SOURCE: Bercovitch, Sacvan. “Romance and Anti-Romance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” In Critical Studies of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” edited by Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher, pp. 257-66. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968.

In the following essay, originally published in 1965, Bercovitch explains that many elements of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight run counter to traditional romantic conventions.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is without question a “profound celebration of the romance values … [of] Christian chivalry and courtesy,” and in this sense we undoubtedly have an “obligation to read[it] … constantly as a romance.”¹ Unfortunately, however, the obligation seems to have misled modern readers into a disproportionate emphasis on its sombre and sacral qualities. The Gawain-poet, writes an influential critic, “is as civilized as Chaucer, but sterner, much more of a moralist, a great deal less of a...