarily rich place.
In dream landscapes, such as those in the Parlement of the Thre Ages or in Pearl, the landscape is presented as a poetic device to provoke us into contemplation. In these romances, audiences are permitted to drift into worlds of profound spiritual reflection on self and the world. In Wynnere and Wastoure a dream landscape is also used as a platform to facilitate a critique of the economics of medieval English society.
But for poems describing real places, locations were varied to give great reality and presence to the content. In Piers Plowman, evoking a West Midlands location, its putative author William Langland locates his dreamer in the Malvern Hills above the Severn valley. Langland's world was half real, half dream - a place for reflection on society as a whole.
Elsewhere, a group of northern Arthurian poets placed their action in the wastelands of Inglewood Forest near Carlisle, possibly in response to demands from local lords. One of these poets, the poet-author of the alliterative Morte Arthure (King Arthur’s Death), took things even further by showing a significant grasp of national and international geography and has a realistic awareness of travel times across England.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, however, the Gawain-poet takes things to the next level. Showing a deep understanding of the rocky landscapes of North Wales and the distinctive landscapes of the Staffordshire Roaches and the Peak District, he then merges this hostile landscape with an Arthurian romance to create a work of destabilising emotional impact and power.
Landscapes to haunt the mind
The power of the Gawain-poet is unparalleled. While (as the Pearl-poet) he sprinkles his dream dust on us in his magically melancholic masterpiece Pearl, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight he tosses all this on its head, exposing the fragile spirituality of the human soul to a deeply hostile natural environment.
The power of this magnificent alliterative work is its astonishing contrast between the imaginary world and the real, dumping the chivalric dream of French fancy into the nightmarish monstrosity of a howling northern winter.
This is the work of a poet who understood place and the weaknesses of humanity within it. This is a poet who has no qualms in trashing the conceits of chivalry in the blustery, icy, wintry world of Northwest England and North Wales.
So, when we venture with Gawain on his journey from Camelot to Hautdesert we follow a real road – the coastal road from somewhere near Caernarfon, past ‘all the isles of Anglesey on his left’, [l. 698] down to Holywell [l. 700] and then across the Dee to the ‘wilderness of Wirral’ where few men of God live [ll. 701-702].
This is an horrific journey, not following some winding route populated, Chretien-style, with maidens in tents, random knights and the ever-present security of Arthur’s court to which Perceval’s defeated foes are returned in shame.
Instead, Gawain’s journey is one in which he fights with wolves and wodwose (wild men), alone in a world washed by icy rains. Cast into the wilderness he must call to God or Mary, bereft of all company in his loneliness [ll. 713-739].
Gawain's crossing of the Dee to a near-Godless Wirral is highly significant. The great peninsula is a transformative place – our last known identifiable geographical reference before Gawain is cast adrift into a landscape which can only lead to the Green Chapel with its grim executioner ready with his axe.
A literary landscape of dark threats and ambiguity
After the reality of Wirral, we the audience enter a semi-magical hazy world somewhere nearby, but exactly where is not quite known. It is here - after some unknown period of time - that we encounter the castle of Hautdesert, rising from its extra-deep moat, its reflection shimmering in the waters.
But this is magic in more ways than one: seemingly built in the latest style [ll. 785-797], as if ‘pared by paper’ l. 802], its denizens are in stark contrast to the courtly people, we might imagine.
In Lord Bertilak we have a stout, bearded man, avuncular in the style of the Ghost of Christmas Present [ll. 842-849]. But there are two women – one, his wife, more beautiful even than Guinevere; the other is old, ugly and sinister [ll. 941-969]. They exude ambiguity and threat.
Bertilak is a master of the outer world. He hunts three times in the icy crags to slaughter a deer, a boar and a fox as part of a pre-conceived game with his guest. The landscape is not a dreamworld, it is cold, craggy and frosty and the peaks bear hackles of mist.
The inner warmth of the castle might suggest security from the weather, but this is only one of the enemies confronting our hero.
In the antithesis of the medieval damsel in distress, the lady of the castle now plays with Gawain, who is trapped inside the castle as a condition of the game. This castle maybe a harbour in the snow, but it is also a temporary prison.
Inside, the lady destroys the medieval conceit of flirtatious 'luf-talking' and instead uses her own powers of persuasion to seduce her guest almost to the point of sexual contact [ll. 1770-75].
