Backlisted - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the subject of this episode of Backlisted. Dr Martin Shaw and Dr Laura Varnam (hwaet Laura!) join Andy and John to discuss this late 14th-century chivalric romance - or subversion thereof - written in Middle English alliterative verse, author unknown. We discuss the poem's chequered history and a variety of translations by Simon Armitage, J.R.R. Tolkien, Marie Borroff and Dr Shaw himself. We also take a look at some of the film, TV and radio adaptations of the poem, the most recent of which is The Green Knight (2021), starring Dev Patel. This show was recorded in front of a live audience at Foyles in Charing Cross Road, London, on 12th June 2024. Locklisted subscribers will be able to hear more Gawain chat next weekend, including some terrific contributions and questions from members of the audience. In other words, it's a bumper bonus Backlisted bonanza from the blokes and broads who brought you Beowulf. Bye! *Tickets are now on sale for our LIVE show in London on Wednesday July 17th where we will be discussing Endless Night by Agatha Christie, with guests Caroline Crampton and Andrew Male * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us once again in the flesh on the sixth floor of Foyles, a gaff that has been going great guns since 1903. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the website where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, the publisher of Unbound, the website where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we are joined by two guests, one returning for the fifth time and one making their debut. Please welcome to the stage Dame Laura Varnham and Sir Martin Shaw.

What, everybody? Dame Laura is the lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College Oxford. Her academic publications include her 2018 book, The Church as Sacred Space in Middle English Literature and Culture, and the co-edited essay collection, Encountering the Book of Marjorie Kemp. She is also a poet and a collection of her Grendel's mother poems

inspired by the old English epic Beowulf. Ooh! What? Will be published... It's like a Cracker Jack thing, that. Every time you hear the word Beowulf... What? Will be published in Primers Volume 7 by Nine Arches Press in August this year.

She previously appeared on a string of sinister backlisted Halloween episodes covering Daphne du Maurier, Elizabeth Jane Howard, most recently M.R. James, and most pertinently Beowulf. What? We are also delighted to say what to Martin Shaw. Martin is a writer, storyteller, and teacher who lives on Dartmoor. He founded the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life Courses at Stanford University and is director of the West Country School of Myth in the UK. He is the author of the award-winning Myth Teller Trilogy and recent books include Smokehole, Courting the Wild Twin, both published

by Chelsea Green, Wolf Milk, Cinderbiter with Tony Hoagland, and his Lorca translations, Courting the Dawn with Stephen Harding. In 2023, Unbound published his first work of fiction, Bardskull, which Laura, I believe, has been reading and would like to recommend to you. I absolutely would. It's fantastic. John, is it good? It is very good. Okay, that's excellent. Martin's introduced thousands of people to mythology and how it can be put to use in our busy modern lives. And for 20 years, he has been a wilderness rites of passage

guide. Madeline Miller has described him as a modern day bard. Others have called him the lost inkling. What does that tell people if they don't know? What would the lost inkling be? Well, I wasn't the person that said it. So you'll have to speculate on quite what that could be. Okay, but you will be talking about Tolkien, will you not? At some point this evening, who was an inkling. John, over to you. Right, well, I think you probably all know,

because we put it in the programme, what we're here to discuss tonight, one of the great masterpieces of English literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We know that it was written in the late 14th century, but we don't know who wrote it. In fact, all we know is that the person who wrote it knew a lot about the Bible. He knew his courtly French literature.

And we know also that he wrote in his alliterative, rhythmic style in the dialect of the Northwest Midlands. And more than that, it's pure speculation. I don't know how familiar you are with the plot, so let me just say this. It involves Christmas feasting, at least one beheading, two extreme parlour games, more feasting, bad weather, instructions on the correct way to butcher a deer. It's good, interesting to me anyway. Even worse weather, even more feasting. The sauciest scene in all of English literature and a lady's undergarment. Confused? You won't

be. Not after the bright bard of bards we have brought forth bedecked with books and not yet be calmed by beer. What is happening? I don't know what he's doing there. Before we G up Gringolet and head towards the wilderness of the Wirral, here's a message from our sponsors. This is an advertisement from BetterHelp. Everyone knows therapy is great for solving problems.

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powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash y amex benefits vary by card other conditions apply and we're back let's start the question that we ask all our guests on backlisted and i'll start with you dame laura when did you first read Gawain and the Green Knight slash Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Well, I've got two sort of encounters with Gawain and the Green Knight. The first is the narrative, the story, and the second is with the poem. But the first with the story, and I remember it so vividly. I was in the sixth form center of my high school, Poynton High School, up in Cheshire. It's up in the Northwest, where the poem may well originate from. And I was in the middle of an A-level lesson with Mr. Wasserberg, and he was teaching us The

Wife of Bath. And all of a sudden, he just decided to tell us the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I'd never heard of the story. I didn't know anything about the poet or any of the background or the language. And Mr. Osseberg told the story, told the whole story over the course of about 15 minutes. And honestly, I just lost my mind in that moment. I just could not believe it. I lost my head, John. I thought this is the most extraordinary thing I've ever heard. And I remember going home, retelling the story with kind of extra adornments to my mum, to my brother, to my dad, you know, saying, and he picked up his head after he'd been beheaded and said, you know, see you later, alligator, and rode off. I just thought this was just unbelievable. I think it

must be the moment that in some ways made me into a medievalist, that this kind of story was out there. But my encounter with the poem was reading English at Durham University. And the first lecture that I went to was by Dr. Corin Saunders, who's another reason I'm a medievalist. And she read the poem out loud in the original Middle English in this Northwestern dialect. And I just thought it was gorgeous. And just the sound of it just blew me away. And so I couldn't wait to start writing about it and working on it. And now I teach it and talk to my students about it every year. You are an expert on this topic. Just be proud of it, own it. Yes, yes it would be fair to say that I've been thinking about Gawain for something like 25 years. All right well yeah okay that's good. Martin,

when did you first encounter, it's a good word, when did you first encounter this story? When did you first encounter, it's a good word, when did you first encounter this story? Encounter is the right word because I heard it before I read it. There was a very, is a very senior storyteller, Hugh Lupton, you must seek him out. And somewhere in a Devon field about 15 years ago, he told it. And it was a beautiful, visionary recital.

