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Article: The sport of Easter. (Opinion).("Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and the Easter message)(Critical Essay)(Column)
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- April 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The anonymous alliterative Middle English poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is one of the gems of Western medieval literature. It gives a colorful portrait of court life, of heaped tables fringed with silk, knights and ladies in stately order, "velvet carpets, embroidered rugs, studded with jewels as rich as an emperor's ransom." Its attention to detail is remarkable. It is a rare poet who sees poetic possibilities in butchering a deer, but the Gawain poet lingers over the slaughter for thirty fascinating lines. Above all, as several of my students have emphasized to me recently, what marks the poem is its tone of utter and undiluted jollity. Everything in the poem ...