Alan Jacobs

I still think my analysis in that essay is useful, but I wrote it before what happened in Charlottesville, and long before Roy Moore’s Senate campaign, and if I were writing it now I’d write something rather different. I’d want to reckon with the counter-myths of covert or overt racism — in some cases plain old white supremacy — that affect life on campus even when the people involved don’t have any investment in university life and can, like Spencer, walk away after they’ve lit a few fires. My friend Chad Wellmon not only teaches at UVA but lives with his family on the Lawn, and when the neo-Klansmen stomped in with their tiki torches chanting their threats, you can imagine how his small children felt. But those people had no business on the grounds in the first place — they were supposed to be protesting the city of Charlottesville’s actions — they just wanted to intimidate, and since a public university is a public place, they could move freely into its space even when their only goal was to frighten.

Similarly, as I observed the Alabama Senate campaign I was struck by how completely Roy Moore’s supporters operated from within their own mythical core, how completely impervious they were to argument or debate (this is true of some of his opponents too, of course). My point is simply that these contests of competing myths happen throughout our society and the university can’t be isolated or protected from them. That is, we can’t fix the university-specific problems I pointed to without addressing some of the larger social issues. That people associated with a university would invite a hateful mythmonger like Richard Spencer to campus is a tragedy; but it’s a greater tragedy that someone like Spencer is a public figure at all. That’s not something that even the best university administration can fix.

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(I might add that when people say that they want conservative ideas to be represented on campus and then invite Ann Coulter or Milo or Richard Spencer to speak, they have zero interest in ideas. They just want to spit in their neighbor’s soup.)

At several points in the poem Gawain is referred to as “Mary’s knight,” and it certainly seems that here she has been gracious in answering his prayers. For immediately after he ends his prayer with his threefold self-crossing he discerns a place of refuge: a castle, inhabited by a gracious man named Bertilak and his lovely wife. They are delighted to have the famous Sir Gawain as their guest, and much Christmas festivity (at the table of feasting and at prayer in their chapel) is had by all.

Bertilak is a hunter, and on each of the following theee days he goes out on a hunt, leaving Gawain to rest and recuperate at home before he must proceed to the Green Chapel — which, he learns, is quite nearby. (O joy.) Bertilak and Gawain make a little agreement: each will bring to the other whatever he acquires during the course of the day. It’s, you might say, a Christmas game — though Gawain doesn’t seem to notice that in this it resembles an agreement he made with another stranger a year earlier.

This extremely complex and marvelously artful poem is very concerned with tacit and explicit agreements — with, as it were, the social contract of the Age of Chivalry. Some such concern arises in every pre-modern society: for instance, an awareness that in an often threatening and only partly civilized world we are often in desperate need of hospitality, and therefore must also be willing to offer such hospitality to others. You can see this theme going all the way back to the Odyssey, in which the Cyclops shows his barbarity by eating those whom he should treat as his guests, while back in Ithaca the suitors of Penelope show their barbarity by abusing her hospitality to them. So guests and hosts owe certain decencies to one another, and failure of those decencies is taken very seriously indeed in the premodern world; look at where the betrayers of guests and hosts are in Dante’s Inferno: in the very deepest circle of Hell.

But the temporary relations of guest and host are no more strictly governed than those permanent ones between lord and liegeman, which the Gawain poet is also interested in, as we saw at the beginning when none of Arthur’s knights came to his aid until Arthur’s offer of himself shamed Gawain into stepping up. And then there are the obligations one owes to the bond of marriage: chaste faithfulness within it, and for those outside, respect for its covenant. Those are about to come into play in this poem, but again, let me stress how concerned this poem is with all the forms of tacit and explicit agreement — all the promises we, either silently or verbally, make to one another. Much that in our world is governed by law was then governed by such personal promises. One’s words and one acts, including the acts of giving and receiving hospitality, must be one’s bond.

So what is Gawain supposed to do when, as Bertilak is out on his jolly hunts, the lady of the house starts hitting on him? At first she is relatively subtle, but soon enough she, as the poet says, makes her meaning quite plain. And now Gawain is in a bind indeed. For to have sex with her would be a double betrayal of Bertilak, would be to offend against the man as host and as husband. And yet knights are also sworn defenders and servants of ladies: they take pride in doing a lady’s bidding. But what if the lady is bidding you to give her a bit of rumpy-bumpy on a cold winter’s afternoon? What we see here is a moment when an entire moral system — the system of Courtesy — seems to be broken, or rather to be breaking right before Gawain’s eyes. For whatever he does he will inevitably he uncourteous to someone — he, known not as the most powerful or eloquent of Arthur’s men but rather the most courteous. The place that looked to be a respite before a great challenge has proved to be itself a challenge. What is Mary’s knight to do now?