It was a wonderful thing. I have to slip in this one very backlisted detail at the end. He found out that I lived on Dartmoor and he said, oh, you must love Moortown Diary by Ted Hughes book. To my great chagrin, I didn't have it. And this was the day before I would be looking on the internet. So as he told me this, he sort of, in my fledgling mind, he was a sort of senatorial figure saying, if you do nothing else in your life, find More Town Diary by Ted Hughes. Hugh Lupton tells you to find it. I search and I search and I search. I can't find the book.

It is Christmas Eve. I am all the way over in the town of Norwich, hundreds of miles from Devon, down a little back street. I come to the poetry section, snow against the window. Finally, I see the little slim green volume. The book actually exists. Hugh wasn't lying. By the book, think I must ring him. I get back to my little cottage to read it. I open it and it says, this book belongs to Hugh Lupton. That is a true story.

But I really fell, I swooned, I swooned into Gawain in the Green Knight. Actually, a few years ago when I was very sick, I went to America to be filmed for something. And the moment I got off the plane, I thought, I think I have the thing they call COVID. And the moment I got off the plane, I thought, I think I have the thing they call COVID. And I did. And so for about seven days, I swam in and out of consciousness reading this book. And I would dream it when I wasn't reading it. And ironically, the way the COVID attacked me was around the back of my neck. I found myself scratching the back of my

neck in the sleep. Now, I don't want to be a plot spoiler. But after that, I thought, I think there's some work that I need to do with it. So those are the two ways I first came across the story, which I have now, in a very anarchic shambling style, toured across Canada and England and Ireland. very anarchic, shambling style, toured across Canada and England and Ireland. I think what would be really helpful for... How many people here have read or seen some version of Gawain and the Green Knight? Only two people.

What a strange couple you must be. I wonder whether for everyone else who hasn't read it, could you give us a preysy of the plot? John touched on certain images we might see. Could you put them in the correct order for us? So it's Christmas, it's Camelot, they've been partying for 15 days. Arthur is giddy with excitement

and he has this odd little stipulation. He says, before anybody gets into the nosh, give us a story, remind us of who we are, bind Camelot again with a tail, and no one has anything, nothing. On cue, the doors burst open, there's this great foliaged, shamanically Christian figure in my mind, the Green Knight, and he says, I've got a game, Not the sort of game anybody would ever want to play. You chop my head off with the condition that someone a year and a day later, I could repeat the blow. You're with me so far. Well, of course, it turns out Gawain, whose name means

Gwalchmai is the hawk of May, used to be a bird before he was ever a man, he's the young lad who hasn't really been tested. And so, of course, this journey becomes his initiatory journey. And a year and a day later, that terrifying time span, he makes his way through certain initiatory ordeals around the Wirral and beyond until finally he is at a – he bumps into a guy called Bertilak, who's oddly familiar in some way, but we can't put our finger on it, can we? And then a second, first of all, it's the Wadwos out in the wild and it's all sorts of exterior terrors on him. But the real testing is what goes on in those days before he meets the Green Knight. But the real testing is what goes on in those days before he meets the Green Knight. And then finally, of course, he meets the Green Knight.

And the story for me moves from great hilarity into real pathos. And as a storyteller, you're looking for what I would call psychic weight. You're looking for sorrow to live in the room as well as hilarity. And it's the balance of the two means I can't I can't leave the story alone that was wonderful thank you now Laura tell us the story of the story of Gawain and the Green Knight what is the history of this particular text um so it's funny you should say that sort of story of the story. You know, in many ways Gawain and the Green Light is a perfect backlisted book because it is a book about books.

It's a poem all about books. It's a poem about the Arthurian tradition, but it's also a poem about close reading and the importance of being a very careful and very close reader. The manuscript that we have that's kept in the British Library with a very exciting title, Cotton Nero A10, Antiquarian Robert Cotton had collected the manuscript. This is, of course, the group of manuscripts that also included the Beowulf manuscript. What? Thank you. And the Cotton Library, we lost many volumes. We could have lost Gawain, we could have lost Beowulf, the fire that took place in 1731 when the library was being kept in the ominously named Ashburnham House. Thankfully, Gawain, Beowulf survived. Gawain survived in better condition than Beowulf, a little singed around the edges. And it sort of

passes into obscurity. So the manuscript is a copy probably from around about 1400, probably a copy of whatever the original might have been. It contains four poems. It's got a dozen illustrations of those poems. I think the illustrations are really delightful and charming. Some academics have felt that they are... Crap. Yes. I don't. I think they're adorable. And in fact, my mum has recently done a gorgeous embroidery inspired by one of the illuminations for Pearl. Yeah, take that academia. So it's got four poems in the manuscript that are known by modern editorial titles. The first three are known by the first word of each poem. So Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and then we have Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It'd be interesting to think maybe later about

what we might call Sir Gawain and the Green Knight if we didn't call it Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, if there's a particular word that might spring to mind. Patience is a retelling of the story of Jonah and the Whale, often seen as a kind of negative exemplum of patience, because Jonah is not very patient, nor does he endure suffering in the way that that's what the Middle English word patience means. Cleanness is a poem that's all about, it's actually kind of all about uncleanness, it's about filth, it's about biblical stories, Sodom and Gomorrah, this kind of comes back to what John was saying about our poet clearly being steeped in biblical

text as well as in the Arthurian tradition and in various other kinds of literature from the period. various other kinds of literature from the period. The other poem is the beautiful, beautiful poem, Pearl, which is an elegy, a dream vision poem, perhaps for the poet's lost daughter. So we have those three poems and Gawain. The manuscript was first edited in 1839, and then translation started to come out at the end of the 19th century.

I believe one of the first translations of Gawain was a prose translation by Jessie Weston. So it's great to see women translators. She was an American scholar. So was there an outbreak of Gawain mania? Absolutely. Gawainia, if you will. But there was, right? And so in the late 19th century, this thing is rediscovered

and becomes sort of, you know, fashionable in the arts and crafts tradition. Rediscovery of ancient crafts being a theme of that era. Yeah, and the Victorian period has this flowering of medievalism and fascination, particularly for the world of King Arthur. If you're into soft furnishings and clothing, I mean, it's... Gawain is full of it. It's astonishing, the detail, isn't it? Yeah. So, John, Laura was talking about the Gawain poet as he or she is generally referred to.

