SOURCE: Lindley, Arthur. “‘Ther He Watz Dispoyled, with Spechez of Myerthe’: Carnival and the Undoing of Sir Gawain.” In Hyperion and the Hobbyhorse: Studies in Carnivalesque Subversion, pp. 65-83. Newark, New Jersey: University of Delaware Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Lindley argues that many critics misinterpret Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by seeking to impose meaning in the place of deliberate ambiguity.

Few characters project a categorical view of human nature more strongly than the Wife of Bath or subvert it more thoroughly. In her world of discourse everyone is first, last, and always male or female. Those categories are ever and always separate and opposed, not only as black to white, but also as official to carnival. Either men are on top or women are. As we have seen, however, both her “real” and “fictional” narratives dissolve those categories and their alternative hierarchies. “I am woman...