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Archetypal Patterns in
Gawain and the Green Knight
by
Michael Dellert
The term archetype denotes recurrent narrative designs, patterns of action, character types, or images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even ritualized modes of social behavior. Such archetypes are held to reflect a set of universal, elemental, and primitive mental forms or patterns, whose effective embodiment in a literary work evokes a profound response from the reader. Among these archetypal patterns, the death-rebirth theme is often held to be the archetype of archetypes, and is grounded in the cycle of the seasons and the organic cycle of human life. This archetype occurs in primitive rituals of the king who is annually sacrificed, and gods who die to be reborn. Among the other archetypal themes, images, and characters that have been frequently traced in literature are the heavenly ascent, the search for the father, the Paradise-Hades image, the earth goddess, and the fatal woman.
Using this definition of an archetype, it is possible to draw parallels between the characters and actions of Gawain and the Green Knight and the myths and early folktales of the Welsh people prior to the Norman invasion of 1066.
To begin with, we can easily discern parallels between the Green Knight himself and earlier legends and folktales. The most obvious connection is between the Green Knight and the Celtic Green Man, called Cernunnos ("the Horned") by the Romans, and later known as Robin Goodfellow. Although not depicted as horned, the Pearl Poet's description of the Green Knight is otherwise consistent with this Celtic mythological figure, and is explicitly associated with the supernatural in lines 149 ("He ferde as freke were fade,/And ouer-al enker grene") and 240 ("Therefore for illusion and magic the folk there it judged"). Such horned deities are abundant in early folklore around the world, from paleolithic cave paintings in the Caverne des Trois Frères in Ariège to Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, India, Greece and finally to ancient Gaul, Britain and Ireland, horns being considered to be a symbol of divinity or supernatural power. In addition, Bertilak, the Green Knight's alter ego, is an expert huntsman, and one of the roles played by the Green Man in Celtic myth was that of the Master of the Wild Hunt, a supernatural (and ritual) hunting of evildoers in Celtic myth. The Green Knight's possession of a branch of holly is also significant. While on the one hand, holly played the part of the white flag of truce in the culture of the 13th century, it was also a holy tree among the ancient Celtic peoples of Wales, associated with the month of Tinne in the Celtic tree calendar (roughly the Gregorian month of July) and with the aspect of the Celtic god-concept corresponding with humanity and strife. We can thus draw a parallel between the holly, the Green Knight, the themes of strife and victory and Northrop Frye’s concept of mythoi, which associates the romance genre to which Gawain and the Green Knight belongs with the seasonal cycle’s summer aspect.
The beheading game played by the Green Knight with Gawain at Arthur’s court also has its precedents, such as in the 11th century Irish romance Briciu's Feast, and the Old French story of Le Livre de Caradoc. In Celtic folklore, the head of slain enemies always seem to have magical powers, such as the Green Knight’s talking head, which is reminiscent of the talking head of Bendigeidfran in the story of Branwen Daughter of Llyr in the 13th century Welsh Mabinogion, a written collection of earlier oral tales of the Cymri, or early Celtic Welsh. The beheading game and the magical powers associated with severed heads can be tied to the archetypal ritual of the king who is annually sacrificed and the god who is killed to be reborn. It is also significant that the Green Knight chooses Christmas to play the beheading game, as the Christian holiday of Christ’s birth corresponds to the Celtic new year’s celebration, during which the Prince of Light is reborn after the death of the Tanist or Dark Prince at the hands of the Queen, or earth goddess, in her destructive aspect. Traditionally, this Celtic new year’s celebration included the ritual of the harvesting of mistletoe, which typified the emasculation of the Old King by his successor, suggestive of the castration of Uranus by Cronos, which signified the end of an age and the beginning of another. If we consider this aspect of the beheading game in relation to the turbulence of British-Welsh politics at the time of the poem's composition, we can interpret the beheading game, and the poem in general, as a tale of the decline of one culture (the pseudo-Celtic/Christian Welsh, with their loose tribal society and relatively primitive lifestyle) and the rise of its successor (the Roman Catholic, feudal Anglo-Normans).
The recurrence of the number "5" in Gawain and the Green Knight is also significant. Five was considered a sacred number by the ancient Celts. There are five holidays upon which Arthur holds full court: Easter, Ascension Day, Pentecost, All Saint’s Day, and Christmas, which coincide with the five high holy days of the old Celtic faith: Imbolc, Beltaine, Lughnasa, Samhain, and New Year’s Day (which in the Celtic calendar was celebrated on the same day as Christmas is today); the device on Gawain’s shield is the pentacle, or five-sided star; Gawain has five virtues, etc. etc. The significance of the number five to the ancient Celts of Wales can be summed up by the Celtic concept of the five-fold divinity: The Maiden, the Mother, the Crone, the Prince of Light and the Dark King. All of these aspects of the Celtic divinity are characterized in Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain himself represents the Prince of Light, similar in form and function to the hero Gwydion who appears in the Mabinogion, an archetype of science and light, the overriding ego, the advancing tide of Roman Catholicism and Christian feudalism, while Bertilak/the Green Knight represents the Dark King, psychologically related to the lower nature or Id which needs to be controlled, the primitive tribal Welsh, Pryderi, the Lord of the Underworld character of the Mabinogion. Bertilak's wife is the Nubile Maiden or Clotho, the natural, instinctive, or "fleshly"/material aspect of the personality, while Morgan le Fay is the Crone or Atropos, representing both the intuitive or inspirational faculty, and the destructive aspect of death and decay. The Virgin Mary, painted on the inside of Gawain's shield, represents the Mother or Clotho, the rational and practical aspects of the personality, at odds with both the Maiden and the Crone, yet reconciling both, and the Virgin Mary is the only supernatural agency upon whom Gawain calls for assistance, significant of the rational, practical mind's struggle to coordinate and control its other members. Thus, the struggle between Gawain and Bertilak/the Green Knight, is the struggle between the advancing tide of the feudal Christian culture of the Anglo-Normans and the declining but proud primitive tribalism of the native Welsh. Supporting this interpretation is the fact that Gawain's journey to the Green Chapel takes him into the north of Wales, wherein the Anglo-Norman Lords Marcher, reigning over Wales in the name of the British Kings, had penetrated the fertile river valleys and established feudal baronies, while the Welsh tribal mountaineers held the impenetrable fastnesses of Snowdon, and all of Wales was a scene of tribal feud, baronial violence and official tyranny and extortion.
The Pearl Poet, presumably living in the lands of the Northwest Midlands dialect in which he writes, was probably well aware of both the old Welsh tales and of the contemporary tales of war, strife and bloodshed characteristic of the Wales of his time. Thus, it is not unlikely that he might combine all of these elements into a tale crafted in the style of the most popular literary style of his time, the Breton Arthurian Romance.
Bibliography
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Trevelyan, G.M., History of England, Vol 1, Doubleday and Co., Garden City, NY, 1952.
Jones, Gwyn and Jones, Thomas (translators), The Mabinogion, Orion Publishing Group, London, 1994.
Hope, Murry, Practical Celtic Magic, Aquarian Press, London, 1987.