What do we actually know about the Gawain poet? Very little. Very little. I mean, we're pretty sure that he's a he because his degree of knowledge of scholarship means that he would have been educated. And sadly, in those days, it tended that women weren't put through classical education.

He obviously knew Latin and Greek and was familiar with French as well, we would think. And quite possibly Italian. Yeah. And quite possibly Italian. Yeah, and quite possibly Italian. What we think is that he might have been a minor cleric, i.e. not an ordained priest, but perhaps working in a monastery or in a kind of an institution attached to a large house. He seems to know a lot about how the rich folk live. I mean, the poem is astonishing, rereading it, how much feasting

there is in it, and how much description there is of what people wear, and of the rituals of court. There is a theory also that he might have been attached to Richard II at the end of the 14th century was the king, complex and controversial figure ended up being murdered horribly probably but was i don't know potentially gay but was also a great patron of poetry so langland and chaucer and the gawain poet were all writing roughly at the same time what's amazing is that nobody knows a poet of this quality i mean and I mean, I think when you take all of those four poems, we don't know whether he wrote all four of them, but the linguistic evidence seems to suggest that he did.

The assumption is that he was from the Northwest and that Cheshire, the palatinate of Cheshire, was a very important... Richard used to spend quite a lot of time there and not in London. And when he went to London, he brought a group of Cheshire men to look after him, kind of like a sort of, I don't know what you'd call it, a kind of camp group of bodyguards and guys hanging out reading poetry. Sounds great. But there were a lot of people in England who didn't like that kind of behavior, and he ended up being murdered for his sins or his virtues. So it's tantalizing. There isn't another poet in English of this quality that we don't know the name. And you say poet, and please, any of you please answer this. To me, this is one

of the things I'm most interested in, as regards this text. I'm going to say text for a while. Poet. How was poetry consumed in the era in which the Gawain poet was writing? Performed aloud, was read aloud. You have to listen to it. Same as with Beowulf, and you can tell that from the word quat, which does in fact appear in Gawain. I'm sorry to interrupt, Laura, can I ask therefore, does that mean that the Canterbury Tales, the poem, the Canterbury Tales, was written to be performed? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I never knew that.

Yeah. There we go. I've learned something. It was like a non-stop 14th century poetry slam, really, wasn't it? Yeah, completely. I mean, what it wasn't written for, I don't think, and correct me if I'm wrong, was to express the lyric impulse necessarily. It was to entertain and to, you know, if you knew all of these, if you knew that your audience knew the stuff that you knew, then what you were trying to do was to make something a bit clever and a bit... So basically we're talking about something that is as much a

record of a script as it is a poem. So it has the qualities of poetry, it invites us to make connections and it's introspective in some ways but it also is a script. Yeah it has bounce, it has energy. in some ways, but it also is a script. Yeah, it has bounce, it has energy. Yeah. Have you saw the recent film of it, maybe? Which for me, it's a beautiful thing,

but it's not energetically, atmospherically at all like the poem. This audience actually actively saying out loud, yes. Yes! Someone had to say it! Hold it down, guys. We're going to come on to the film later on. So, before I forget, my new theory is that the Gawain poet is actually Alan Garner. Well, that's very much what Alan Garner thinks, too, by the way. Alan Garner is on record as saying he was the first person to write in the same language as the Gawain poet for 600 years.

And one of the reasons is when he read his dad, who was a stonemason, he read him from Gawain. His dad understood it completely without any, and said that, yon's grand stuff. said that yon's yon's grand stuff and if you actually if you look at the the vocabulary of the poem alan says when he when he can do i've seen him do he had he used to do a brilliant double act with a great medieval scholar called ralph elliott and ralph elliott would read the middle middle english and alan would do it in cheshire dialect and the two would the two were almost identical it was it was really astonishing astonishing. So I think you're right. You're definitely on to something. Yeah, it's Strandlopian.

Yeah. It's Strandlopian as an energy. Garner's grandfather gives Gawain Grandly. Whoa. Sorry, that's the alliterative style. Should we say something about alliteration? Because that's another thing that's going on. Well, before we do that, we've given you the plot. plot we've given you the context we've given you some biographical

details such as we know it we would now like to give you an extract from the poem in the original middle english i hand you over to dame laura varna thank you um yeah can i can i just want to say one thing first um which is that you know know, this is the most extraordinary poetry. The Gawain poet is incredibly, he's an exciting poet. He's experimental. He's taking this alliterative tradition that comes to us through Old English. It's the language of Beowulf. And where Chaucer and his contemporaries are starting to write in rhymed form.

Softy southern bastards. Exactly. There's a line in the Canterbury Tales where someone says, I am a southern man, I cannot rum-ram-ruff, saying, you know, I can't do this northern alliterative nonsense. But what we get in the Gawain poet is this incredible... So Simon Armitage calls the alliterative meter the kind of warp and weft of the poem. But the Gawain poet is also a real innovator. So what we get

in Gawain is these stanzas of alliterative long lines where the alliterative sound falls on the stress. And then at the end of the stanza, and the stanzas are not of the same length, so suspense is something that the Gawain poet is brilliant at. You never know when the kind of blow is going to fall at the end of each stanza, where you get something that we've come to call the bobbin wheel, which is a little tiny line of just two syllables and then a rhyming quatrain. And you get that at the end of stanzas that gives this, the bobbin wheel can be, it can be funny, it can kind of crystallise something, it can be ironic, it can be a little address to the audience. So the Gawain poet, as far as I know, comes up with this idea of merging these two forms together. Anyway, sorry,

idea of merging these two forms together anyway sorry sorry yeah i'll read a bit you're very into it just just read just read please read some please read some okay so this is this is the green knight um uh when he's describing uh he's saying to arthur this is the Christmas game and King Arthur has said to him Sir Cortes Cunicht, if thou craver bathe el barra here failest thou not to ficht. So if you crave battle you'll get a fight here. Don't help them. Sorry. And the Green Knight replies, nay, freist i no ficht in faith I thee teller. Hit on about on this bench but beardless childer. If he were haspid in armours on a high staid, here is no man me to match, for michter so waker.

