Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight

About this book

At King Arthur's New Year feast, a giant knight, green from head to foot, rides into the hall and offers a game: anyone may strike him with his axe, if he will receive the same blow a year later. Sir Gawain beheads him, and the Green Knight picks up his head and rides away, reminding Gawain of his promise. The next winter Gawain sets out to find the Green Chapel and stays at a castle where, for three days, the lord goes hunting while his lady tempts Gawain, and the two men exchange whatever they have won each day.

Context and significance

The poem was written in the late fourteenth century by an unknown poet from the north-west Midlands and survives in a single manuscript. This edition, by the scholar Richard Morris, gives the original Middle English text with notes, not a modern translation, so it suits readers who want to meet the poem's alliterative music directly. For Malory's prose Arthur, read Le Morte d'Arthur.

About the author