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The knight and the Green Man
A different look at the Middle English poem
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Introduction
The usual interpretation of poetry is to see in it a test of chivalry of one of the leading knights of King Arthur, Sir Gawain. My opinion is that behind the mask of Christian chivalry is an idea based on pagan rituals. It is possible that this base was not only known for beginning readers, but perhaps even in the use in real time between people, camouflaged by the ideas more acceptable to the authorities.
I. The Poem
It may be useful to take a look at the points major poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (s. links below) in order to clarify the idea presented in the Introduction. The poem tells us that on the Day of Year Again, while the knights of King Arthur's Court is held under the auspices of The Queen Guinevere, a giant knight is dressed all in green. He challenges the knights court to behead him, claiming it no harm, in turn, required to do the same to his beheaded in the following New Year's Day. Sir Gawain, nephew King Arthur, volunteers for the task, has great hands ax the Green Knight and cut off his head. Instead of dying, the knight lifted his head and goes after Sir Gawain remember your pledge for next year, and the designation of their meeting at his home in Green Chapel.
Towards the end of the year, Sir Gawain walks in search of the Green Chapel. On his way he encounters many adventures and many dangers until, at Christmas, comes to a castle. The Lord of the Castle, Bertilak, a avid hunter, will welcome you with courtly manners, who introduces her to his wife, Mrs. Castle, a beautiful young woman and her partner, who is old and ugly. Mrs. flirts with Sir Gawain in the absence of her husband in his hunting trips, and gives a green belt to avoid being killed.
At the end of the poem, some mysteries are solved. It seems that the castle is actually treated to the Green Chapel and the Lord's Castle is the Green Knight himself. Sir Gawain, who had been placed ridicule over the green and his dalliance with the lady, is sent free home safe and sound.
II. Sir Gawain
The figure of Sir Gawain is crucial to the story, as no other gentleman would have gone through the improbable task that requires the Green Knight. Who was, then, to take part as prominent in the court of King Arthur? In a pedigree chart on a page on the figures to the legends of King Arthur (s. link below), can be learned that Galvan has been considered by some scholars as the representative of the Sun God.
In the Welsh legend, Gawain was known as Gwalchmei or "Hawk of May." Gwalchmei appeared not only as a hero and a nephew of Arthur, was also the son of the goddess Gwyar. In his interpretation of the season Celtic myths, presented in book "The White Goddess, Robert Graves, is the hero's life symbolizes the sun's course through a year. That the heroic divinity born on Christmas (December 25) shortly after the birth of the sun on the shortest day of the year (December 21) in the spring month of May when the sun has risen higher in the sky has gained sufficient strength, the young hero flies into the sky as a hawk.
Gwalchmei was compared with the greatest hero of Ireland Cu Chulainn, who was the son of the sun god Lugh. (A "Son of God" usually symbolize younger version of God). In the history of Culhwch and Olwen, Gwalchmei was a hero who "never returned without accomplishing their mission" -. the quest to be the completion of the circle of the Year, as wandering represented by Gawain was known that the greatest strength of Gawain in duels always shown at noon when the sun is at its highest point in the sky. In the poem Middle English, then, Sir Gawain represents the mythological figure of the sun god.
III. The Seasons Course
The atmosphere of the poem season is very strong, which adds to the character of the hero as a god-season Sun Thus, the poet describes what happened with Sir Gawain after the Green Knight had left the party and they put in their quest for the Green Chapel, Gawain is given "a year and a day" for this purpose, as the Irish year note: 13 months of 28 days plus a day to complete the official number of 365 days.
These are the stations mentioned in the original poem, Sir Gawain and the Book Green Knight: Start with the festivities of New Year's Day, because, although the sun god is born on Christmas Eve, the lengthening of days is evident only around New Year's Day. After that comes the winter season called Lent, when the ground is bare and the sun is cold and ineffective. As days get longer and the sun grows stronger, what happens in the poet's words is: "The cold is removed, the lifting of the clouds and rain falls in showers just hot in the plains. "That's when May Hawk spreads its wings and flies into the sky. Then," The flowers come out, meadows and forests are dressed green birds ready to build, and singing sweetly to the delight of the mild summer that follows after that ... The flowers bud and blow in the notes to hedge rich and rank, and sufficiently noble as they sound in the woods just "Strangely, the poet does not say anything about what happens when the sun reaches its peak in summer. - perhaps because in the days ancient, unspeakable things happened at that time, which could include human sacrifice (as discussed below). After summer, the year becomes, "the harvest comes and hardens the grain, alert to the mature wax before the winter ... The drought drives the dust on the heights, flying over the earth. "Autumn is coming, and" the fierce wind of the sky (= heaven) struggles with the sun, the leaves fall from trees and light on the ground, and all are brown forest but now they were green, and ripe fruit is that once they flower. "This description of the death of the year, closing the circle line of travel of the sun. That's the time when people begin to wait for the darkening winter.
In San Miguel (29 September), with the arrival of the darkness of autumn, Sir Gawain begins to think about his coming trip. On the Day of All Saints, after the autumn equinox, in a sad mood awaiting execution comes, Sir Gawin gets in the way of adventure in search of the Green Chapel and the Green Knight. On the eve of Christmas, which comes to the beautiful castle surrounded by a green park, the next begins stage of their adventures.
