A Game-Oriented Perspective on Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Bard College <a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/" target="_blank">Bard Digital Commons </a><a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020" target="_blank">Senior Projects Spring 2020 </a>Spring 2020 <a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/undergrad" target="_blank">Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects </a>The Game at the Green Chapel: A Game-Oriented Perspective on Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Joshua David Maldonado Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: <a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">https:</a><a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">/</a><a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">/</a><a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020 </a> Part of the <a href="/goto?url=http://network.bepress.com/hgg/discipline/456?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">Literature in English, British Isles Commons</a>, and the <a href="/goto?url=http://network.bepress.com/hgg/discipline/480?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">Medieval Studies Commons </a>This work is licensed under a <a href="/goto?url=https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License</a>. Recommended Citation Maldonado, Joshua David, "The Game at the Green Chapel: A Game-Oriented Perspective on Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (2020). Senior Projects Spring 2020. 122. <a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020/122?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">https:</a><a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020/122?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">/</a><a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020/122?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">/</a><a href="/goto?url=https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020/122?utm_source=digitalcommons.bard.edu%2Fsenproj_s2020%2F122&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages" target="_blank">digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020/122 </a>This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rightsholder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected]</a>. 1 Maldonado The Game at the Green Chapel: A Game-Oriented Perspective on Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 2 Maldonado For both of my grandparents, thanks to whom I exist as the person I am. This project would also not be possible without… My academic advisor, Maria Sachiko Cecire, who stuck with me through thick and thin. Your expectations for me, paired with your infinite patience, are what kept me going on this project. My senior project colloquium professor, Marisa Libbon, whose vast knowledge of and passion for Middle English literature inspired me to take an interest in it. Thank you for having faith in me in the times I had very little. My countless friends, who I have systematically regaled with the tale of Sir Gawain. For the hundreds of hours of study sessions, and the hundreds of hours of emotional support, thank you. You know who you are. You, the reader, who fate has somehow brought to this page. You are the reason this exists. 3 Maldonado Introduction - The Game Good Knights Once Played It is the day of the new year in Camelot. The good King Arthur, his wife Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table were merry with games and celebration. The warmth of this festivity was briefly and abruptly interrupted when a titanic, unknown figure, clad completely in green, canters up to the court. His horse is green to match, and so is the mammoth axe he wields in his hand. His other hand grasps a holly branch, as a symbol of peaceful intentions. King Arthur asks this hulking Green Knight to speak of his intentions. After a bout of ominous silence, the figure speaks. He is not here to harm anyone. He is simply here to challenge someone to a game. Though Arthur is poised to accept this challenge, Sir Gawain of the knights speaks up. “Wolde ʒe, worþilych lorde… I haue frayned hit at yow fyrst, foldez hit to me”1 (350-358). Gawain proclaims himself as among the weakest of the knights, showing a performative modesty and asking to accept the Green Knight’s game for his own self-improvement. Arthur grants Gawain’s wish, and the Green Knight accepts his challenger. The game, known as the beheading game henceforth, is simple: today, one will strike the other with the Green Knight’s axe. A year and a day later, the other shall return a blow. This exchange of blows is a simple game at a glance, but the Green Knight is actually putting into motion a one-year-long plan to test Gawain’s honor and integrity. 