Sir Gawain And The Green Knight example essay topic

Chivalry in Middle English Literature The Middle Ages changed the ideas of the Code of Chivalry by having an influence from Christianity, the ideas themselves didn't change but the other aspects like heritage did not affect the thought of a knight. Sir Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" showed he was a great knight, in the Middle Ages, by being courage and being able to learn from his mistakes to make him more honorable. The knight in the "Wife of Bath" was not a great knight by not being courtesy but also tried to act like he was a great knight by being loyal. Courtesy was one of the most important traits a knight had to have while heritage was not a factor at all. Knights were allowed to have faults and learn and grow from the experience due to the influence of Christianity.

Courage was shown by all knights to show how loyal they are to their lords and so they would not be thought of as cowards. Sir Gawain has to hold up his side of the contract and he knows that he will die if he does, but as a great knight he carries on with his duties. From the story "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" Sir Gawain says that he will stand for one strike and he will not move. Gawain says that with " But be brisk, man, by your faith, and come to the point!

/ Deal out my doom if you can, and do it at once, / For I'll stand for one food stroke, and I'll start no more / until your ax has hit - and that I swear" (ll. 295-298). Gawain is and wants to be known and to die with honor and a lack of courage would diminish his honor. The whole journey to find the Green knight also took a lot of courage.

With Gawain traveling to his death, it would make any man question how loyal they need to be, Gawain stays loyal and shows his courage as he trys to find the Green Knight, so Gawain can receive his strike. Alan M. Markman wrote about the story and had to say "The fundamental motivation for Gawain's intervention is really his sense of duty, or decorum: what a knight must do to help his lord extricate himself from an unseemly situation -- in a word, loyal. But the act demanded great courage too" (Online). For Gawain to stay loyal he has to use a great amount of courage, and for this it makes him a great knight.

Even though it was near impossible to be an ideal knight, in the Middle Ages, what made it possible to be considered and ideal knight was a knight was able to be forgiven for a fault they have realized as a fault. Sir Gawain showed he was a great knight by showing courage, courtesy, and by learning from his fault of not being loyal to the lord. Sir Gawain shows he learned his fault and relies it as a fault when he says "There, there's my fault! The foul fiend vex it!

/ Foolish cowardice taught me, from fear of your stroke, / to bargain, covetous, and abandon my kind, / The selflessness and loyalty suitable in knights; / Here I stand, faulty and false, much as I've feared them, / Both of them, untruth and treachery; may them see sorrow / and care!" (ll. 389-395). Showing that he is truthfully sorry for his fault shows he is not perfect but he will learn from his mistakes. R.H. Bowers says it the best when he says "He depicts good-natural aristocrats, free from bourgeois envy and wrangling. He depicts Gawain not as perfect in any absolute sense - that kind of perfection is possible only in Our Savior-but as perfect as a son of Adam, blemished by venial sin, can be in this transitory world" (online), about the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. Gawain is a great knight even without being perfect because in a Christian society everyone con be forgiven if asked properly.

During the middle Ages few knights met what was considered the ideal knight. The reality of becoming such a great knight diminished and even though every knight tried none succeeded like they did before. said "So the "reality" of chivalry is that it is becoming a deliberate fiction, while the knights stubborn attempts to relies the chivalric ideals increasingly relegates to a lost fictional work of the past" (online). The knight in the "Wife of Bath" showed he really was not a worthy knight by raping the woman and also the disrespect he showed the old lady, but he still stayed loyal to the queen. The act of being loyal was pointless because he already proved himself not the ideal knight. The knight kept his word by appearing before the queen when his time was up. As he arrived he said "O Queen, I've kept my day / And kept my word and have my answer ready" (ll.

200-201). The loyalty he showed does not cancel out the lack of courtesy he showed before and after he kept his word. The middle Ages were the sign of the world's standards dropping and becoming less strict, like it is in today's society. Knights were supposed to show courtesy to the old due to their wisdom. In the Canterbury Tales, "The Wife of Bath" had a knight who was not courtesy at all to an old woman who saved his life. The knight had told the old lady that "You " re old, and so abominably plain, / So poor to start with, so low-bred to follow; / It's little wonder if I twist and wallow" (ll, 276-278).

The knight put the old lady sown even though she saved his life. According to a critic's thought the knight did not be courtesy by first raping the women in the beginning then by using degrading remarks towards the old women. The critic had to say this about courtesy in the Middle Ages, "Courtesy, it will be noticed, is the first thing to be stressed in the schedule of breeding, after the military essential of horsemanship. Courtesy is behavior proper to a court; and the masters in courtesy fixed their standards by the highest court they knew of, which was the court of heaven" (Cog hill, Online). The knight in "The Wife of Bath" was not going to go to heaven because he lacked courtesy even thought he has proved himself loyal. All the knights lost the perfection it took to become the ideal knight.

Even though they could not reach perfection the Christian ways let the knights be forgiven for the faults and become the ideal knight that way. Sir Gawain was a sign of how it was ok of a knight to not be completely chivalric because it was ok as long as they learn their lesson. The knight in "The Wife of Bath" shows the forgiving ways of Christianity let knights that were not good knights fool others into thinking they were good knights. For example, the knight showed a lack of courtesy toward the woman he raped then later he tried to prove himself loyal, and then he showed no courtesy to the old lady.

This makes a knight who seems to be good but really is not get away without actually learning his lesson, of treating woman with courtesy.