Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English alliterative verse. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs: the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish, and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important example of a chivalric romance, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his prowess. It remains popular in modern English renderings from J. R. R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage, and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations.
Gawain, also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and one of the premier Knights of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest Welsh sources. He has subsequently appeared in many Arthurian tales in Welsh, Latin, French, English, Scottish, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Italian, notably as the protagonist of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Other works featuring Gawain as their central character include De Ortu Waluuanii, Diu Crône, Ywain and Gawain, Golagros and Gawane, Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, L'âtre périlleux, La Mule sans frein, La Vengeance Raguidel, Le Chevalier à l'épée, Le Livre d'Artus, The Awntyrs off Arthure, The Greene Knight, and The Weddynge of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell.
Morgan le Fay, alternatively known as Morgan[n]a, Morgain[a/e], Morg[a]ne, Morgant[e], Morge[i]n, and Morgue[in] among other names and spellings, is a powerful and ambiguous enchantress from the legend of King Arthur, in which most often she and he are siblings. Early appearances of Morgan in Arthurian literature do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a goddess, a fay, a witch, or a sorceress, generally benevolent and connected to Arthur as his magical saviour and protector. Her prominence increased as the legend of Arthur developed over time, as did her moral ambivalence, and in some texts there is an evolutionary transformation of her to an antagonist, particularly as portrayed in cyclical prose such as the Lancelot-Grail and the Post-Vulgate Cycle. A significant aspect in many of Morgan's medieval and later iterations is the unpredictable duality of her nature, with potential for both good and evil.
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" is among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and was probably of interest to Chaucer, himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. He also goes so far as to describe two sets of clothing for her, in his General Prologue. She calls herself both Alyson and Alys in the prologue, but to confuse matters, these are also the names of her 'gossip', whom she mentions several times, as well as many female characters throughout The Canterbury Tales.
"The Merchant's Tale" is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In it Chaucer subtly mocks antifeminist literature like that of Theophrastus ("Theofraste"). The tale also shows the influence of Boccaccio, Deschamps' Le Miroir de Mariage, Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris, Andreas Capellanus, Statius, and Cato. The tale is found in Persia in the Bahar Danush, in which the husband climbs a date tree instead of a pear tree. It could have arrived in Europe through the One Thousand and One Nights, or perhaps the version in book VI of the Masnavi by Rumi. Though several of the tales are sexually explicit by modern standards, this one is especially so. Larry Benson remarks:
The central episode of the Merchant's Tale is like a fabliau, though of a very unusual sort: It is cast in the high style, and some of the scenes are among Chaucer's most elaborate displays of rhetorical art.
Morgause is a popular variant of the figure of the Queen of Orkney, an Arthurian legend character also known by various other names and appearing in different forms of her archetype. She is notably the mother of Gawain and often also of Mordred, both key players in the story of her brother King Arthur and his downfall. Her other children may include Agravain, Gareth and Gaheris.
A fabliau is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitudes—contrary to the church and to the nobility. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decameron and by Geoffrey Chaucer for his Canterbury Tales. Some 150 French fabliaux are extant, the number depending on how narrowly fabliau is defined. According to R. Howard Bloch, fabliaux are the first expression of literary realism in Europe.
"The Reeve's Tale" is the third story told in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The reeve, named Oswald in the text, is the manager of a large estate who reaped incredible profits for his master and himself. He is described in the Tales as skinny, bad-tempered, and old; his hair is closely cropped reflecting his social status as a serf. His sword is rusty while he rides a fine gray horse called Scot. The Reeve is a skilled carpenter, a profession mocked in the previous "Miller's Tale". Oswald responds with a tale that mocks the Miller's profession.
The Green Knight is a heroic character of the Matter of Britain, originating in the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the related medieval work The Greene Knight. His true name is revealed to be Bertilak de Hautdesert in Sir Gawain, while The Greene Knight names him "Bredbeddle". The Green Knight later features as one of Arthur's greatest champions in the fragmentary ballad King Arthur and King Cornwall, again with the name "Bredbeddle".