1 If you [Arthur] would graciously grant it… I request that this task [the Green Knight’s offer] be transferred to me. 4 Maldonado This is the stage that is set in the early pages of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a chivalric poem written in the late 14th century. Penned by an unknown author, it is one of the best-known Arthurian legends and is often studied today. The narrative follows Sir Gawain, a knight of Arthur’s round table, as he agrees to and participates in the beheading game offered by the mysterious Green Knight. An Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is primarily concerned with honor and knighthood. In addition, however, the poem has an undeniable preoccupation with games. From the initial “beheading game” offered by the Green Knight, to the “exchanges game” later offered by Bertilak, another identity of the Green Knight, to the very concept of knighthood itself, there always exists an air of challenge, sport, and determination to follow through as a good knight and player of games. This project aims to look at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a text that uses games as a plot device to explore and explain the concepts of X and Y. Said project will assert that games themselves function as a unique and effective literary device that can inform what it means to be the perfect knight in the world of chivalric literature. The first chapter of this work focuses on pointing out multiple ways in which games and play seep through the context of the story. A recurring theme in the poem, for example, is the notion of self-contradiction -- something that, in itself, contains two conflicting traits that logically would not be able to coexist. [Give a quick example of how this appears in SGKK that you address in Chapter 1] The second chapter sets its sights on the idea of perfect knighthood and whether such a thing exists. This problem, one that Sir Gawain and greater Arthurian legends are concerned with, is tackled by 5 Maldonado comparisons to what it may mean to be a perfect player of games. The conclusion of this work will serve to offer additional avenues for research regarding games as literary devices, as well as an assessment of Arthurian literary importance in the era of modernity. The rest of this introduction is dedicated to explaining important plot points to my thesis. In brief, I will propose what I mean by “game.” Then I will offer short descriptions of key game-related elements in the poem: the beheading game, the exchanges game, the meeting at the Green Chapel, and Gawain’s penance. As this project will be about games and play, a formal definition of “game” is required going forward. There are many valid, working meanings of this idea, from video games to mind games. However, the definition that will be used henceforth will be that presented by philosopher and game theorist Bernard Suits: To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity (Suits, 10). Following these rules, a game can simply be defined as (1) an activity with a goal in mind, (2) in which the goal must be brought about while following specific rules, (3) in which the limitations of the rules define the way in which the goal is reached. Using the above definition, the Green Knight’s beheading challenge can inarguably be defined as a game. The goal is to deal one blow to each other each. The 6 Maldonado specific rules are that the blows must be a year apart. And, most importantly, that one year serves as a device for Gawain to think about the decisions he is making. Suits’ definition of what a game is will also be helpful going forward, as there are other games present in Gawain’s tale that also fall under this description. The exchanges game, for example, is one in which the honest knight must trade his winnings each day for someone else’s. Games like this are present throughout the poem, and I will define them as such based on these premises. The beheading game is what the story revolves around. It gives Gawain a motivator not only to stand up and become part of the story, but as a game, also provides a mission with a clear goal: reach the Green Chapel at the designated time and accept a blow in turn from the Green Knight. Meanwhile the exchanges game, which takes place about halfway through the narrative, is another game that Gawain accepts and participates in. On his journey to complete the beheading game, he stumbles upon a grand stronghold in the woods headed by Bertilak, a dignified lord and hunter. Bertilak, as a kindly gesture, offers Gawain to stay at his home until the time comes for him to face the Green Knight. The lord offers a game of his own: every day, Bertilak will go out hunting. Gawain will stay within the walls of Bertilak’s estate during this time. At the end of each day, Gawain and Bertilak will exchange what they had gained that day with one another. Gawain is often given the game that Bertilak hunts, and Bertilak receives from Gawain kisses from Bertilak’s wife that Gawain received within the confines of the castle. 7 Maldonado Gawain’s meeting at the Green Chapel serve as the climactic end to the tale, where Gawain completes the beheading game after a long year. The end of the game is met by a memorable encounter with Bertilak, the Green Knight. Having shown honor and integrity by following through on his promises and arriving on time to accept an axe strike, the Green Knight praises Gawain, and punishes him for wavering only with a nick on the neck. Beyond Bertilak’s punishment, however, Sir Gawain decides to undergo further penance for his cheating. Gawain wraps a green girdle, the very object that proves his cheating, around his arm as a reminder for not doing as well as he could have, and wears it for the rest of the story and implicitly beyond. This penance is a reflection of Gawain’s guilt and drive to improve as a knight and player of games. The rest of this project delves into the many ways in which games, and the playing of games, help to explain concepts of chivalry and knighthood in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 8 Maldonado Chapter 1 - The Axe and the Holly Branch Now that my introduction has set the stage, I would like to be