SOURCE: Davenport, W. A. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” In The Art of the Gawain-Poet, pp. 152-94. London: The Athlone Press, 1978.

In the following excerpt, Davenport examines various techniques employed by the Gawain-poet, including symbolism, irony, and role reversals in his characterizations.

2. Gawain's Adversaries

The most puzzling, and hence the most variously interpreted, element in Sir Gawain is the double figure of the Green Knight-cum-Bertilak. He has been seen as Life, Death, God, the Devil, and the force of Nature, as a Wild Man, a primitive hob-goblin, a shape-shifter, as the force of an earthly moral integrity stripping courtly pretension of its class veneer, as a super-human primordial energy mocking the mutabilities of time and human triviality, and more. Most such ‘interpretations’ are fanciful generalisations based on unanalysed, impressionistic reactions to particular moments in the poem, but the very variety of them is an indication of...