IV. The figure of the Goddess
The Goddess is the ruler of life and death and all things of nature, including the course of the season the sun throughout the year. The three women in the poem represents his three aspects, according to pagan theories: Queen Guinevere, King Arthur presided over the courts the celebrations of the birth of Sun God (whose name is Jesus), represents the Mother Goddess as the hero of Sun. The Lady of the Castle, a young and beautiful, elegantly dressed in his neck and chest exposed, flirts with Sir Gawain and would have chosen for a husband who never married, she represents the Goddess as a bride of spring, each years ago the choice of a hero to be his lover for the season. In some cultures it is the loving sister and twin brothers, who are to symbolize the growth and year's decline. Her former colleague, described in the poem as "rumpled, rugged, hairy, black-browed, completely covered in clothing, represents the goddess at the end of the year, when she makes the hero's death symbolizes the death of the sun. These are the three aspects of the Triple Goddess, which appears as the bride, Mother and Crone.
V. The Green Man
The person who more than anyone and everything else shows the pagan basis for the poem, is the "Green Knight" representing an ancient figure, but well established called Green Man. The green color is constantly in the poem, the Green Knight, the Green Chapel, and the green belt proposal by the Lady to Sir Gawain as protection against death. The green color that has little to do with Christianity, mostly aimed at old pagan times. In those times many rituals that take place in the field and forest, and not under the roof of a church, palace or castle, where gentlemanly manners are so important. The Green Chapel says to the jungle, with its green canopy, where unknown wild rituals took place in ancient times. The Green Man was part of the wild ritual.
In an article entitled "The Green Man - Variations on a theme that appears in a place called Edge (s. link below), Ruth Wylie said that" the powerful questions of who, what and why "in relation to the figure of the Green Man" have no answer yet. "However, in its own article manages to make very few answers to these questions. The idea and the figure of the Green Man, and Ms. Wylie states, spread across England. It is "an image of the Middle Ages usually found in the churches ... He can be recognized as a face, often grotesque, with foliage that comes from the mouth, nose, eyes or ears. Alternatively, can be a face composed entirely of leaves ... The earliest known examples are in the art of ancient Rome, where the idea seems to have moved northward to be adopted by Christianity and spread far and wide along the pilgrimage routes. The Green Man vanished with the 'Old Faith' after Reform ... "
The expression of the "old faith" is the answer to these questions initially contributed by Ruth Wylie. This, obviously, religion pagan spread throughout Europe before the arrival of Christianity. In relation to the occurrence same range of the Green Man, the Link Mything site (link s.) states clearly: Green Man was the god Pan - inhabitant of the forest, dressed in their leaves and the decision on all sorts of wild rituals.
However, according to other sources, the god Pan had a double in the god's best known, most widespread and powerful, Dionysus. In his book The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer says about Dionysus was a god of trees in general, sacrificed by the Greeks as Dionysus all the trees, sometimes represented only as a post (which is considered a phallic symbol). Dionysius assumed the form of a goat, like Pan, and was worshiped under the title The Black Goat One, he sacrificed himself in the form of a child in the fall festival (which marks the end of the year in the Mediterranean countries). As God of the Forest, Dionisio can be identified with the king of Nemi timber. The forest was not his partner Diana and annual slaughter victim, because "some people prefer to kill the king while he was still in full vigor of life."
In a development site to explain the essence of some Greek deities (s. link below), ie Dionisio: He was associated with death and rebirth (the Great Goddess) Hera prepared Titans to kill him and tore to pieces, while the goddess Rhea (Earth) (also known as Cybele) brought him back to life, and was raised by nymphs the mountain. Dionysus' followers worship him in the forest, the work is up in crazy states of frenzy and ecstasy, and animals (or people) they found that destroyed at slaughter, the meat is eaten raw. In art he is represented with a crown of ivy, and covered with vine leaves and grapes, a typical image of the Green Man. He is a God of Nature and the Lord of the harvest, a God of the Underworld, a son / lover of the goddess, a child of promise, the Green Man and Horned God, all combined in one. The Green Knight's poem, then, represents this ancient God of the Forest, which at times was the brother of the sun god. His half cut to pieces in his sacrifice is symbolized in the poem to be beheaded, their stay alive shows him as the god who died and rose in the figure of Dionysus.
In a place name (s. link below) states that The Green Man makes his appearance in the Morris dancers in England as a Jack-In-The-Green. Theirs is a disturbing character that attempts to distract the dancers of dancing being silly and break with the dance group and harassing the audience. This description is evidence of the emergence of the Green Man, not only medieval England, but even in those days.
Conclusion
The main points that connect the green man with the Green Knight of the poem are First, the generalized figure of the Green Man in England, enough to be known by listeners of the medieval poem. Second, the character of the Green Man, that is evident in the figure of the Green Knight: lives in the forest and participates in civilized manners is not known at the court of King Arthur, which is involved in a breakup, not kill him. He is undoubtedly connected with the seasons, making a point in the ritual of taking part of dying in winter, with the death and rebirth of the sun. As Lord of the Castle, which is obviously related to nature goddess as a girlfriend, that things can bring death back to life with the help of a green belt. The two heroes of the poem, which compete for the love of the lady and their right to life, representing the two gods of the sun in the form of many pagan gods and heroes known antiquity, and the story unfolds behind the mask of a test poem of chivalry, is the story of his birth, love, death and rebirth of antiquity when it ruled that the pagan religion everywhere.
Links:
www.lib.rochester.edu / CAMELOT / sggk.htm - English translation in whole
www.sparknotes.com/lit/gawain/section1.html - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
www.timelessmyths.com / Arthurian / roundtable.html - Knights of the Round Table
www.indigogroup.co.uk / EDGE / greenmen.htm - Edge, The Green Man as a mystery
http://www.controverscial.com/Greek% 20Mythology.htm - Description of Dionysus as a green man
http://thegreenman.net.au/mt/archives/2003_06.html - Jack in the Green
www.mythinglinks.org / ct ~ greenmen.html - Comments on the ideas and customs of the Green Man
About the Author
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