able to discuss Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in a more concentrated way. This chapter will address the self-contradictory nature of games in the poem. This chapter will also raise questions about deceit and duality, ending with an analysis of the games in Sir Gawain in this context. I will begin by addressing what I mean by “self-contradictory,” and I will continue to describe some examples of this in the text. These examples will range from characters being self-contradictory to the very environment of the poem itself being so. Self-contradiction, which is a key term in this chapter and beyond, refers to a person, thing, event, or any one subject that seems to possess two conflicting traits at once. I argue that the very world of this poem is one that is full of self-contradictory characters, objects, goals, and environments. Questions involving self-contradiction raise themselves naturally throughout the story, almost begging to be explored. How can a game be so serious yet so playful? The many games present within the text are presented as jovial challenges and friendly contests, but also as fierce, life-altering or even life-ending tasks that serve to judge one’s character. How can the kind Bertilak and the life-threatening Green Knight be the same person? At one moment, a hulking figure threatens the life of one of King Arthur’s knights. The very next moment, the same person is inviting that same knight to a joyous feast as a friend. How can Gawain be the perfect knight as well as a fearful, regretful cheater? Sir Gawain’s perfectly adorned attire, along with the Green Knight’s own implication that Gawain is a “faultless prince,” 9 Maldonado throws him in with the best. But Gawain himself disagrees with this, taking from his quest a token of shame and dishonor. How can Bertilak’s wife strive both for Gawain’s love and Gawain’s death? While trying to seduce Gawain, she knows that her success would cause his death. How can a girdle be both an all-powerful item and a worthless rag? The green girdle Lady Bertilak gives Gawain is perceived as valuable enough to breach his honor for, but is also a less-than-worthless sign of failure. How can a game be both won and lost? Bertilak considers Gawain to have played the beheading game honorably, but Gawain considers himself a cheater to be disqualified. These and more are examples of self-contradiction within the poem. First and foremost in the field of self-contradiction, Gawain himself both wins and loses the beheading game. To conclude this game with the gift of a memento, Bertilak the Green Knight entrusts Sir Gawain with the green girdle that was stolen. “Þis a pure token,” he says, “Of þe chaunce of þe Grene Chapel at cheualrous knyʒtez”2 (SGGK 2397-2398). Gawain accepts this gift, which he goes on to wear at all times as a reminder of his own failure. Indeed, the girdle is a sign of failure. It is unequivocal proof that Gawain cheated in the hunting game, a mini-game crafted by Bertilak as part of the grander beheading game. If the girdle is a sign of Gawain’s having cheated, why does the Green Knight call it pure? Why does Bertilak call Gawain “the most faultless of princes to ever walk on foot”? The girdle’s self-contradiction is evident, as it is both something pure and representative of wrongdoing. This dual nature carries through to the end result of the beheading game: though Gawain does not forgive himself for 2 This pure sign will stand for the game at the Green Chapel good knights once played. 10 Maldonado cheating, Bertilak readily and enthusiastically does. Gawain sees a game lost, and Bertilak sees a game admirably played. This is because Bertilak minds the attitude and intent behind the cheating, while Gawain does not. This difference in perspective is the difference between whether Gawain ultimately wins or loses the game. This same difference in perspective is also the agent that creates a situation that is two things at once: a win and a loss. Indeed, Bertilak painly states his reasons for forgiveness: “Bot here yow lakked a lyttel, sir, and lewte yow wonted; / Bot þat watz for no wylyde weke, ne wowyng nauþer / Bot for ʒe lufed your lyf-- þe lasse I yow blame”3 (315). Bertilak recognizes that Sir Gawain only kept the girdle from him because he was afraid for his life. He did not conceal the girdle because he liked it, or because he wanted it, or because he coveted Bertilak’s wife. It was only because he believed that the girdle may have been able to protect him from a gruesome fate. It is reasonable that anyone else would have stolen the girdle for courtship or covetousness, because Bertilak’s wife is described as very objectively desirable: “He seʒ hir so glorious and gayly atyred, / So fautles of hir fetured and of so fyne hewes, / Wiʒt wallande joye warmed his hert”4 (SGGK 1759-1761). Because of Gawain’s more reasonable and understandable desire to survive the beheading game, Bertilak forgives Gawain. Gawain treats himself with much less dignity. Rather than consider why he cheated, like the Green Knight does, he only considers that he cheated. He does not 3 You lapsed just a little; your loyalty flagged. / Since the cause was not courtship or covetousness, / But the love of your life, so much less do I blame. 4 When he gleaned her so gaily, so gloriously fine, / For her features were faultless and fair was her skin, / A gladness then grew in him, glowed in his heart. 