Forthie, I craver in this court, a Christmas gorman, for yet is Yule and New Year, and here are yet many. If any so hardy in this hoose, holden himselfen, be so bold in his blood, brain in his header, that dare stiffly strike a stroke for an other, he shall give him of me gift this gissen rich, this axe, that is heavy enough to hundle as him leakers. And he shall be to the first burr as bare as he sitter. If any freak be so fell to fond that he teller, lape lichtly me too, and latch this weapon. He quit claim it forever, keep it as his own, and he shall stonder him a stroke stiff on his flate. Elleth thou will dich me to the dome to dale him an other barley?

And yet, if him respite, a twelve month and a day, now here, and let's see teat, dare any herein ocht say. Thank you very much. What? What?

Martin, you were telling us backstage before we came on how you opened at the Glasgow Empire with that. Yeah, there were a thousand Glaswegians waiting for somebody else to come on stage. There's a great musician some of you will know, Glenn Hansard. He's a dear pal of mine. And he said, how would it be if you came on tour with me and just sort of foie gras'd myth into the general atmosphere of people that may not be

knowing it was what they needed? So yeah, once you've stared down the barrel of 900 Liverpudlians or 1,000 Glaswegians, and you've seen this ancient story land as if it happened to them on the way to work this morning. You know this is living myth. This isn't a reenactment fair. This isn't a seance. This is something that's actually happening in the room. Could I read a bit? We would love to hear it, please.

So I've had the challenge where, as an oral storyteller, you're aware of these traditions and you admire them and you love the bounce of the poems and then at a certain point you have to almost forget all of it and so I'll read a little bit about The Green Knight and this moment when this is more like a synopsis Gawain is about to leave and head out into the mist on a quest. The Green Knight, a power as old as even the dream of Merlin. He imagined himself for 500,000 years before he took form. This is a remnant, an energy source so far back in the mist, it is almost as old as me. Green Knight wants to play a game, an ancient pagan game. In the end, Gawain gets embroiled to save Arthur's reputation.

One blow off goes the giant's head. It rolls around the floor and the body calmly rises and gathers it under his arm. Oh, shit. rises and gathers it under his arm. Oh shit. Turns out that Gawain has to meet him at something called the Green Chapel in a year and a day's time to receive an equivalent blow. Gawain really should have studied the contract. The Green Knight rides away, terrifying, I mean terrifying, and the party attempts to continue. The Queen is ashen and the boys try to make light of it, but everybody knows a drive-by shooting has just occurred. Gawain, flower of the court.

He's a flower of the court. He's a dead man. He is moribund, posthumous. That is it. His bell has chimed, all jumbled up within the rules of the game. Ah, but we are leaving with him in that wintering light, crisp snow underfoot. We are tucked up in gringolet saddlebags, warm in hay. It is a huge thing to set out into the wilds of old Britannia. Portals to other worlds are

cranked even wider in them days. Every body, every copse, every rain-wrung moor contains fairy and brigand and spirit. Every tump is encoded with ghostly script, if you know how to read. Spirit braille on every dike and branch. Wow. Thank you. on every dyke and branch. Wow. Thank you. Thank you, Martin. That was fantastic. When we come back, we're going to hear a couple of more modern takes on the Gawain myth.

But first, let's hear from our princely sponsors. Thanks very much. Welcome back, everybody. I feel intimidated by our panel today and by you because I know you read this when you were a student, didn't you? I did. And you've got your student copy there. I do. Do you have any of your student annotations?

No, because I have a weird thing. I don't like writing in books. Hands up who likes writing in books. No one. Hands. I don't like writing in books. Hands up who likes writing in books. No one. Hands up who doesn't like writing in books. There you go. It's usually the same. Yeah, it's just a weird thing.

I can fold corners, but I find it actually... I'm worried this is too wild for a... Yeah, that is my student version. It's got terrible notes by the person who owned it before me. For me, the hero of the poem, without a shadow of a doubt, and you've got some of the reason why, is the Green Knight. And it's also, by the way, the most original bit. There is nothing like the Green Knight in any other medieval poem.

It comes from somewhere, I think Martin hinted at it, from some strange confluence of old green magic and the craggy Celtic Christian tradition. He's like kind of warrior Santa. He arrives in the court with holly in one hand and an axe in the other. I'd only read one version of Gawain and the Green Knight, or more accurately heard it. This is a clip from it. Then Arthur grips the axe, grabs it by its haft and takes it above him intending to attack.

By Guinevere, Gawain now to his king inclines and says, I state my claim. This moment must be mine. Call me, courteous lord, said Garwain to his king, to rise from my seat and stand at your side. If it pleases, I'll politely take leave of my place,

quit without causing offence to my queen, and come to your council before this great court. 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. And if my proposal is improper, let no other person stand blame. The fellows then confer and all assert the same.

The king can quit. It's fair to give Gawain the game. king can quit. It's fair to give Gawain the game. So that was Sir Ian McKellen and our former backlisted guest Samuel West performing a dramatised version of Simon Armitage's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the afternoon play on Radio 4 in 2009. That is the only text of Gawain and the Green Knight that I had encountered other than the recent and increasingly controversial film. And I wanted to draw attention to the fact that Simon Armitage, I suppose to some extent, John,

following in the footsteps of Heaney, representing a text in a new translation in a kind of popular style. I have to say, I went and read the Armitage text for this. I thought it was absolutely terrific. I thought, I think it, and it sold how many copies? I mean, it was a bestseller. Like 100,000 copies or something.

Yeah, well over 50,000. And it seems to me, I put this to everybody, that it has that colloquial energy. Martin, does it have the bounce that you yes yeah and and that's where the garner thing comes in that's where the garner things come in if you the many of us in the room grew up as kids reading garner there's just so much language in jamment jammed into those books and you're reading i think even when i read this i thought this would work in a room, even if people had been drinking for an hour beforehand, or maybe especially if they'd been drinking for an hour beforehand.