Then, when the time eventually comes for Gawain to leave, it seems he is metaphorically prising open his eyes as he leaves one nightmare behind to face another when he must venture forth to the Green Chapel.
As the poet writes, "þaʒ he lowkeʒ his liddeʒ, ful littel he slepes" [l. 2007] - though his eyes appear locked, he cannot sleep at all. His nightmare is ours too.
A fictional world where we do not dare to dream
The power of the poet in this final phase is magisterial. The “snawe snitered ful snart þat snaype þe wylde; pe werbelande wynde wapped fro þe hyʒe” he writes [ll. 2003-4]. The icy, biting snow nips at the animals cowering in the blasts; the howling winds whipped down from the heights.
We, the audience, do not dream. We do not dare to. We are right there with Gawain as he is taken by his guide towards the Green Chapel. It is fitting that the guide leaves him after trying to tempt Gawain away form his duty, like the Devil with Christ in the wilderness [ll. 2091-2139].
We descend past icy, gushing northern waters to the plain where, in the snow, a haunting barrow can be seen all alone, by a bubbling wintry river.
Above us, in what appears to be the cold limestone karst landscape of the southern Peaks, we hear the grinding of the axe as the Green Knight sharpens its monstrous blade on a great wheel [ll. 2200-2204].
In the end, of course, Gawain is saved by his conscience and his religion; he was conceited, he lied to his host, but he did not betray him.
It is here that the Green Knight reveals he knew all along what was happening at the castle [ll. 2358-68], that he was Lord Bertilak all along, and that he has been transformed into the Green Knight by Morgan le Fay (the old woman at the castle) who, it seems, is Gawain's own aunt [ll. 2445-70]
The Green Knight is in some way the stuff of nightmares; a man trapped by fate by the machinations of magic and yet a man who understands the sorrows of others. His melancholy ambiguity is one of the standout features of this magnificent work. He gives a haunting humanity to his shapeshifting prison, fashioned by the wickedness of Morgan.
But we, too, have been shape-shifted. The poet's magic has warped our own minds and made us fearful of the unknown which lies beyond our conventional understanding.
The literary landscape of Sir Gawain - a world beyond that we know so well
It is notable at the end that the poet chooses not to tell us how Gawain returns to Camelot apart from a cursory account of the journey. As he says, in the poetic conceit of the age, he does not intend to recount it at this point ("þat I ne tiʒt at þis tyme in tale to remene" [l. 2483]).
Nonetheless, the brevity of the return tells us that a menacing magical place has been left behind, and we have returned to the security of one we know better.
What is not in doubt, however, is that our journey has been set in a landscape known to us. The poet has shaped his world to have resonance in the lordly landscapes of those of Cheshire and Lancashire. To be told to gatherings or small groups in castles, in manor houses, halls and households in centres as dispersed as Hale, Beeston, Warrington or Clitheroe.
The “other world” of the poem lies somewhere beyond the mountainous bowl which surrounds the flat plains of Cheshire, the wide muddy flats of the Mersey and Dee estuaries, or the shallow, rolling lands of west Lancashire.
Camelot is somewhere beyond the coast of North Wales, perhaps hidden deep in the lands of The Mabinogion. Hautdesert is somewhere beyond the Peaks, the Roaches, or even the northern Pennines.
Impossible to position with geographical precision, both places are still out there now, on the edge of our imaginations, on the edge of our known real world.
Michael Smith, author, translator, printmaker
Read more about the historical landscape of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
If you would like to know more about the landscape of Sir Gawain, contemporary events which may have influenced the story, and see a map of Gawain's journey, please read this article which was published in Forgotten Ground Regained.
Treat yourself to three medieval alliterative romances and save 25%
If you would like to buy all three of my translations (King Arthur's Death, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Romance of William and the Werewolf), signed by me, at a special saving of 25%, please click the button below. You can of course buy any of my books through any good bookshop.
Original prints from this article
If you would like to buy any of the prints featured in this article, please visit my online shop.
About the author, Michael Smith
I am a British author, translator and illustrator. I am currently studying for my PhD at the University of York, where I am researching the effective representation of Middle English romance.
My books, published by Wilton Square Books, include a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and are available through all the usual outlets. My translation of The Romance of William and the Werewolf was published in 2024.
All my books feature my own linocut prints as their illustration; many of my prints are held in private collections worldwide.
To find out more about me, please click here
For more details of my books and how to purchase signed copies, click here.
Comments