11 Maldonado accept Bertilak’s forgiveness, choosing to repent on his own by eternally wearing the girdle as a grim reminder of his own dishonesty. This difference in perspective, as I have previously mentioned, is the difference between a win and a loss for Gawain in the beheading game. And this difference is also precisely why Gawain both wins and loses: he is stuck not in between, but on two opposite ends of a spectrum. Bertilak, the orchestrator, the gamemaster, the one to claim ultimate judgement on Gawain’s life, believes that Gawain won the game. Gawain showed true honor in the way he played, even though he broke the rules. Gawain, both the player and the one being played, the recipient of the prize of being allowed to live, cannot accept that award without intense guilt at having cheated. Gawain’s guilt upon the belief of losing the game is further magnified when it is abruptly brought to light by the very judge of the game. In asking the question “did Gawain win the game?” the question that is implicitly asked is one of perspective. Whose perspective is more valid: the gamemaster’s, or the player’s? It depends on where victory lies. If victory lies in an award, a trophy, a congratulatory speech, then Gawain won the game. If victory lies in emotion, confidence in one’s play style, and personal belief and gratification, then Gawain has clearly lost. I assert that Gawain has both won and lost the beheading game, a truly self-contradictory feat. As the player of someone else’s game, one cannot declare themselves the winner. Likewise, one cannot declare themselves the loser, as Gawain would like to. But as a gamemaster, to declare a player’s loss or victory based on a personal whim, forgiveness in Bertilak’s case, can also be viewed as folly. 12 Maldonado This brings me to a troubling conclusion. In most games, the winner should be determined by the rules of the game and the conditions of victory being met within legality. There is no dispute as to who wins dice, checkers, cards and the like, unless there is cheating involved. But the beheading game has no clear rules or victory conditions beyond “find Bertilak to receive a blow at the Green Chapel in a year’s time.” No rules were explicitly stated outside of that, and thus, anything would be legal. Gawain fulfilled these conditions, and thus technically “won” the game. Once Gawain was tempted to give the Green Knight a visit earlier than promised, which would have broken the rules, but Bertilak convinced him against it. The game Gawain technically cheated at was the exchanges game, not the beheading game. To bring it back into focus, the rules of this game were that Bertilak would go out hunting each day, and Gawain would stay at home and get what he could. At the end of the day, they would exchange every one of their spoils with each other. Gawain gained the spoils of a girdle during that game, and he hid it from the one he was playing with. That unequivocally counts as cheating. And, since the exchanges game is a game within the beheading game, then Gawain cheated at the beheading game. But that logic can be seen as folly. Gawain could not have known that the exchanges game was a part of the beheading game. Is cheating really cheating if one does not know they are playing the game? This and many other questions arise from the beheading game, none of Gawain’s own fault. But they can be explained with self-contradiction: Gawain both cheated and did not cheat. The poet does a good job of making the reader question the morality of this-- not grey, but black and white. This is 13 Maldonado the duality of self-contradiction. In the end, Gawain both won and lost the game. This is an intriguing self-contradiction stemming directly from the concept of games: one’s viewpoint could conflict with another’s, while both can end up being true at the same time. This further propagates the idea of self-contradiction in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, providing evidence that it is a preoccupation of both games and the tale itself. It is worth mentioning that there is another player who bends the rules of the beheading game. Unlike Gawain, this person does not feel any remorse for things like deceit and trickery. The character I refer to is Bertilak, the Green Knight himself. In the initial challenge in Arthur’s court, he tricks Gawain into a one-year death contract by choosing not to reveal the fact that he can lift his own severed head off the ground and live. He disguises his own identity and feigns ignorance about Gawain and his quest. He sends his wife into Gawain’s bedroom for the sole purpose of tempting him. And, in the end, he even fakes two killing blows. For better or worse, the Green Knight is a great deceiver. Trickery and deceit are both treated as implicitly destructive according to the norms of chivalry,. According to 11th century writer Ramon Llull, who wrote a book on chivalry that may have inspired the Pearl Poet, these destroy chivalry. “Showing favour to… truth… honesty… and other things similar to these pertain to the knight, for just as all nobility shall be recognized in God, so all that for which Chivalry receives honour on the part of those who are in its Order shall be compared to the knight” (Fallows 78). Llull rules that honesty should be held to a knight just as nobility is held to God. To be dishonest is to not be a knight. Bertilak, then, is not a knight by standard definition. As

A Game-Oriented Perspective on Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

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