This has enough romp to get you from one end to the other, but it also has plenty of spook in it, and it does have changes of gear. One of the things that struck me about why the Gawain poet included certain scenes rather than others and certain pieces of pacing rather than others were almost like a good stand-up comedian will want to give their audience stuff the audience can relate to or aspire to. So the poem is full of lovely clothes, big feasts, Christmas.

It's full of hunting, those incredible hunting scenes. It's presenting a mixture of the everyday, the aspirational, and the fantastic. And the changes of pace, to me, always seem to be about holding the audience. Yeah. Right? Changes of pace, to me, always seem to be about holding the audience, right? Rather than a poetic, let me counterpoint this with this. It's always about in the moment. It's saying, I reckon I can, this is how much juice I can draw out of this for this crowd. Laura, is that how you process it?

Absolutely. It's often divided into four fits or sections. And there are larger opening initials in the manuscript that seem to suggest it's in these four parts. And those parts really seem fitted to performance. That, you know, at the end of fit one, when, you know, the Green Knight has picked his head up and ridden off, and the poet says, now think well, Gawain. Let's see what's going to happen in a year and a day's time.

And you can almost imagine the kind of doof-doof East Ender's music at the end. First part of the performance done, everyone can have a drink, part two. So it's got that structure. The Gawain poet has built in breaks for his sponsors. Absolutely. So we're all going to talk now about a specific translation of Gawain. And I think I would like to go across the stage from the far side. So, John, would you like to tell us about your choice of translation

of Gawain and the Green Knight? Which one will you be sharing with us? I have to say I do really like the Simon Armitage, and I commend it. I mean, I don't think any of them are flawless, I have to say. You always have to give up something if i was going to be even a little bit snitty about the armitage it's sometimes a bit too chirpy and i mean he's a lot of things the gawain poet but he isn't really chirpy so i picked the Keith Harrison, who is an American academic, Australian-born translator who's based in Minnesota.

And this edition is the Oxford World's Classics version, and the notes are by the very excellent Helen Cooper, who I'm sure you would know from... Yes, absolutely, the first female fellow at University College and medievalist and Chaucer expert. What he does is he just... he does things that I really like. He doesn't try to do the alliteration, which Armitage does to his credit, but Armitage, sometimes it does make it seem a little bit tumty-tum. What he really, really tries to do is to keep the meaning clear. And he also does, which I really admire, he does the,

which Alptage also does, he does the bob on wheel little rhymy bits at the end really well. I mean, the difficulty with translations is that they're always difficult to judge if you haven't read the original poem. And as I say, all of them feel a little bit, Martin was talking about that thing that nobody really knows why a literative verse, it was called the alliterative revival, wasn't it? Yeah. Nobody quite knows why it was revived other than if you're standing in front of an audience and you want to get people going,

this kind of hitting these stresses and there's nothing quite like it. I could read a tiny little bit of this just to give you some of the flavour if i can find it with my turned down pages hang on where is it oh gawain okay has uh he's been partying hard okay um with uh with the uh bertilak and and uh and bertilak and and bertilak's wife which of which maybe a little bit more later he knows the next day he's got to go to the green chapel it's that terrible thing you've had too much to drink and you've got like the worst worst thing you have to do the next day but there are a couple of things about this that i really love night passes a new year's day

draws near dawn drives out the dark as the lord decrees a time of wild weather the wind increases clowns rain over the cold ground and nagging northerly pinches the skin blown snow whips about nipping the animals wind whistles in gusts and howls off the heights packing the dales with deep drifting snow Lying wide awake, the night listens At each cock crow, he told the time exactly Though he closed his eyelids, he dozed but little Before first light, he leapt briskly out of bed For a lamp still burned on in the bedroom

He roused his chamberlain, who replied straight away Bade him bring his suit of mail in his saddle The man gets up, goes to fetch his clothes for him, then soon a ray of sigawain in splendid style, still with the clothes. Then, beginning with warm clothes against the biting cold, then his mail armour, which the men had safely stored, chest pieces, plate armour perfectly polished, and his coat of mail, its metal rings rubbed clean of rust, all seemed brand-new and he was thankful indeed As he buckled on each piece

It shone like a burnished bead the fryness from here to Greece Then he asked for his steed and off he goes into I think a round of applause for John Mitch I felt John John John John I John, John. I felt I had a note of Richard Burton towards the end there. Oh, do you think? Well, what I think is it's very readable. It's very, it doesn't, it's not going to offend anybody. It takes the story, you know, it's good.

It's solid. All right, we have to bounce along. Time is against us. Laura, please, which translation are you sharing with us tonight? I am sharing the Marie Boroff 1967 translation that's been reprinted in this lovely Norton Critical edition with an introduction and some critical essays at the back. Marie Boroff wrote a wonderful book about the style and meter of the Gawain poet about five years before the translation. And Marie Boroff also, I think, is an important figure. She was the first female member of Yale University English Department.

And I really love her translation. I find it a real scholarly companion. It's accurate. You can really feel, you know, because I do, you know, I know the Middle English, but I have to say the poem is hard. I can read Beowulf more easily than I can Gawain and the Green Knight because the language of Beowulf is of a very particular high poetic register. And once you know it, you kind of know it. But reading the Gawain poet, it's such an amazing mixture of French, of Cheshire dialect words, of alliterative words that come down from Old English.

But it's also quite, it's very precise, it's quite tricksy, it's quite slippery, and it's quite challenging. So I find the Boroff really wonderful to read alongside the original because she's really accurate and helpful. And she does feel like a kind of scholar companion to kind of help you on your way. And if you don't have access to the original, I think she's a really good place to get a kind of firm and clear sense of what the original sounds like. Shoot your shot. I will indeed.

