sir gawain and the green knight?

Question

what are 5 most important moral and ethical issues raised in sir gawain and the green knight? discuss the relevance or lack thereof of these issues in our society today........if you can help, thanks

Answer 1

Yes, what she said.

Answer 2

The meeting with the Green Knight
The next day, Gawain leaves for the Green Chapel, with the lady's silk girdle hidden under his armor, and accompanied by a guide from the lord's castle. Leaving the guide, who is afraid to approach the Green Chapel, Gawain finds the Green Knight busy whetting the blade of an axe in readiness for the fight. As arranged, the Green Knight moves to behead Gawain, but only strikes him on the third axe-swing, the blow barely cutting his neck and only injuring him slightly. The Green Knight then reveals himself to be an alter ego of the lord of the castle, Bertilak de Hautdesert, and explains that the three axe blows were for the three occasions when Gawain was visited by the lady. The third blow, which drew blood, was a punishment for Gawain's acceptance of the silk girdle. There is much speculation as to whether the girdle would have really kept Gawain from dying had the Green Knight desired to kill him. The lady, it seems, has lied to Gawain insofar as the girdle has not kept him completely from harm. On the other hand, it has kept him from death. The author leaves the exact powers of the girdle undefined and open to interpretation, but makes it clear that the Green Knight would not have willingly spared Gawain's life had he failed to resist the lady's sexual advances. Assuming it has no life-saving powers, it is meant to be ironic that the girdle, the one thing that Gawain thinks will save him, is actually the thing that harms him; furthermore, assuming the girdle has no real powers, it would have been the thing that led to his death had he taken it as a love token, which is what the lady originally offered it to him as.

The Green Knight explains that Gawain's trial was arranged by "Morgne the goddes", Morgan le Fay, mistress of the wizard Merlin and now a guest at Hautdesert castle. A passage of rhetorical anti-feminism follows which has excited considerable discussion in the critical literature, where Gawain blames his troubles on women in general. The two men part on cordial terms, Gawain returning to Camelot. There, Sir Gawain recounts his adventure to Arthur and explains his shame at having partially succumbed to the lady's attempts, if only in his mind. Arthur refuses to blame Gawain and decrees that all his knights should henceforth wear a green sash in recognition of Gawain's courage and honor and to recognize the fallibility of men. The poem concludes with the motto: "HONY SOYT QUI MAL PENCE", which is a form of 'honi soit qui mal y pense', which is the motto of the Order of the Garter and means "Shame be to the man who has evil in his mind." From this, it has been theorised that Gawain's peers wearing the sash is meant to represent the origin of the Order of the Garter, although, in the parallel poem, The Greene Knight, the lace is white and is said to be the origin of the collar worn by the knights of the Bath.[2]


[edit] Similar stories
The closest parallel is a rhyming retelling of what is almost the same story in a poem of the Percy Folio Manuscript which is known, in order to distinguish it, as The Greene Knight. The plot is simplified, and there is more extensive explanation of motive, and some of the names are changed. A further parallel of the beheading game exists in Sir Gawain and the Turke.

There is a similar character present in the Qur'an, by the name of Al-Khidr (Arabic, the "Green" Man). Al-Khidr, in his encounter with Moses, tests him three times with three seemingly evil acts. Eventually, the "sins" of Al-Khidr prove to be noble deeds to prevent greater evils or reveal great goods. Both the Green Knight and Al-Khidr serve as teachers to holy and upright men (Gawain, Moses), who thrice put their faith and obedience to the test. It has been suggested that the character of the Green Knight may be a literary descendant of Al-Khidr, brought to Europe with the Crusaders and blended with Celtic and Arthurian imagery.

A certain "Green Knight" is also referenced in the stories of Saladin. The knight in these stories is a Spanish warrior in a shield vert and a helmet brandished with a stag's horns. Saladin had respect for this honourable fighter.

In Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, chapter 20, Gawain's brother Gareth fights "two brethren whych were called the Grene Knyght and the Rede Knyght". It is unknown if Malory was aware of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or if he drew any influence from it.


[edit] Significance of the Colour Green
In English folklore and literature, Green has traditionally been used to symbolize nature and its embodied attributes, namely those of fertility and rebirth, however, green is also known to have signified witchcraft, devilry and evil for its association with the faeries and spirits of early English folklore and for its association with decay and toxicity. In the Celtic tradition, green was avoided in clothing for its superstitious association with misfortune and death. Given these varied and even contradictory interpretations of the colour green, its precise meaning in the poem remains ambiguous. Many scholars believe the Green Knight to be a manifestation of the Green Man vegetation deity of pre-Christian Europe, while others see him as being an incarnation of the Devil himself. Another possible interpretation of the Green Knight is to view him as a fusion of these two deities, at once representing both good and evil and life and death as self-proliferating cycles. This interpretation also embraces the positive and negative attributes of the colour green and ties in with the enigmatic motif of the poem. The green girdle too, originally worn for protection, is later worn as a symbol of shame and cowardice and is finally adopted as a symbol of honour by the knights of Camelot, signifying a transformation from good to evil and back again displaying both the spoiling and regenerative connotations of the colour green.

Sources:

The Idea of the Green Knight, Lawrence Besserman, ELH, Vol. 53, No. 2. (Summer, 1986), pp. 219-239. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Why The Devil Wears Green, D. W. Robertson Jr., Modern Language Notes, Vol. 69, No. 7. (Nov., 1954), pp. 470-472. The Johns Hopkins University Press.