To be continued...

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] David Jones, Nativity with Beasts and Shepherds (1927)[/caption]

At several points in the poem Gawain is referred to as “Mary’s knight,” and it certainly seems that here she has been gracious in answering his prayers. For immediately after he ends his prayer with his threefold self-crossing he discerns a place of refuge: a castle, inhabited by a gracious man named Bertilak and his lovely wife. They are delighted to have the famous Sir Gawain as their guest, and much Christmas festivity (at the table of feasting and at prayer in their chapel) is had by all.

Bertilak is a hunter, and on each of the following theee days he goes out on a hunt, leaving Gawain to rest and recuperate at home before he must proceed to the Green Chapel — which, he learns, is quite nearby. (O joy.) Bertilak and Gawain make a little agreement: each will bring to the other whatever he acquires during the course of the day. It’s, you might say, a Christmas game — though Gawain doesn’t seem to notice that in this it resembles an agreement he made with another stranger a year earlier.

This extremely complex and marvelously artful poem is very concerned, it seems, with tacit and explicit agreements — with, as it were, the social contract of the Age of Chivalry. Some of this arises in every pre-modern society: for instance, an awareness that in an often threatening and only partly civilized world we are often in desperate need of hospitality, and therefore must also be willing to offer such hospitality to others. You can see this theme going all the way back to the Odyssey, in which the Cyclops shows his barbarity by eating those whom he should treat as his guests, while back in Ithaca the suitors of Penelope show their barbarity by abusing her hospitality to them. So guests and hosts owe certain decencies to each other, and failure of those decencies is taken very seriously indeed in the premodern world: look at where the betrayers of guests and hosts are in Dante’s Inferno: in the very deepest circle of Hell.

But the temporary relations of guest and host are no more strictly governed than those permanent ones between lord and liegeman, which the Gawain poet is also interested in, as we saw at the beginning when none of Arthur’s knights came to his aid until Arthur’s offer of himself shamed Gawain into it. And then there are the obligations one owes to the bond of marriage: chaste faithfulness within it, and for those outside, respect for its covenant. Those are about to come into play in this poem, but again, let me stress how concerned this poem is with something that the medieval world in general seems to have cared about very deeply: all the forms of tacit and explicit agreement — all the promises we, either silently or verbally, make to one another. Much that in our world is governed by law was then governed by such personal promises. One’s words and one acts, including the acts of giving and receiving hospitality, must be one’s bond.

So what is Gawain supposed to do when, as Bertilak is out on his jolly hunts, the lady of the house starts hitting on him? At first she is relatively subtle, but soon enough she, as the poet says, makes her meaning quite plain. And now Gawain is in a bind indeed. For to have sex with her would be a double betrayal of Bertilak, would be to offend against the man as host and as husband. And yet knights are also sworn defenders and servants of ladies: they take pride in doing a lady’s bidding. But what if the lady is bidding you to give her a bit of rumpy-bumpy on a cold winter’s afternoon?

What we see here is a moment when an entire moral system — the system of Courtesy — seems to be broken, or rather to be breaking right before Gawain’s eyes. For whatever he does he is to someone uncourteous — he, known not as the most powerful or eloquent or Arthur’s men but rather the most courteous. The place that looked to be a respite before a great challenge has proved to be itself a challenge. What is Mary’s knight to do now?

To be continued…

Once the voice has quietly spoken, every knight must ride alone On the quest appointed him into the unknown: One to seek the healing waters, one the Dark Tower to assail, One to find the Lost Princess, one to find the Grail.

Through the wood of Evil Counsel, through the Desert of Dismay, Past the Pools of Pestilence he must find the Way. Hemmed between the Haunted Marshes and the Mountains of the Dead, To the Valley of Regret and the Bridge of Dread.

— W. H. Auden, “Song of the Quest”

Gawain postpones his journey as long as he possibly can, for he can imagine no happy ending to the Quest laid upon him: to find the Green Chapel and receive from the Green Knight the promised reciprocation.

In this section of the poem, the passing of the year is marked by the calendar of the Church. It is on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (September 29) that Gawain thinks he should leave Camelot and begin his search. But he does not leave; he tarries. A month later, on All Saints’ Day (November 1) he realizes that he may tarry no longer, and on the next day he sets out.

That next day, as it happens, is the Feast of All Souls. The brilliant, eccentric, maverick scholar Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy believed that the creation of All Souls’ Day was a great revolution in Western culture, because it added to the existing cult of the saints — those holy ones who intercede for us at the throne of God — a salutary reminder of all of us, all the souls, who are on our pilgrimage and need one another’s prayers. All Souls’ Day reminds us that everyone still on the way, whether in this world or in Purgatory, needs the prayers of the faithful. It marks, Rosenstock-Huessy said, “the universal democracy of sinners under judgment.” And that, as we shall see later, is a democracy that matters very much to this poem.