So this is part of the passage that i read out in the middle english the green knight's christmas game she does the alliteration as you'll hear and i want you to listen very carefully to the contract that is set up because as i said before this passage uh this moment in the poem is often talked about as the beheading game, Boroff calls it the challenge episode. So just listen if the word beheading is used. Okay. So the Green Knight says, I call in this court for a Christmas game, for tis yule, a new year, and many young bloods about. If any in this house such hardyhood claims, be so bold in his blood, his brain so wild, as stoutly to strike one stroke for another, I shall give him as my gift this gisarm noble, this axe that is heavy enough to handle as he likes, and I shall bide the first

blow as bare as I sit. If there be one so willful my words to assay, let him leap hither lightly, lay hold of this weapon. I quit claim it forever, keep it as his own. And I shall stand him a stroke steady on this floor, so you grant me the guerdon to give him another sans blame. In a twelve month and a day he shall have of me the same. Now be it seen straight away who dares take up the game. To strike one stroke in exchange for another. As well as thinking that Gawain and the Green Knight is a book about books,

I also think it's a book about close reading and about paying attention. The Green Knight says one stroke in exchange for another and he will give the axe almost as a kind of reward. He does not say, take this axe and chop my head off. Well, I think there's something of that about it. He does later, you know, sort of reveal his neck, lift his hair up. But he also comes in with a holly bow. Gawain was perfectly at liberty to take the holly, to bop him with it, to kind of tap him with the side of the axe. Nowhere does it say

chop my head off. And Arthur says to Gawain, if thou raiders him wicht, if you, and raiders means interpret or read, if you read him rightly, raidly I trow, thou shall bide the burr that he shall be to thereafter if you interpret this properly you will easily survive uh the blow that will come and that could be you know that was often read as arthur going you know you won't have to have a blow in a year's time lop the guy's head off and then this will all go away it'll just be a christ nightmare. The Gawain poet does not suffer the lazy reader. No, no, they do not. And sort of an unreliable narrator as well, which is another trope that we've had. Also a master storyteller. A master storyteller, indeed. Martin, which classic text are you going to present us with? I had a look at Tolkien. Ah, okay. So Tolkien

describes the language of the Gawain poet as this, archaic, queer, crabby, and rustic. I'm going to give that to you again. Archaic, queer, crabby, and rustic. And I'm going to, you know that anything that Tolkien translates or put his hands on, you know it's going to be pretty good. So there's a couple of things around it I want to say before I forget really, which is just Tolkien's relationship to the Celtic world was never as fulsome as it was the Scandinavian and the Norse. He has this sort of terrifying phrase, really. He described Irish myth. He said, they're of bright color, but they're like a stained glass window,

but broken with no design. So, you know. Meow. Yeah. And so, you know, the Celt and the Saxon are always having a conversation. And he was always a bit, he struggled with his own version of the, well, his own, you know, creation of the Silmarillion. He said, I worry it's too Celtic.

That's not what's wrong with it. Yeah, I'm with Linda. What's the name of the artist? Tolkien is a man. He went to, when they said, what do you think of Ireland? And he said, it just feels evil. The land, it just feels evil. And he said, the only reason that it's keeping itself together

is by all those Catholics, you know. So the fact that he went, this is, you can Google it. The fact that, you know, I love him and I love what he did, but these things have to be said. On those bombshells, though, really. I'll read him. I'll read him. I mean, as I said, you know it's going to be terrific.

And again, this is Gawain out, as the philosopher John Moriarty would say, discovering his bush soul out in the initiatory. You've got to remember, this is the initiative you've got to remember this is the thing you have to bloody remember with this story do you not think that this happened to every single knight that ever made their way through camelot have you twigged yet that this is an initiatory encounter to find out the credibility of this guy you know there's a reason why no one else steps forward it's his turn you know he's he's a man of great promise but he's not a legend yet some very earnest nodding well there should be because these things have not been said by a mountain the morning merrily

he was riding into a forest that was deep and fearsomely wild, with high hills at each hand and hoar woods beneath, of huge aged oaks by the hundred together. The hazel and the hawthorn were huddled and tangled with rough, ragged moss around them, trailing with many birds bleakly on the bare twigs, sitting that piteously piped there for pain of the cold this good man on gringolet goes now beneath them through many marshes and mires but a man all alone see there's no there's no guys from the shire going with him it's no sam ganji a man all alone troubled lest a truant at that time he should prove from the service of the sweet Lord, who on that selfsame night of a maid became man our mourning to conquer.

Wow. He's got a future, that guy. Well, my translation, what I'm going to do is offer you an overview of several of the film and TV adaptations of Gawain and the Green Knight. And we're going to kick off with this clip. See if you recognize. Well, I think this stands up with the other the other interpretations we've heard. Fighting the forces of magic and sorcery.

So Gawain is faced with unearthly dangers. He is challenged by all, defeated by none. A remarkable man, fighting the treachery around him. Leave the wretch to his miserable end. Always courageous. Forward into battle!

Always victorious. Tomorrow I ride out to meet the Green Knight. The ultimate challenge awaits. We have an appointment at the Green Chamber before the sun goes down. You've had your cut. The game is over. I make the rules for you. That's your summary.

That's your summary. Sean Connery and Miles O'Keefe in Sword of the Valiant, an epic tale of a legendary knight, a knight called Sir Gawain. You can stick that in your pipe, Tolkien. Yes, that's Sword of the Valiant from 1984, starring Miles O'Keefe as Gawain, and yes, Sean Connery as the Green Knight. I make the rules here, boy!

It's a magnificent performance by Sean, who did it for the money. But that version was written and directed by a man called Stephen Weeks, and Stephen Weeks, what's particularly inexplicable about that terrible film, is it's a remake of an earlier film that Stephen Weeks made of Gawain and the Green Knight 11 years earlier, called Gawain and the Green Knight, starring Murray Head as Sir Gawain and Nigel Green, appropriately enough, in his last film role,

who you will know from the Ipcrest file as the Green Knight. He's wearing a huge wig in it, which is the finest point of the film. And Philip Reeve, the writer Philip Reeve, says quite correctly about this 1973 film, which is on YouTube, everyone, you can see it. It features the cream of mid-tier 1970s British thespery, all slicing it thick and serving it raw. So that's two versions by Stephen Weeks.

The first one then remade with Sean Connery. There's a 1991, very strange but wonderful adaptation by David Rudkin, who is the author of Pender's Fen and Artemis 81 and other weird, what would now be known as folk horror texts. And it was made in 1991 for ITV. It's inexplicable when you watch it now that something so strange would be made by… It's seriously weird, isn't it? Well, here's the thing about it, though.

