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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Poem
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an important poem in the romance genre, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his ability. The ambiguity of the poem's ending... makes it more complex than most. Christian readings of the poem argue for an apocalyptic interpretation and draw parallels between Gawain and Bertilak's wife and the story of Adam and Eve. Feminist interpretations disagree at the most basic level, some arguing that women are in total control from beginning to end, while others argue that their control is only an illusion. Cultural critics have argued that the poem is best read as an expression of tensions between the Welsh and English then-present in the poet's dialect region. The poem remains popular to this day, through translations from renowned authors like J. R. R. Tolkien and Simon Armitage, as well as through recent film and stage adaptations.
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Like other books in the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, Approaches to Teaching Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is divided into two parts. Part 1, "Materials," surveys materials useful to classroom instruction, such as translations, anthologies, reference works, and teaching aids. Part 2, "Approaches," begins with background essays on teaching the poem within the traditions of romance, chivalry, courtly love, religion and law, and medieval aesthetics. The essays that follow discuss ways to include the poem, both in translation and in the original, in courses ranging from freshman composition to graduate seminars. A final section includes ideas that can be adapted to any class--from reading the poem aloud to sponsoring a medieval banquet.
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Sir Ian McKellen is the narrator in this new, contemporary translation by poet Simon Armitage of the poem that has become known as Sir Gawain And The Green Knight. Music has been specially composed by Gary Yershon.
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Written by a fourteenth-century poet whose name is unknown, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is recognized as an equal of Chaucer’s masterworks and of the great Old English poems, including Beowulf. Translator and editor Burton Raffel writes that “The Gawain-poet can do an incredible number of things in brilliant style. He can draw characters so vividly that they breathe, he can paint pictures so vitally that one sees them, almost feels them; he can be passionately moral; he can be wickedly comic…Gawain is great poetry, it is unqualifiedly a masterpiece.”
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written around 1400 in a northwest midlands dialect of Middle English. It survives in only one manuscript, British Museum Manuscript Cotton Nero A.x, Art. 3. Three other narrative poems thought to be written by the same anonymous author appear in the same manuscript.
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The study of Sir Gawain, the finest of all the English medieval romances, was signally advanced by the publication in 1925 of the edition by the late Professors Tolkien and Gordon. This remained the most widely used text of the poem; but after forty years the time came for revision.
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