In any case, once Gawain is on his way time ceases to be marked by the sacred calendar: instead, the poet describes for us an increasingly wintry landscape: bare trees and swirling winds in the wild wood, a wilderness — and in the Middle Ages “wilderness” was a word to conjure fear — in which the knight cannot confidently make his way. He does not know where to look he does not know what he is looking for.

Now through England’s realm he rides and rides, Sir Gawain, God’s servant, on his grim quest, passing long dark nights unloved and alone, foraging to feed, finding little to call food, with no friend but his horse through forests and hills and only our Lord in heaven to hear him.

Finally he pauses to pray: “Father, hear me, / and Lady Mary, our mother most mild.” What he wants above all is a place “where mass may be heard, / and matins in the morning.” He ends his prayer and crosses himself three times. It is Christmas Eve.

To be continued…

All the visitor wants is to play a little “Christmas game” — but it appears that no one at Arthur’s court wants to play with him. Perhaps that’s because he is enormous and green.

a fearful form appeared, framed in the door: a mountain of a man, immeasurably high, a hulk of a human from head to hips,  so long and thick in his loins and his limbs I should genuinely judge him to be a half giant, or a most massive man, the mightiest of mortals. But handsome, too, like any horseman worth his horse,  for despite the bulk and brawn of his body  his stomach and waist were slender and sleek.  In fact in all features he was finely formed, it seemed. Amazement seized their minds, no soul had ever seen a knight of such a kind — entirely emerald green.

(It’s hard to get the “bob and wheel” — the short lines that end each stanza of the poem — to render accurately in HTML. In general, HTML is not made for the presentation of verse. Sorry.)

The knight clearly resembles the Green Man of European folklore, a kind of vegetation deity whose attitude towards humanity is ambiguous — he can be generous, he can be threatening. It is interesting, and perhaps relevant to this poem, that the Green Man is often represented in medieval churches, often as a stone carving, and sometimes in quite colorful form, as in this roof boss from Rochester Cathedral:

Or maybe it’s the particular game he offers that’s the problem: for he carries with him a massive axe, a “gigantic cleaver,” and he suggests that one of Arthur’s knights should take it and chop his, the Green Knight’s, head clean off — and then, he says, in a year and a day he’ll return the favor.

No one steps up to volunteer — until, in the embarrassed silence, King Arthur himself does. This event could be read as a token of Arthur’s courtesy and courage, and surely there’s an element of that; but aren’t the knights sworn to protect and serve their liege lord? Should they not be interposing themselves between their king and this terrifying stranger?

Only when Arthur offers himself does one knight, Gawain, acknowledge that the whole situation is rapidly becoming humiliating:

For I find it unfitting, as my fellow knights would, when a deed of such daring is dangled before us that you take on this trial — tempted as you are — when brave, bold men are seated on these benches, men never matched in the mettle of their minds, never beaten or bettered in the field of battle. I am weakest of your warriors and feeblest of wit; loss of my life would be grieved the least. Were I not your nephew my life would mean nothing; to be born of your blood is my body’s only claim. Such a foolish affair is unfitting for a king, so, being first to come forward, it should fall to me.

This is throwing some serious shade on all the other knights, who (if he speaks true) are all more powerful and/or wiser than he. But none of them moves a muscle. So forward Gawain steps and takes the axe.

The Green Knight tells Gawain to search him out in a year — to seek a place called the Green Chapel, where he will wait for Gawain. However, Arthur whispers to Gawain that if he gives the fellow’s neck a truly serious whack, he won’t have to worry about what might happen in a year. Sage counsel; so Gawain lifts the “gigantic cleaver” high and lops the visitor’s head clean off. Problem solved!

Except …

The handsome head tumbles onto the earth and the king’s men kick it as it clatters past. Blood gutters brightly against his green gown, yet the man doesn’t shudder or stagger or sink but trudges towards them on those tree-trunk legs and rummages around, reaches at their feet and cops hold of his head and hoists it high, and strides to his steed, snatches the bridle, steps into the stirrup and swings into the saddle still gripping his head by a handful of hair. Then he settles himself in his seat with the ease of a man unmarked, never mind being minus his head!

He then reminds Gawain of his obligations, bids everyone farewell, and rides away, leaving them to contemplate the great feast that’s growing cold on their plates.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

To be continued…

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“837”] Althea Willoughby, illustration for A Child Is Born by Henry Newbolt[/caption]