It's made in 1991 for ITV. It's written by David Rudkin, author of Pender's Fen, and it's directed by a man called John Michael Phillips, whose most prestigious gig before this was Emmerdale. So there is something of a mismatch there. Also, there was a performance of Tolkien's translation on the third programme in December 1953, featuring Professor Tolkien himself.

That has been lost, wiped by the BBC. There was also a radio adaptation on at Christmas 1972 in four parts, translated by Professor Gwynne Jones. And the second episode was called Christmas at the Wirral, which was very pleasing. Music by the King Singers. And the Gawain poet was played by Derek Giler. There's one for the teenagers.

And Sykes, of course. Derek Giler from Sykespe cock always sykes i think that's right isn't it and then that leads us in 2021 as though this thing was structured in some careful way to the the the film which can barely be mentioned in public without people hissing and getting angry uh the green knight written produced directed and edited by david lowry starring ralph innocent and Dev Patel. I would like to ask all three of you. One of the things that I think is a bit off about the film, which I did enjoy, is the way it plays into the myth of nature.

When, as I understand it, that is a latter day gloss on this story. The idea of the Green knight and the green man are not interchangeable, are they, Laura? They are... No, no, they're not. There's a kind of... There's so many ways in which the colour green might be operating in the Middle Ages.

Part of it might be to do with nature and to do with life. And there are these figures called wood woes, kind of wild men of the woods characters who sometimes are green in manuscript illuminations. And Gawain does fight some wood woes along with the worms and wolves that he encounters on the Wirral. Thank you very much.

I was one of the prepared earlier. But the sort of, the green man, the kind of foliage green man is, as far as I understand it, a kind of 19th century sort of, in a sense, medievalism invention. Although, of course, there are these foliate heads that you find in medieval cathedrals and churches. But obviously, the Green Knight film really leans into that. But obviously the Green Knight film really leans into that. And of course, the knight when he comes in is very, he's more kind of tree beard from Lords of the Rings,

kind of tree kind of creaking in. The voice at first is ventriloquized through the queen. So very, very different to the Green Knight coming into the poem, who to all intents and purposes is a perfect courtly knight. He's beautifully dressed in courtly clothing. He's got his horse. Everything about him is perfectly camelot, apart from the fact he's overall enkegrener.

He's completely green and so is his horse, but otherwise perfectly normal. So, Martin, you were saying you felt that you were happy with the look of the thing. I think it's sumptuous to look at. Absolutely gorgeous and very subtle. And some of my life is as a painter and I just enjoyed looking at it sensorily. But in terms of, it's got no crack. There is no crack in that film. None. but in terms of it's got no crack there is no crack in that film none uh and there's lots of crack in the the problem with it you see is that in the very late stages of the story

there's a deep dropping into a very soulful moment and it's when we as readers and listeners fall into it it's it's when have you fallen short? It's about vulnerability, it's about exposure, it's about the capacity for forgiveness. That's why it's a story we can't forget because we've all done it. And if the story is already tremendously moribund from the beginning, that gets lost because we already feel terrible so there needs to be uh yeah different rhythms i would suggest that the film doesn't have and john the ending of the film we must spoilers um the ending of the film seems to me to be an highly elaborate way of dealing with the the dying fall of the poem. You know, the tonal end of the poem is very important.

Yeah. But translating that to the screen is quite challenging. Yeah, I mean, I think it is pretty unfilmable, to be honest. I think, like, it's... And there was much I liked about it I thought Dev Patel did well. I was really looking forward to Alicia Vikander being better than she was. But it is such a, honestly, it's such a sexy poem. It's got everything.

I mean, as Martin said, it is definitely an initiation right. But also, for a while, it's a bit of a detective story. You know, he's like a gumshoe trying to find the Green Chapel, asking everybody he meets into. And then he ends up, it's a bit of a detective story. You know, he's like a gumshoe trying to find the Green Chapel, asking everybody he meets into... And then he ends up... It's that classic thing. You end up in an incredibly luxurious hotel with a femme fatale who's coming on,

saying to you, you know, my body is yours. It's like, what? Anyway, that's my... What were you saying about the end of the film? Yeah, I just thought... I enjoyed the last episode as well, yeah. I just felt by the end of the film, I just wanted it to be over.

And I was sort of... They didn't... I mean, I felt that they were trying to work out the... Well, I mean, what I think is exactly what Martin said. The real point of the poem is everybody's still having a party except for gawain yes i i want to ask specifically about that martin can i start with you i think the most powerful part of the poem is the sense that in theory and at first sight gawain has triumphed but we know that gawain feels he hasn't triumphed, that his conscience is nagging him.

Is that, to you, is that the hook of the poem? Not the point, but the hook of the poem. It is the hook of the poem. So you shall recall, I think we can get to this point now, where the third time that the lady of the castle comes to him, she says, look, I have this, I have this, you know, this belt effectively, this sash. And if you put it on, it will protect you.

There's 10,000 secrets sewn into this thing. And you're going to make it through alive. You can pray to Mary all you want, but take this with you and all will be well. And he doesn't overthink it, you know. He doesn't overthink it. He says, yes, thank you very much. And then, of course, he is exposed. And the chivalric code, which is terribly important to him, falls in pieces around him. Now, the thought that I'm left with is this. Back at Camelot, no one knows what has happened. No one knows the truth of this.

He, you know, there was no one there taking a selfie. There was nobody filming it. On the way back to Camelot, he could have created some complete fiction about what had happened. And what makes the story so tremendously moving is that he finds a way of telling the truth. And that is redemptive. It's redemptive. It turns the whole thing on its head because suddenly you go, you know, well, we're all going to do something like that at some point. We're always going to sell ourselves down the river. And so that for me, that moment where he comes back and says, I want everybody in right now and I'm going to tell you exactly what happened. I'm going to tell the truth and I'm going to get rid of the lies. And if that isn't a way to live, I don't know what is.

