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I'm working on "Gawain and the Green Knight" for the Fabulous Beasts course -- reading around The Hobbit and into Tolkien's literary preoccupations. With Beowulf, the unified theme so far is "odd people unexpectedly showing up at dinner tend to make a mess." Blood, dozens of dead warriors, threatened teacups. Also Nature, Strangers, Others, etc.
I think I'll compare the Armoring Scenes, since Bilbo comes away so completely unready compared to the hysterically overdressed Gawain.
Since I'm using Simon Armitage's translation, it made sense to watch his BBC special on "Gawain", which I enjoyed, though there were a lot of not entirely explicable shots of splashing water -- waves, waterfalls, rivers -- despite such bodies not appearing all that often in the poem.
I quite enjoyed this talk on the poem. The lecture is mostly an overview with some interesting background on the surrounding literature (other Gawain tales), and an occasional look-in from the speaker's own thesis that the poem reflects the emergence of contract law. Listening to other people's lectures while doodling is not a bad way to harvest insight. See my entire undergrad.
I think I can do quite a bit on gender in "Gawain", which pleases. The paired hunts give plenty of scope.
Speaking of the hunt -- I am pleased with myself for noticing one way the Gawain Poet1 is formally artful.
Asyouknowarthur, "Gawain" is written in alliterative verse. You get a big block of unrhymed lines full of alliterative shimmering, and then a little knot of rhyme at the end of each chunk. This knot, known as the bob and wheel, closes, summarizes, or comments on the action.
The poem is divided into four sections, or fitts. Fitt 3 describes the three days of hunting leading up to Gawain's final trial in the Green Chapel. The Lord Bertilak hunts first deer, then a boar, then a fox; back in the castle, his wife hunts Gawain, using the rules of courtly love to try to bring him to bay, while he dodges and leaps with supple courtesy.
The poem cuts back and forth between scenes from the two hunts -- highly visual, cinematic, with much dramatic irony.
On the first day, scenes of the two hunts alternate in separate stanzas (or series of stanzas). Sometimes there's a little carry-over at the beginning of a section, a transition, but not at the end.
On the second day, the wife's hunt suddenly appears in the bob and wheel of the husband's stanza.
On the third day, her scene cuts right into the middle of his stanza and takes over.
Folks, I like this convergence so much. Not only does it accelerate the action and make us feel ambushed by the story, as Gawain is startled by the lady; it also gives her a kind of formal power to mess with the structure of the poem itself. She's like one of those marginal illustrations in an illuminated manuscript, sticking her arms right into the lines to correct them. It's doubly fitting because her weapons are words and rules of conduct, like the rules of a poem.
{rf}
1. Or the Pearl Poet, if you must.
I think I'll compare the Armoring Scenes, since Bilbo comes away so completely unready compared to the hysterically overdressed Gawain.
Since I'm using Simon Armitage's translation, it made sense to watch his BBC special on "Gawain", which I enjoyed, though there were a lot of not entirely explicable shots of splashing water -- waves, waterfalls, rivers -- despite such bodies not appearing all that often in the poem.
I quite enjoyed this talk on the poem. The lecture is mostly an overview with some interesting background on the surrounding literature (other Gawain tales), and an occasional look-in from the speaker's own thesis that the poem reflects the emergence of contract law. Listening to other people's lectures while doodling is not a bad way to harvest insight. See my entire undergrad.
I think I can do quite a bit on gender in "Gawain", which pleases. The paired hunts give plenty of scope.
Speaking of the hunt -- I am pleased with myself for noticing one way the Gawain Poet1 is formally artful.
Asyouknowarthur, "Gawain" is written in alliterative verse. You get a big block of unrhymed lines full of alliterative shimmering, and then a little knot of rhyme at the end of each chunk. This knot, known as the bob and wheel, closes, summarizes, or comments on the action.
The poem is divided into four sections, or fitts. Fitt 3 describes the three days of hunting leading up to Gawain's final trial in the Green Chapel. The Lord Bertilak hunts first deer, then a boar, then a fox; back in the castle, his wife hunts Gawain, using the rules of courtly love to try to bring him to bay, while he dodges and leaps with supple courtesy.
The poem cuts back and forth between scenes from the two hunts -- highly visual, cinematic, with much dramatic irony.
On the first day, scenes of the two hunts alternate in separate stanzas (or series of stanzas). Sometimes there's a little carry-over at the beginning of a section, a transition, but not at the end.
On the second day, the wife's hunt suddenly appears in the bob and wheel of the husband's stanza.
On the third day, her scene cuts right into the middle of his stanza and takes over.
Folks, I like this convergence so much. Not only does it accelerate the action and make us feel ambushed by the story, as Gawain is startled by the lady; it also gives her a kind of formal power to mess with the structure of the poem itself. She's like one of those marginal illustrations in an illuminated manuscript, sticking her arms right into the lines to correct them. It's doubly fitting because her weapons are words and rules of conduct, like the rules of a poem.
{rf}
1. Or the Pearl Poet, if you must.