"The Shipman's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Perceval, the Story of the Grail is the unfinished fifth verse romance by Chrétien de Troyes, written by him in Old French in the late 12th century. Later authors added 54,000 more lines to the original 9,000 in what are known collectively as the Four Continuations, as well as other related texts. Perceval is the earliest recorded account of what was to become the Quest for the Holy Grail but describes only a golden grail in the central scene, does not call it "holy" and treats a lance, appearing at the same time, as equally significant. Besides the eponymous tale of the grail and the young knight Perceval, the poem and its continuations also tell of the adventures of Gawain and some other knights of King Arthur.
"The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is an English Arthurian ballad, collected as Child Ballad 31. Found in the Percy Folio, it is a fragmented account of the story of Sir Gawain and the loathly lady, which has been preserved in fuller form in the medieval poem The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. The loathly lady episode itself dates at least back to Geoffrey Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales. Unlike most of the Child Ballads, but like the Arthurian "King Arthur and King Cornwall" and "The Boy and the Mantle", "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is not a folk ballad but a song for professional minstrels.
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle is a 15th-century English poem, one of several versions of the "loathly lady" story popular during the Middle Ages. An earlier version of the story appears as "The Wyfe of Bayths Tale" in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and the later ballad "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is essentially a retelling, though its relationship to the medieval poem is uncertain. The author's name is not known, but similarities to Le Morte d'Arthur have led to the suggestion that the poem may have been written by Sir Thomas Malory.
The Daughter Of King Under-Waves is a Scottish fairy tale collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands. He listed as his source Roderick MacLean, a tailor of Ken Tangval, Barra, who reported hearing it from old men in South Uist, including Angus Macintyre, Bornish, who was about eighty. The text was written by H. MacLean, 1860.
Sir Eglamour of Artois is a Middle English verse romance that was written sometime around 1350. It is a narrative poem of about 1300 lines, a tail-rhyme romance that was quite popular in its day, judging from the number of copies that have survived – four manuscripts from the 15th century or earlier and a manuscript and five printed editions from the 16th century. The poem tells a story that is constructed from a large number of elements found in other medieval romances. Modern scholarly opinion has been critical of it because of this, describing it as unimaginative and of poor quality. Medieval romance as a genre, however, concerns the reworking of "the archetypal images of romance" and if this poem is viewed from a 15th-century perspective as well as from a modern standpoint – and it was obviously once very popular, even being adapted into a play in 1444 – one might find a "romance [that] is carefully structured, the action highly unified, the narration lively."
Sir Perceval of Galles is a Middle English Arthurian verse romance whose protagonist, Sir Perceval (Percival), first appeared in medieval literature in Chrétien de Troyes' final poem, the 12th-century Old French Conte del Graal, well over one hundred years before the composition of this work. Sir Perceval of Galles was probably written in the northeast Midlands of England in the early 14th century, and tells a markedly different story to either Chretien's tale or to Robert de Boron's early 13th-century Perceval. Found in only a single manuscript, and told with a comic liveliness, it omits any mention of a graal or a Grail.
The rash promise is a common motif in medieval and folk literature, especially fairy tales. It was also termed a blind promise or rash boon. It is classified in the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature as motif M223 and likely has an Oriental origin.
The Story of King Arthur and His Knights is a 1903 children's novel by the American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle. The book contains a compilation of various stories, adapted by Pyle, regarding the legendary King Arthur of Britain and select Knights of the Round Table. Pyle's novel begins with Arthur in his youth and continues through numerous tales of bravery, romance, battle, and knighthood.
Sovereignty goddess is a scholarly term, almost exclusively used in Celtic studies. The term denotes a goddess who, personifying a territory, confers sovereignty upon a king by marrying or having sex with him. Some narratives of this type correspond to folk-tale motif D732, the Loathly Lady, in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index. This trope has been identified as 'one of the best-known and most frequently studied thematic elements of Celtic myth'. It has also, however, been criticised in recent research for leading to "an attempt to prove that every strong female character in medieval Welsh and Irish tales is a souvenir of a Celtic sovereignty goddess".
The Land of Maidens is a motif in Irish mythology and medieval literature, especially in the chivalric romance genre. The latter often also features a castle instead of an island, sometimes known as the Castle of Maidens.