During this election, I think you're quite right. Yeah. Laura. And what's lovely about that, that moment is that the court, the court embraces him. There's such joy at the end and there's such, there's this delightful sense of mercy and compassion. And they're just so thrilled that he's back, thinking they've sent him off to his death and that's the last they would see of Gawain. Gawain himself is still struggling. And I do think that at the end of the poem, you know, he does confess to what he did. He says, you know, this is a token of the untrouther that I am taken in, the untruth. This word, if we were to give the poem a one word title, trouther is the word I would use because it's symbolized by the pentangle on his shield and on my brooch.

And, you know, your trouther is your truth, your faith, your integrity, your word. And Gawain, I think the reason the film doesn't work for the reasons that John was saying is that at the castle, Gawain is told, oh, the Green Chapel, it's just a couple of miles away. So we'll get you there on the day you need to be there. It's fine. And Gawain's like, oh, brilliant. And this place feels like Camelot and there's feasting and there's that nice, sexy lady. Oh, I can just hang out. I can just have this kind of maybe final fling, even though he's having these nightmares about what's to come.

And then the lady says, oh, I'll just, you know, I could give you this girdle and it would save your life. It's not worth anything, but it's magical. And you get those kinds of magical tokens in romance texts. And Gawain suddenly thinks, this was a jewel for the jeopardy that I'm about to face. And the poet says, if he could be slippered to be unslain, it were a slicht that were noble. If he could somehow slip out of it and wriggle out of the slaying that he thinks is coming to him, the slight, the trick, the strategy, the belt would be a noble thing.

But it's not a noble thing in the game that Gawain does not know he's playing. He's already signed up for the challenge game. Then when he signs up for the exchange of winnings with Lord Bertilak which to be fair he probably should have known them or something going on there um another game another game another game of some of the same language same language is used our revels now are ended wrong poet but doesn't matter um thank you to all of you who've braved the weather and the woodwoses to be here tonight. And to Harry and the wonderful team at Foils,

to Nicky and Tess, our priceless production team, who have made such modish merch and manned the mixing desk so marvellously. If you would like to hear more about Gawain and the Green Knight, we are carrying on this conversation with questions from this lovely audience here at Foils and further readings

and more alliteration. Because, boy, I love that alliteration. And you should subscribe to our Patreon so you can listen to episodes of Locklisted. The next episode of Locklisted will be a continuation of this discussion. Remember, if you want show notes with clips links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 215 we've already

recorded i tell and we've done loads that's the point uh please visit our website at backlisted.fm and we're still keen to hear from you on twitter facebook instagram blue sky and wherever else you feel compelled to write from if you want to hear Backlisted early and without ads like the audience here tonight, you can subscribe to our Patreon. www.patreon.com forward slash Backlisted. Finally, finally, finally, Laura, is there anything you would like to

add that we haven't covered? I've got nothing. I've got anything else. You want to go on about the symbolism of the pentagram and the five numbers again? Just give me a minute. Can you ask somebody else first? Yeah, ask Martin first.

Ask somebody else. Well, isn't it interesting that on the shield of Gawain, you would think he would have an eagle, you'd think he'd have a boar, you'd think he'd have a griffin, but it's this abstraction. It's this five-pointed star, which you and I probably associate with Iron Maiden album covers, to be quite honest. But actually, according to the old poem, it goes back into Christian symbolism, right back to Solomon.

That's very true. So I do want to say something about the pentangle as it goes, and the five interlocking points and all the virtues. And in the poem, it's described as an endless knot and it represents all of these virtues that Gawain has signed himself up to. And it seems like the most extraordinary thing, his five wits, the five wounds of Christ, the five joys of Mary, and these virtues of cleanness and fellowship and truther and chastity and courtesy. But as you get through the poem, you suddenly realize that one of the things the poet has done, and the reason he spends so much time on the pentangle, is that actually putting those virtues into practice, holding them all in sway at the same time,

to practice, holding them all in sway at the same time. It isn't this kind of perfect, endless symbol of wonderful virtue. It's actually a kind of trap. It's a cage. I fear a cage. He is trapped. He's caged by the pentangle. And it's really hard when you're in a lovely bed being tucked in by a sexy lady to hold up your courtesy and your cleanness and your trowel all at the same time. So you get this overdetermined symbol of the pentangle. And then maybe the girdle that may or may not be the magical item that saves your life, that might be something easier to grasp onto at the end. to grasp onto at the end. Martin, can I ask you,

when you're performing, telling Gwen, which is the part of the story that as you approach it, you're thinking to yourself, here we go. This is the bit that always lands. Oh, it's the women. It's the women.

Always it's the women. It's the genius. What we haven't mentioned is this whole thing is put together by women. You know, that's when, and It's the genius. What we haven't mentioned is this whole thing is put together by women. You know, that's when, and there's this wonderful, you've got this extraordinary character who towards the end is coming into, the lady of the castle is coming in primarily pretty much in fox fur,

but there's this also, there's this other figure. And I go, when I'm telling this live, is she an old lady? Is she blind? Who is she? She sort of moves around the room like a spider. What is that? I remember once in Greek myth saying, for every Aphrodite, you have a nemesis right next to her. And so for me, that's when it happens. The action in the forest is interesting. If you think of the Odyssey, the power of the Odyssey is the nostos. It's the longing for home. It's why at the end of Homer's Odyssey, so many of the books take place over a very short period of time. And this story is a bit like that. We have all the smoke and drama of the Wadwos and the rest of it. But really, as always, the real initiatory burning ground happens in the bedroom.

Well, if that isn't a good point to end, I don't know what is. John, do you want to? No, I think that's fine. I mean, I would say that you don't get psychological acuity of this kind until Hamlet. I honestly think after Sir Gawain, it is the most, it's so freighted. And the ending, waving goodbye to sort of Falstaffian dad, going back to Camelot, knowing that he'll never be the same person again,

knowing that he'll never really be able to get that, you know, his childhood back. It's sensational. So I would like to say thank you to the team at Foils. I would like to say thank you to the team at Foyles. I would like to say thank you to our lovely audience here tonight. And I would particularly like to thank our dear friends, Laura and Martin. We'll see you again next time. Thanks very much, everybody. Thank you.